Tales from Ovid

5 ⭐️ Verse format; Hughes’ vivid language with a contemporary tone gives these ancient and often gruesome stories a feeling of immediacy. The extensive glossary is informative and is helpful in keeping all the characters straight.

Ahhh forgot to review! Such an awesome collection, amazing translations by Hughes, epic stories — it has it all.

The tales themselves were hit or miss for me, which is why I'm rating this four stars, but Hughes' language is so gorgeous. I have always adored his poetry, but he really brought the work of Ovid to life for me in translation. I've been reading the different stories in this since October. As they are so bite-sized, they make for perfect reading at bedtime.

I think Niobe, Tereus, and Erysichthon were my favorites. The language in those was haunting. The last passage about Pyramus and Thisbe, which I read this morning, was fantastic as well.

These two, playmates from the beginning,
Fell in love.
For angry reasons, no part of the story,

The parents of each forbade their child
To marry the other. That was that.
But prohibition feeds love,

Though theirs needed no feeding. Through signs
Their addiction to each other
Was absolute, helpless, terminal.

And the worse for being hidden.

As I was reading this, I kept taking pictures of some parts of the text and sending them over to some of my friends. At one point, one of my friend was like, "The f*** you're reading?" That is exactly how it feels to read this. Entertaining but insane. At least now I know where Shakespeare got his inspiration for Romeo & Juliet (read: Pyramus and Thisbe).

There are some obvious anachronisms in Ted Hughes's translation but the whole thing flows better for it. I also don't think I would have got as much from the stories had they been written with the stiff language some earlier translations have.

This is wonderful. Even for those who have read these tales many many times, Hughes' loose translations are glorious and musical. The best stories ever, magically retold. Read this book. Read it again.

ted hughes might have been a horrible husband to mrs Sylvia plath but this is a very good translation!!

By no means a literal translation - obviously Ovid wasn't dropping references to atom bombs - but I thought Hughes did a marvelous job capturing the sense and feel of the original.

*** First Read: Notes on April 2015

Greek mythology is not an idle exercise of fancy and imagination. In its core, these are dark tales of how ancient people related their existential conditions among the order and chaos within and around them. Civilization has tamed some of horror of natural forces, yet much less has accomplished for the psyche. The psyche of extremes is always hovering around the air, ready to take its stake in each stage of human life. Greek myth has much to do with the drama and madness in birthing, mating, and death. In each of these biological event, a broken vat of chemicals floods in, hijacking the order and the typical. If Homeric tales are mostly focused on male and their sense of honor and bravery, then Ovid is more the female, and their earthier existences as daughters, mothers, and sisters. This translated and adapted version by Ted Hughes is a clean, lucid, and powerfully rendered.

Some of the original nuances of mythic stories are refreshed. In “Echo and Narcissus”, Echo was punished for her prattling, and Narcissus actually did realize that he was looking at himself, but could not help his self-obsession. Erysichthon was cursed with insatiable hunger till he devoured himself in the “final feast”.

Noticing the twice-born Bacchus, and the resurrected Hercules who suffered and died by Deianira’s mistakes, it seems that Professor Bart Ehrman’s “How Jesus Became God” is a hitting on the right vein, showing how natural it must be, for ancient people, to imagine transfiguration, and even deification of a mortal.

Most of the stories in this collection is still about the terrifying passions that men and women suffered as lovers, or parents, or being overly arrogant, greedy or even curious. We read boy Phaethon for his vainglorious hope over his schoolyard bullies, young Actaeon for being a Peeping-Tom, Arachne for being too proud of her weaving skill, Midas for his love of gold, Niobe for her proud of her fertility. All ended badly by invoking gods’ wrath. But nothing compares to the human horror of Tereus (and also Philomela and her sister) nor the mistakes by Pyramus and Thisbe. Those are largely human’s own doing. Maybe Bacchus resides in all of us, ready to jump out and hijack our precious hold on reason and compassion. No wonder Plato and his fellow philosophers took a firm line of reason against unrestraint passion.

This book exemplifies the best of Ovid’s poems by the great poet Ted Hughes himself.

*** Notes update: 2nd read, with selected pieces of audio tracks by Ted Hughes (youtube source)

1. Creation and Flood: The contentious and eventually disastrous relationship between the Creator god (Prometheus), Creator Giants, several different strands of humans, the Arcadian king Lycaon who sets up a horrible cannibalistic feast to test Zeus. Eventually the flood turned all human into dead frogs floating on the raging water of gods. Curiously, that is how this segment ended; no followups for anything linking back to other humans. This is incredibly pessimistic and dark.

2. Actaeon: The grave irony of the hunter Actaeon, punished by huntress goddess Diana for a rather innocent peep. Destiny, not guilt, was Actaeon's terrible undoing.

3. Pygmalion: the one happy act by Venus on the artist Pygmalion. I was surprised by the preamble of the horrors of the other women -- the despised and deformed by Zeus. This contrast now gives me wonder to Pygmalion's yearning for the purity and beauty unmaimed by human evil-doings. He accomplished it through his art, blessed by Venus, but now I see it's original was the despised "real" women.

4. Erysichthon: the arrogant and brutal Erysichthon cursed with insatiable hunger, degrading his and his own daughter's lives till self-destruction.

5. Semele: the usual vengeful trickery of Juno on Jupiter and Semele (who being a mortal, reaching above her station to see Jupiter in naked form). But this is more about the story of Bacchus's birth -- the twice-born.

6. Echo and Narcissus: surprisingly Narcissus did find out that he was in love with himself but could not resist. The knowledge is too weak to overcome the passionate self-regard.

7. Midas: the first mistake was not learnt by Midas, yet his second one is less forgivable -- impiety (ass's ears) vs. human greed (gold finger).

8. Myrrha: I realized how Oedipus and Myrrha are parallels in sexual taboos. Oedipus’s tragedy is the unintended consequences of human will and Fate, with the eventual triumph of Oedipus’s nobility and wisdom after much suffering in the hands of Fate and humans. Myrrha is actually much darker; this incest was pre-meditated while Oedipus’s accidental. The struggle of Myrrha against her illegitimate passion was feeble, while the trickery on her father ignoble. The consequence of Oedipus’s death saved a nation, while Myrrha’s the birth of Adonis.