MYSTIC RIVER: AUSONIUS' MOSELLA AS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL REVELATION

Ausonius' Mosella is probably the most remarkable, studied and beloved poem of late antiquity. This essay aims to examine it from a new perspective, by reinterpreting it as a complex and many-layered depiction of a sui generis epiphanic experience, ultimately triggered by an unmediated encounter with nature. This sudden ‘revelation’, be it real or merely an artful literary device, did not only provide Ausonius with a deeper insight into the world around him, but also raised many epistemological issues on the limits of human knowledge and the (in)ability of language to convey reality. Both aspects—the poetical rendering of a non-discursive quasi-mystical experience and the epistemological and philosophical reflections it brings about—pervade the whole of the poem and are absolutely central to an in-depth understanding of its very raison d’être.