THE BOOK AS A BANDWIDTH OF RESONANCE IN OVID'S "TRISTIA"
THE BOOK AS A BANDWIDTH OF RESONANCE IN OVID `s "TRISTIA"

Summary/Abstract: Relegated from Rome to Tomis around 8 A.D., after a sea-voyage which lasted months, forced to give up the circle of high life where he used to be so admired and cherished, Ovid found himself in the land of dissonance. The sources of his dissonance were: the perceived reception of his own poetry, the nature of harsher climate, the life-threatening attacks of the Barbarians and his own fears of illness. Ovid needed a "bandwidth" of communication and resonance and he found it in books, both as objects and as a legacy. The book (liber/libri) was free (‘liber’) to travel to Rome in his place and to receive all the valences of a compensatory myth. Moreover, book (in its ancient form of ”volumen”) retrieves in “Tristia” the vocabulary of resonating with other people. Books, his own and of other writers, are the mysterious path to a much needed reconciliation with Tomitan people.

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