Read for class.

This took me a while because of the more than 600 characters and less depth on the individual myths than I imagined upfront. Still nice to have this behind the belt when visiting a museum - 2.5 stars rounded up
Bernini’s famous transformation of marble in flesh, inspired by a tale in the first book of the Methamorphoses:


General
Metamorphoses is a treasure trove on myths of the Greek and Romans. Ovid takes us from the creation of the world to the murder on Julius Caesar. Don't expect something chronological like the History of Herodotus, but prepare on being buffeted by more than 250 distinct narratives divided over 15 books. I personally would have like more depth on some myths, like Theseus, Perseus and Jason their adventures. Also the book felt a bit fragmented for me, and I had trouble with keeping my attention with it at times.

Is it overall about conformity? Following higher forces (and the state in the time of Ovid) or else be punished/killed/transformed in a horrible manner? Being humble, except if you are a descendent to the powers that be, like Perseus as son of Jupiter, seems to be the only option in the stories Ovid narrates. This is especially true for women, in Metamorphosis you have an extraordinary high chance of being literally and figuratively screwed, with Medusa at the end of book IV being the sad highlight. After being raped by Neptune in a temple of Minerva she is turned into a monster by the goddess and later beheaded by Perseus.

Some highlights per book
Book I: The whole set up of the poem, from creation to current time, reminded met of The Silmarillion of J.R.R. Tolkien, interesting to see where his inspiration came from.
The reminiscing on a lost golden age is also interesting given Rome was the force of the day and it’s fall heralded the “dark” middle ages. The described golden age reminded me of Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, where the foraging men was seen as most blissful in the human history till after the industrial revolution.

Then as a bonus there is Lycaon as a proto werewolf and ah, a primordial flood to punish us humans for our sins, how familiar. Deucalion and Pyrrha as Adam and Eve.

Myths as an understanding of the world, convenient explanations on why Ethiopians are dark skinned (burned by the Sun wagon coming to close to earth), laurels (a rivernymph trying to escape Apollo) and Egyptians worshipping gods that have animal forms (a lover of Zeus changed into a cow to avoid Juno).
Did people really believe that or where this just tales told to children?

Book II
Phaeton as epitome of youthful over ambition

In strophe 252 we have swans being toasted by the sun and in 377 we have a mourning relative, Cycnus, of Phaeton transform in a new bird species, the swan, which seems a bit conflicting.

Crows and old men being punished for their nosiness and gossiping

Wishes go as awry as in Alladin for Semele

Because no deity can negate the actions of an other deity, interesting concept, this explains a lot about The Iliad

Narcissus being popular with men and girls before turning into a flower.

Book IV
Piramus and Thisbe being the Babylonian predecessors to Romeo and Juliet

Book V
The wedding of Andromeda and Perseus ends up being described as a scene from 300, when her fiancee and uncle shows up to the party and get gruesomely killed.

Book VII
Medea is still hard to understand for me, thought this might be a full account of the journey of the Argonauts but it turned out quite fragmented and short.

VIII has Scylla betray her father for love of king Minos, and has her cutting a string of hair from him as show of betrayal, quite reminiscent to the story of Delilah and Samson.

Book X is the gay book with Orpheus, Ganymede and Hyacinthus (who dies rather stupidly in a friendly match of disc throwing with his lover Apollo)
Pygmalion meanwhile invents the first sexdoll from ivory.

In book XI Alcyone and Ceyx, transforming into kingfishers, has an emotional impact.

Book XII has an invincible transgender Caenis/Caeneus (who got the body and strength of a man after being raped by Neptune) and a fight scene between Centaurs and men that would make Quentin Tarantino jealous. Brainpudding is pushed out of cracked skulls like its a sieve. Wow!

Book XIII has Ajax his “I don’t like words but action” speech four pages in an epic burn of Odysseus
Which is than eloquently returned (“not because my father did not kill his own brother I claim these weapons”) by the master of deception and words himself.
Hecuba ripping someones eyes out (and the general misery of the women of Troy) is quite touching.
And not to forget: nymph Galatea being compared to swan down and white cheese by her cyclops admirer.

Book XIV has the founding of Rome and the many wars preceding and following this event (parties are lambasted for fighting because they just want to win and are ashamed of peace).

In XV we have Pythagoras as first vegetarian, with a speech against eating meat due to the belief the soul reincarnates in an ever repeating manner, maybe influenced from stories from India after the conquests of Alexander?
Interesting that he says that ancient anchors have been found on mountains as well. Father of archeological research besides mathematics?

So previously I read the Horace Gregory translation and adored it. This time I decided to try David Raeburn's for Penguin classics and I’m afraid it failed to capture the magic I felt before. It is a much easier read, for sure, but I think poetry was missed in this translation. Which makes sense considering Gregory was a poet and Raeburn was into the performance aspects of classical poetry but apparently reading about Jove raping poor women and then Juno punishing said women for it is not doing it for me without the magic of poetry.

I was curious if we were getting new translations and according to the article on lithub, Jhumpa Lahiri has teamed up with Princeton classics professor Yelena Baraz on a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses for Penguin and I’m definitely reading it when it comes out. I’m so curious to see how these women will tackle the material.

So my advice would be to try different translations and find the one that works for you.
P.S. I know nothing about poetry, translations or Latin.
-------------
If you love mythology you need to read this. P.S. Gods are horny...

So the hardback of this new translation is beautiful. I should buy this yes?
It will look great on the shelf.
It’s also long and will I ever actually read it? Maybe?
But it will look great on the shelf.
And I should probably read it which will be easier if I have it looking gorgeous on my shelf, right?

My thoughts on this book can be summed up in one simple GIF:



But let's get deeper into this phenomenal book, shall we? Metamorphoses is an 8 AD Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid. Comprising 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. It is probably the book with the largest scope that I've ever read:
beginning with the creation of the world from Chaos, and ending with Rome in Ovid's own lifetime, Metamorphoses is one rollercoaster of a read.

There's many things you can say about good ole Ovid but not that he wasn't ambitious! He drags his readers through time and space, from beginnings to endings, from life to death, from moments of delicious joy to episodes of depravity and abjection.

Metamorphosis or transformation is a unifying theme amongst the episodes of the the epic. Ovid raises its significance explicitly in the opening lines of the poem: In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; ("I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities;”).

Accompanying this theme is often violence, inflicted upon a victim whose transformation becomes part of the natural landscape. There is a great variety among the types of transformations that take place: from human to inanimate object (Nileus), constellation (Ariadne's Crown), animal (Perdix); from animal (ants) and fungus (mushrooms) to human; of sex (hyenas); and of colour (pebbles). The metamorphoses themselves are often located metatextually within the poem, through grammatical or narratorial transformations. At other times, transformations are developed into humour or absurdity, such that, slowly, the reader realizes that Ovid plays his audience for a good laugh.

n  All is subject to change and nothing to death. // All is in flux.n

Metamorphoses is more than a collection of stories of mythical adventures, it is a mediation on the theme of transformation in all its myriad forms. Ovid uses this motif as the unifying thread of his tales, emphasising it as a universal principle which explains the ever-changing nature of the world. Moreover, across the fifteen books that form Metamorphoses, Ovid examines a large number of themes such as poetry, politics, identity, immortality, love and lust, violence, morality, and even art.

Ovid’s graphic tales of metamorphosis begin with the story of Primal Chaos; a messy lump of discordant atoms, and shapeless prototypes of land, sea and air. This unruly form floated about in nothingness until some unnamed being disentangled it. Voilà! The earth is fashioned in the form of a perfectly round ball. Oceans take shape and rise in waves spurred on by winds. Springs, pools and lakes appear and above the valleys and plains and mountains is the sky. Lastly, humankind is made and so begins the mythical Ages of Man. And, as each Age progresses – from Gold, to Silver, to Bronze and finally to Iron – humankind becomes increasingly corrupt.

Drawing on the Greek mythology inherited by the Romans, Ovid directs his dramas one after another, relentlessly bombarding his readers with beautiful metrics and awe-inspiring imagery as that of Deucalion and Pyrrha, Arachne, Daphne and Apollo, Europa and the Bull, Leda and the Swan. Hundreds of hapless mortals, heroes, heroines, gods and goddesses rise victorious, experience defeat, endure rape, and inevitably metamorphose into something other than their original forms. Chaos begins the world, and so into Chaos we are born, live and die. As the offspring of the Age of Iron, we must endure and struggle against corruption, brutality and injustice.

n  If wishes were horses, though, beggars would ride.n

In many ways, Ovid’s gods are like the gods in other classical epic poems – anthropomorphic, omnipotent, and meddling in human affairs. However, Ovid’s gods differ from the usual epic gods in their behavior. In Metamorphoses, the gods lack moral authority in regard to their interactions with humans and among themselves. The gods are a ‘divine machine’ of metamorphosis. Even though on a few occasions this change inflicted upon humans is the result of a just reward or punishment, on most occasions, it is caused by anger, jealousy, lust, or simple cruelty.

Metamorphoses is an epic about the act of silencing. Jealousy, spite, lust and punishment are consistently present in Ovid’s chaotic world. So is rape. Rape is undoubtedly the most controversial and confronting theme of the Metamorphoses. It is the ultimate manifestation of male power in the poem and the hundreds of transformations that occur are often the means of escaping it.

An early tale of attempted rape is narrated in Book I, involving the nymph, Daphne and the god, Apollo. Intent on raping Daphne, Apollo chases her through the forest until, utterly exhausted, she calls out to her father, the river god Peneus to rescue her:

n  “Help, father!” she called. “If your streams have divine powers! Destroy the shape, which pleases too well, with transformation!”n

Peneus answers his daughter’s entreaty, and Daphne is transformed into a laurel tree. Where does a modern audience begin with a story such as Daphne and Apollo? How do we begin to unravel the hundreds of other such tales that follow it?

When Daphne begs her father to alter her body to avoid the advances of the god Apollo, she ends up removing herself from human society. Once her transformation is complete she will no longer be able to possess her human body again. Her active rejection of the god's sexual advances, therefore, directly condemns her to an eternity of Otherness and utter lack of agency.

Because Daphne’s transformation was in an attempt to defend herself from Apollo, her figure was kept as close to living human beings as possible, while being removed from the sensible experience that could render them vulnerable to pain or undesired sex. Although Apollo could not rape her, as she was in the form of a tree, she was still vulnerable to his touch and caress.

In Ovid's tales physical metamorphosis becomes an example of "proper" female behavior. This is why when a woman in transformed within an Ovidian tale the transformation is permanent. In cases when the girl herself is transformed because of her attempt to resist the sexual advance, she faces exclusion from society. Metamorphoses presents a bleak, possibly authentic, analysis of the role of women in society, and what happens when they have no agency.

Nonetheless, for modern readers, and I'd assume especially women, the constant rape scenes in Metamorphoses can be challenging to read. They don't take away from the book's brilliance, but they are something that should be kept in mind before jumping into Ovid's world!

When reading Metamorphoses you will recall many names and myths. I was happy to see how much Homer influenced Ovid. It was good to see the gang was all here, the gang being Odysseus and his crew, Circe, Achilles, Ajax, the Trojan War ("We gave our youth to our loved ones, the rest of our lives to Greece."). It's incredible how effortlessly Ovid manages to pack Homer's massive poems into the last books of his own epic. We love successful fanfiction!

One of my favorite mythical couples that I'd love seeing in Ovid's book were Orpheus and Eurydice. Ever since we did a gymnastics show about this particular myth back in 2011, these two have never left me. When I fell in love with the musical Hadestown last year, I couldn't help but think about them and the fate they shared. Theirs is just such a tragic tale. And I kept asking myself: why did he turn around? The answer Ovid gives isn't all that satisfying: "But Orpheus was frightened his love was falling behind; he was desperate to see her. He turned, and at once she sank back into the dark." But it's a possibility. What I loved most about their tale in Metamorphoses is what follows after:

n  She stretched out her arms to him, struggled to feel his hands on her own, but all she was able to catch, poor soul, was the yielding air. / And now, as she died for the second time, she never complained that her husband had failed her – what could she complain of, except that he’d loved her?n

I know, it's not the most feminist, but I could actually tear up about that part. How beautifully tragic is that? I also loved that Ovid then proceeded on telling the story how Orpheus turned from all womankind after that ordeal and became gay – what an icon!

The ending these two get in the end, in the tale about Orpheus' death, is also beautiful: "Orpheus’ shade passed under the earth. He recognised all the places he’d seen before. As he searched the Elysian Fields, he found the wife he had lost and held her close in his arms. / At last the lovers could stroll together, side by side – or she went ahead and he followed, then Orpheus ventured in front and knew he could now look back on his own Eurydice safely."

Another fan-favorite I loved to encounter is Lucifer Morningstar. In Metamorphoses, Ovid describes him as "the last to leave the heavens": "Aurora, watchful in the reddening dawn, threw wide her crimson doors and rose-filled halls; the Stellae took flight, in marshaled order set by Lucifer who left his station last." I'm pretty sure that Lucifer=Satan was not a thing yet when Ovid was writing his tales but I'd be curious to see how his texts (and others of the period) influenced Christian beliefs.

Another thing I'd like to research is how Ovid influenced artists of subsequent centuries and millennia to come. In some cases his legacy is more than clear: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet wouldn't exist without Ovid's tale about Pyramus and Thisbe (two young lovers forbidden to wed because of a long-standing rivalry between their families), same with Ted Hughes' 1997 Tales from Ovid. No Dante without Ovid. Furthermore, there are countless paintings and sculptures immortalising Ovid's Metamorphoses, like the 17th-century sculpture Apollo and Daphne by Gianlorenzo Bernini, or Bacchus and Ariadne, an oil painting by Titian produced in 1523. But I'm sure that there are hundreds of instances where I missed a reference or am not aware of how that particular tale has influenced the writers I came to admire and love.

n  As yellow wax melts in a gentle flame, or the frost on a winter morning thaws in the rays of the sunshine, so Narcissus faded away and melted, slowly consumed by the fire inside him.n

Another example would be Echo and Narcissus. Theirs is an immensely popular story nowadays, but it's one we probably wouldn't know had Ovid not written it down in his Metamorphoses. The introduction of the myth of the mountain nymph Echo into the story of Narcissus, the beautiful youth who rejected Echo and fell in love with his own reflection, appears to have been his invention. And so, Ovid's version influenced the presentation of the myth in later Western art and literature.

As I can't go over all of my favorite myths, I though I'd leave you with a list of them:

Book I: The Creation; The Four Ages; The Giants; The Flood; Daphne; Io
Book II: Europa
Book III: Narcissus and Echo
Book IV: Mars and Venus; Perseus
Book V: Minerva and the Muses; The Rape of Proserpina
Book VI: Arachne; Niobe; Tereus, Procne and Philomela
Book VII: Medea and Jason; Theseus and Aegeus; Minos and Aeacus
Book VIII: Scylla and Minos; The Minotaur and Ariadne; Daedalus and Icarus; Erysichthon
Book IX: Acheloüs and Hercules; The Death of Hercules
Book X: Orpheus and Eurydice; Ganymede; Myrrha; Venus and Adonis
Book XI: Midas; Ceyx and Alcyone
Book XII: The Greeks at Aulis; Rumour; The Death of Achilles
Book XIII: The Judgment of Arms; The Sufferings of Hecuba; Acis, Galatea and Polyphemus; Glaucus and Syclla
Book XIV: Ulysses’ Men and Polyphemus’ Cave; Ulysses and Circe; Picus, Canens and Circe; The Apotheosis of Aeneas
Book XV: Pythagoras; The Apotheosis of Julius Caesar; Epilogue

Ovid's Metamorphoses has had a long and fascinating history. Its presence among the Western literary canon has functioned as a strange but valuable mirror that has, for over two millennia, reflected social, moral and artistic customs. As David Raeburn so brilliantly recalls in his introduction to the text in this Penguin Classics edition: if you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, you will return intoxicated after discovering that "It's all Ovid!"

Este libro escrito por el romano Ovidio, en el año 8 AD, lo leí dos veces. La primera lectura casi termina en abandono. Era una versión sin notas, por lo que fue difícil saber cuál era el contexto relacional y temporal de muchos de los personajes y de sus míticas vivencias. Sin ese contexto, muchas de las casi 250 metamorfosis que se cuentan se volvían entre aburridas y sin sentido. Me paré antes de la mitad (200 páginas). En esa primera lectura un par de historias, incluso descontextualizadas, fueron muy significativas, por lo que me busqué una versión anotada (más de 1000 notas) que me permitió entender mucho mejor cada mito y su concatenación con la cosmovisión mítica Griega. No soy novato en mitología griega, pero incluso con esa base, fue fundamental contar con la versión anotada. Además, las deidades griegas se conocieron con otros nombres en Roma, lo que puede llevar a confusiones o directamente a perderse.

Esta obra es una especie de compendio mítico grecolatino. Recoge toda la sabiduría contenida en los mitos de estos dos pueblos. Inicia con una especie de génesis que plantea de entrada la integración de lo sagrado y espiritual con lo profano y material. Muchos Dioses, ninfas, y otros seres mitológicos entran en relación con los humanos. Son relaciones amorosas, venganzas, odios, repudios, etc. Nos deja claro el origen de las ideas monárquicas humanas. Muchos personajes reclaman orígenes divinos míticos, generalmente resultantes de hermosas humanas que seducen a bravos Dioses, para fundamentar hechos extraordinarios que llevaban a cabo los hijos reyes para hacerse así con el poder sobre otros humanos. Es de estas fusiones entre divinidades y humanos de donde sale el título del libro. Aunque hay también metamorfosis "específicas" pero menos creíbles. Todas las metamorfosis, hacen referencia a comportamientos humanos concretos.

A mi me encanta Shakespeare y cuando leí en las metamorfosis la historia de Píramo y Tisbe me dije, mira, Sheiks también leyó este libro, solo que él se fue a escribir después Romeo y Julieta. También van a encontrar el mito de Narciso, van a entender lo que significa caer en los brazos de Morfeo, verán caer a Ícaro, conocerán a Cupido y sus peligrosas flechas, presenciarán la tonta decisión del rey Midas, y conocerán en un inmenso final a la Filosofía de Pitágoras, entre muchos otros hechos conocidos en Occidente. Aparecen rápidamente personajes como Circe, Odiseo, Aquiles, Paris, Eneo, y por supuesto Zeus. Son 15 libros cada uno con unos 5 o 6 mitos. El mito más largo puede extenderse por unas 6 páginas. Los cortos una o dos y la mayoría se extienden por unas tres páginas. Con una versión anotada, no necesitan conocer previamente la mitología griega para disfrutar de las metamorfosis.

I read this about two months after my second stay in Rome in 2019, so sadly never had the book itself in the city. The city though, was of course, on my mind, throughout.

The Metamorphoses is an 8 AD Latin narrative poem which consists of 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths. It is known as one of the most influential works in Western Literature, influencing the likes of Dante, Shakespeare, Chaucer. It is accredited with having over 200 characters. My edition stands at over 700 pages long. Elements from the poem have been depicted throughout art forms for centuries. On a beach in St Ives, Cornwall, one year, I read Ted Hughes' Tales From Ovid, his brilliant retelling of twenty-four of the tales. (For a taster of the myths, it is certainly a good place to start, at only 250 pages.)



Most of the myths are familiar: Apollo and Daphne, Narcissus and Echo, the Rape of Proserpina, Arachne - Niobe, Medea and Jason, Theseus and Aegeus, Scylla and Minos, the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, Hercules, Venus and Adonis, Orpheus and Eurydice, Midas, the Death of Achilles, the Ships of Aeneas, Ajax, the Fall of Troy, Ulysses and Circe, and countless more. It ends with the apotheosis of Julius Caesar.

The short prologue reads, and distinguishes the theme of the entire poem:
n  

Changes of shape, new forms, are the theme which my
spirit impels me
now to recite. Inspire me, O gods (it is you who have even transformed my art), and spin me a thread from the
world's beginning
down to my own lifetime, in one continuous poem.

n
Ovid says so himself; the art of transformation is the crux of this giant work. And it is true, we witness the Gods turning men into animals, stones, constellations. It is about love; it is violent; it is also witty, Ovid does not write without humour at times. I remember to this day the humour spinning from the absurdity of some of the events, made absurd by Ovid, who is always seemingly self-aware. At the end of "The Creation" in Book 1, from line 84, the first mention of a metamorphosis occurs, that of man:
n  

Where other animals walk on all four and look to the
ground,
man was given a towering head and commanded to stand
erect, with his face uplifted to gaze on the stars of heaven.
Thus clay, so lately no more than a crude and formless
substance,
was metamorphosed to assume the strange new figure of
Man.

n
Where Ovid calls Man "strange", Hughes, to compare, likens us to Gods:
n  

Then Prometheus
Gathered that fiery dust and slaked it
With the pure spring water,
And rolled it under his hands,
Pounded it, thumbed it, moulded it
Into a body shaped like that of a god.

n

"The Untangling of Chaos, or the Creation of the Four Elements", Hendrik Goltzius—1589

The gods are mischievous throughout. At times their actions seemed completely unprovoked, uncalled for, at other times, they were cruelly fair. Over the 250 myths we see gods and men fight, gods and gods fight, men v. man, heroes against creatures and gods, we see almost everything pitted against one another. And despite the humour, there are poignant moments of feeling, beauty and emotion.

Like in one of my many favourite passages in the poem, the fall of Icarus in Book 8:
n  

He ceased to follow his leader; he'd fallen in love with the sky,
and soared up higher and higher. The scorching rays of
the sun
grew closer and softened the fragrant wax which fastened
his plumage.
The wax dissolved; and as Icarus flapped his naked arms,
deprived of the wings which had caught the air that was
buoying them upwards,
'Father!' he shouted, again and again. But the boy and his
shouting
were drowned in the blue-green main which is called the
Icárian Sea.
His unhappy father, no longer a father, called out, 'Icarus!
Where are you, Icarus? Where on earth shall I find you?
Icarus!'
he kept crying. And then he caught sight of the wings in the
water.
Daedalus cursed the skill of his hands and buried his dear son's
corpse in a grave. The land where he lies is known as
Icária.

n

"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus", Pieter Bruegel the Elder—c. 1560
[Icarus' legs can be seen in the bottom right of the painting, protruding from the sea, surrounded by feathers.]

Or, in Book 10, Orpheus leading Eurydice from the Underworld, which has always been one of my favourite myths; Ovid tells it hauntingly:
n  

Not far to go now; the exit to earth and the light was
ahead!
But Orpheus was frightened his love was falling behind;
he was desperate
to see her. He turned, and at once she sank back into
the dark.
She stretched out her arms to him, struggled to feel his
hands in her own,
but all she was able to catch, poor soul, was the
yielding air.
And now, as she died for the second time, she never
complained
that her husband had failed her—what could she complain
of, except that he'd loved her?
She only uttered her last 'farewell', so faintly he hardly
could hear it, and then she was swept once more to the land
of the shadows.

n
And because I've somehow managed to avoid any of the metamorphoses in the book, the transformation of Daphne into a tree in Book 1:
n  

[...] She had hardly ended her prayer when a
heavy numbness
came over her body; her soft white bosom was ringed
in a layer
of bark, her hair was turned into foliage, her arms into
branches.
The feet that had run so nimbly were sunk into sluggish
roots;
her head was confined in a treetop; and all that remained
was her beauty.

n

"Apollo and Daphne", Gian Lorenzo Bernini—1622–1625
[This is one of my favourite statues ever, life-sized and made from marble. It is housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, which I have never seen. It is my priority, on my next trip to the city, to finally see the sculpture in person.]

Ovid's report of Achilles' death is short and intriguing in Book 12:
n  

So saying, he pointed the hero out, still hacking the
Trojans
down; then turning Paris' bow in the same direction
he guided an arrow with deadly aim at Achilles' heel.
If Priam, after the death of Hector, had cause for rejoicing,
this surely was it. So Achilles who'd vanquished the
mightiest heroes
was vanquished himself by a coward who'd stolen the wife
of his Greek host.
If he was destined to die at the hands of a woman in war,
he'd rather be cut down by the axe of Penthesilea.

n
(The most popular recent depiction of Achilles and the story of Troy is Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, which actually chooses to omit the concept of Achilles' heel as she used principally Homer's Iliad as her inspiration, where it is not mentioned as it is here in Ovid.)

I could continue quoting elements of the poem forever. The myths are immortal, of course, and this new verse translation by Raeburn is stunning: it is fresh, readable, but maintains a beautiful poetic voice. Hughes' retellings are also brilliant and I recommend them. I read them after Ovid's original, which I preferred, though it is a long-haul. Any lovers of myth should flock here. Ovid is witty, profound and above all, genius. Of the Roman texts I've read, studying Classical Civilisation in college, this is still the greatest to date.

(Book 1000 from 1001 books) - Metamorphōseōn Librī = The Metamorphoses = Books of Transformations, Ovid

The Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus. Comprising 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths, the poem chronicles the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythic-historical framework.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و نهم ژانویه سال 2014میلادی

‏عنوان: افسانه‌های دگردیسی اوید، اثر: پوبلیوس اویدیوس نسو؛ برگردان: میرجلال‌ الدین کزازی، نشر تهران، معین، چاپ نخست سال 1389، در622صفحه، شابک 9789641650348، ‏موضوع آثار نویسندگان رومی (لاتین) - ترجمه شده به فارسی - سده نخست پیش از میلاد

اووید، یکی از نام‌ آورترین سخنوران «رومی»، یا همان «لاتین» است، و می‌توان ایشان را، پس از «ویرژیل»، و «هومر»، پرآوازه‌ ترین سخن‌سرای «لاتین» نامید؛ «افسانه‌ های دگردیسی»، در «پنجاه بخش» به نظم درآمده، که «اووید» هر بخش را، کتاب نامیده، و کوشیده افسانه‌ هایی از انواع «دگردیسی» را، در آنها بازگو کند؛ در این افسانه‌ ها به همه‌ گونه دگردیسی برمی‌خوریم، از دگردیسی آدم به جانداری دیگر، تا دگردیسی انسان به سنگ و کانی بی جان؛ کتاب، برگردان سروده‌ های «اووید»، و شرح «افسانه‌ های دگردیسی اووید» به زبان پارسایی این مرز و بوم همیشه جاوید است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 20/07/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 25/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Every bird, animal, fountain, or object we see was once something else. In Ovid, they were all once people – in love, or grieving, or trying to escape from rape (see below) – who were transformed. It doesn’t take much for us to anthropomorphize. When I look at trees and their twisting branches, they seem emotional. But they’ll always be something else, and something else, and something else again.

In 15 books, Ovid takes us from primordial chaos (“No shape was fixed”) through creation and recreation, to the future of Rome, and even further, into ever-shifting eternity.

It is Pythagoras who gives a speech on metamorphosis in the final book. But first he makes some interesting comments on vegetarianism:

“How wicked it is for guts to be entombed in guts” (what a way with words!)

Pythagoras believes in reincarnation. If souls do not die, but move from post to post, then humans can also become animals; animals, humans.

“Since we, part of this world, are not just bodies but also winged souls and can inhabit wild beasts and dwell inside the hearts of herds, let bodies be revered, unharmed. They might have held the souls of parents, siblings, others bonded to us”

Ages change, so do places (sea to land, land to sea), so do nations, so will the Rome of Ovid’s time, and so will every empire we see today.

“In all creation there is nothing constant. Everything flows. Each likeness forms in flux. Time too glides by in endless motion, like a river. Both the river and swift hour can never stop.”

Finally, and there is no way around it: after metamorphosis, rape is probably the second most common theme in this poem. About 50 of the stories in this poem involve sexual assault. After reading so many chapters featuring the plotline, I could no longer keep track, and just came to assume that:
If the character is attractive, they will likely get assaulted.
If the character is a virgin, they will likely get assaulted.
If the character is a woman, they will likely get assaulted.
If it’s Tuesday, someone will likely get assaulted.
Most disturbing of all is how routine and normalized it becomes in your mind chapter after chapter. Usually, the victim must birth the product of the rape, and/or is metamorphosed into an animal or object (as translator Stephanie McCarter points out, literally objectified). As though the act collapses into the main theme, the lack of agency over the ever-changing mortal body.

NB: The entire poem contains over 250 myths and over 200 characters. Even though I knew many of them already, it was still hard to keep track, so I read with a notebook and took notes on who is who, which I’d highly recommend doing if your memory is a sieve like mine.

There is no rating with my review for a reason. I simply do not dare to assess such a masterpiece of literature. What I can write about, however, is my own experience with this “universal poem” as it is called in the epilogue. My first encounter with the Metamorphoses was back at grammar school, when we read and translated a few fragments. I remember that, after Caesar and Cicero, this was a wholly new experience. For the first time I realized the beauty of the Latin language and enjoyed what I am reading.



Now, almost 40 years later, I read them in total in a prose translation with the Latin text side by side. Though my knowledge of this language has decayed too much, as that I could “read” the Latin text, it was good to get a feeling for the real words, their sound and metre. As part of the collateral reading I found the wonderful website of the Ovidprojekt by Humboldt University Berlin. They not only recorded key scenes in Latin, but also illustrated them with reliefs from the Sanssouci Castle in Potsdam. While I expected the Metamorphoses being both beautiful and entertaining, I was surprised by their scientific depth in the areas of biology, geology, philosophy and even physics. There are also allusions to politics, some of the rather ironic, which may have contributed to the poet’s sorry fate in banishment.



The second reason, why I so much enjoyed reading the Metamorphoses are the members of the dedicated Goodreads group and their observations and contributions. Their variety in terms of geography, age, life and professional experiences helped to illustrate the tremendous influence of the book on music, painting, sculpture and literature. Our lively exchange of views and insights made the lecture of the Metamorphoses to my most rewarding reading experience in 2019.

Ovidio è un fiume in piena, i miti raccontati sono tantissimi. Nel caos apparente ci sono un paio di fili conduttori: gli amori e i tradimenti; il tipo di metamorfosi; lo scorrere ineluttabile del tempo, scandito da Lucifero, da Aurora, da Febo e dalla Luna; le stagioni nate dal rapimento di Persefone; i sentimenti degli dei, uguali anche se forse più intensi di quelli degli uomini; la vendetta, spesso cruenta; la violenza delle armi e delle guerre, spesso scatenate per un nonnulla e alle quali gli dei non sono mai estranei. Anzi assistono, parteggiano, proteggono e distruggono.
Metamorfosi è un fatto che riguarda tutto il creato, cielo, terra, dei, uomini, oggetti inanimati. Nulla resta uguale a se stesso. Nemmeno il mare, che separa terre come Zancle (la nostra Messina), un tempo attaccata all’Italia, dalla penisola. Le acque dei fiumi possono improvvisamente diventare salmastre; le pianure sparire, le città inabissarsi. La morte stessa trasforma gli esseri riportandoli all’origine e il ciclo ricomincia, insieme alle stagioni, al giorno e alla notte.
Dalla creazione all’avvento di Augusto è un continuo susseguirsi di immagini e storie, di azioni e conseguenze anche tragiche. I volti si accavallano, le vite si compiono sotto gli occhi di dei che amano confondersi con gli uomini, assumendo le forme più diverse per ingannare giovani donne o giovani uomini la cui bellezza li ha stregati. Sono amori che non durano. Sono tante le donne abbandonate e la vendetta è spesso tremenda. Medea, Circe, Giunone, Diana non hanno pietà e nemmeno rimorsi.
Nascono fiori dalla morte di Adone e Narciso; nascono città sulle ossa di persone ospitali; nascono guerrieri dai denti di drago; nascono amori incestuosi, a lungo repressi, ma poi senza possibilità di controllo. È di notte che i desideri si fanno insistenti; il giorno porta il pentimento e la vergogna.
Il Sonno manda in giro i suoi figli, in grado anch’essi di trasformarsi, a influenzare i sogni degli uomini. L’Invidia avvelena gli animi; la Fame conduce alla pazzia. E le Parche tessono e tagliano il filo della vita.
Quindici capitoli, circa 250 miti per raccontare e cantare le età dell’uomo e della storia fino alla morte di Cesare e all’avvento di Augusto in un’opera che, Ovidio ne è certo, varrà al poeta la Fama che trionfa sulla morte.

Like many classic epics, Ovid's "Metamorphoses" is an anthology, retelling ancient oral tales, all lined up and arranged in a loose narrative arc, not much different in structure from the Odyssey, Iliad, Aeneid, not to mention the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Gilgamesh epic, and Arabian Nights. Ovid focuses on tales of shape shifting identity twists....hence the title. So we get the tale of Diana and Actaeon in which the hunter becomes the hunted. With Narcissus and his reflection, beauty falls in love with itself. Then the artist Pygmalion falls in love with his own creation, that comes conveniently to life. The artist and his art are one, the dancer is the dance. And self-reflective story telling about the comforts of story telling is central to the main symbol of the poet-singer Orpheus. As with all these classic Greco-Roman stories, there is an abundance of rape and pillage, and badly misbehaving gods. In many ways these contentious, arbitrary and cruel gods provide a more logical explanation of history than the Judeo Christian notion of a noble and just god. It is the beauty of art and the magic of poetry and song that lift the stories from savage brutality to something transcendent. And highly ambiguous. After emphasizing the transitory nature of all things, Ovid boasts that his songs will live for ever, --where ever Rome rules -- a point he has already put in doubt. And he has this Roman leader turn divine and ascend into heaven in an apotheosis of ridiculous proportions, meant to flatter I suppose, but only if one accepts the nonsense. There are no ancient manuscripts of the text, but it did survive the collapse of the Roman Empire. What I cannot quite get a handle on is what was going through the minds of all those medieval monks who copied and recopied these pagan tales of lust and blood and magical transformations to preserve them after the fall of the Roman empire. What were those sedentary, theoretically celibate guys in the scriptoria actually thinking of. What was it that appealed to them? And did they make any changes in the text? We may never know...https://www.wdl.org/en/item/4524/