Metamorphoses

I used this translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses when I was doing my GCSEs, and I've looked out for it ever since. The current poetic translations irritated me, I wanted the version I remembered. Well, lo and behold, my university's library delivered.

Don't read Ovid's Metamorphoses expecting a novel, or even a single coherent story. It's a series of stories, woven together in a highly flexible framework, which results in some stories being examined at length and others skipped over. There are stories about gods and heroes, about the lovers of gods, and those wronged by the gods. There are all kinds of transformations, including famous stories like that of Orpheus and Eurydice, the rape of Proserpina, the story of Narcissus and Echo, Adonis, Perseus... If you want to read a book which deals with a lot of the traditional Roman stories, Ovid's a good bet.

I don't know if it's the original or the translator, but either way the narration manages to encapsulate moments of tenderness toward the characters, as well as the moral judgements and so on. Even with the brief glimpses we get, there are characters that are intriguing, even likeable. ( )

Gods and their love affairs. Gods and their love affairs with mortals. Fate, covetousness, allegiance, brutalities, treachery and chastisements metamorphosing from the cocoon of mighty love. The discordant waves of love dangerously destabilizing romantic notions; overwhelming morality and raison d'être of Gods and mortals alike. Ovid makes you want to write intense poetry and feel affectionate to the idea of love as a device of alteration for better or worse. Love does not conquer all; it destroys and alters everything it touches. That is the best part in Ovid’s poems. They do not have happy endings. Lust or romantic love or ardent worship, acquired in any form changes a person, landscapes, communities mutating elements of fate and tragedies.

Metamorphoses elucidates the consequence of origin and transformation in its entirety.

My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song in smooth and measured strains, from olden days when earth began to this completed time!

Ovid commences his poems by showing appreciation to God (which he says is yet unknown) for carving a loose mass of earth into a picturesque bounty of nature. The amorphous chaos changed into a convex ecstasy of pathless skies, terrains, rivers, the color and prototypes of birds and animals came through a process of love and hate. Ovid represents the mythical world of story telling and repeating fables with morality lessons. The justifications of rape or incest in Ovid’s works segregate the idea of faithful devotion from the viciousness of powerful acquisition that overcomes delusional love. Betrayals are penalized and loyalties are commended. The treatment of love is sagacious and didactic in this book as compared to his other works in the relating genre. It moves onto a broader scenario, becoming a defining factor in wars, altering powers between constituencies, breaking and making of civilizations. Ovid intends the reader to see the probable metaphoric significance of change as a crucial and homogeneous factor in life itself.

And now, I have completed a great work, which not Jove's anger, and not fire nor steel, nor fast-consuming time can sweep away. Whenever it will, let the day come, which has dominion only over this mortal frame, and end for me the uncertain course of life. Yet in my better part I shall be borne immortal, far above the stars on high, and mine shall be a name indelible. Wherever Roman power extends her sway over the conquered lands, I shall be read by lips of men. If Poets' prophecies have any truth, through all the coming years of future ages, I shall live in fame.

As he concludes this epic of transforming love, he credits the survival of Rome to his own prominence making it one of the most influential and renowned works over centuries. Metamorphoses is translated frequently by several modern poets and literary elites.
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The fact that it took me nearly two months to finish this behemoth is not entirely reflective of its contents.

The major reason it took so long is that it's thick and heavy -- I just didn't want to carry it around like I would a normal MMPB or my Kindle, so it mostly sat around on my couch looking forlorn.

Also, with it being epic poetry, I found that if I wasn't quite in the mood to read it, I started to tune it out within a page or two - so I had to be in the mood to hurt my back with a heavy bag and in the mood to read about Roman gods. The two didn't coincide as much as I'd hoped. There was maybe a week's worth of actual reading during those two months. I finally finished off the last half today in one very long reading binge.

I was a bit surprised at how many of these myths I already knew. Apollo and Daphne, Narcissus and Echo, Arachne, Daedalus and Icarus and portions of other epic poems like the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. It even contains Caesar's death. It's pretty comprehensive, and anything Ovid could use to fit the "metamorphosis" theme is included. ( )

This is THE Metamorphoses translation to read. Others can't even hold a candle to it (I know, I read some side by side to compare). Beautiful, touching, amazing.

Rereading bits of this at work 6/11. So good. ( )