RSG: Can we can add Virgil to Shade as poets who were presumably never on the Black Sea? A lapsus calami, of course: It was Ovid who wrote the Epistulae ex Ponto from his exile in Tomis, some 30 years after Virgll’s death (19 BCE). Does this impact on your thesis (as far as I follow it)? Since Ovid’s Epistulae are considered by many scholars* as manipulative, devious and plain dishonest, this does indeed point more to CK than JS. But in your proposed linkage, does VN get tarred with the same brush? The ex Ponto allusion can point to the common theme of exile, VN’s and CK/VB’s. But need it be milked further by asking who’s ever been to the Black Sea? If CK/VB have (presumably) ever been there, he/they were (presumably) placed there by VN, their creator.

Jansy recently said there’s a lot of CK in VN. Ca va sans dire! CK/VB/JS/HS et al, are all the fictive products of VN’s cunning, teasing pen. CK/VB is, ironically, a more credible creation (even when lying) than the uneven poet Shade (VN trying too hard).

* http://www.jstor.org/pss/25010759

Stan Kelly-Bootle

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