I never quite finished this and will need to start again now. The problem was reading it before bed at night - there are so many stories and so many characters that keeping track of them all in that twillight between awake and asleep proved too much for me. But this is the Classical World's Bible, although much more interesting in that the stories are clearly meant to be taken as metaphor and there isn't endless boring bits where all that happens is praise for the jealous god.

The Greeks and Romans had a much better sense of irony than the Jews or Christians, I think. If you read this you might get that odd sense of having heard many of the stories before - and that might be one of the main reasons for reading this book at all - it has been the source of so much else in our literary tradition, that alone is reason enough to read it.

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.

What will become of me, gripped as I am
by this queer longing for a kind of lovemaking that no one understands?

Did not connect fully to this, but mostly had a lovely time reading this very old epic poem.

I learned about Ovid many many years ago (my Romanian teacher would probably be happy that I read this), because he was exiled in Pontus Euxinus, aka The Black Sea, in the city of Tomis, now Constanța. There's actually a town that bears his name (Ovidiu), that you pass through on the way to the seaside.

The book has some interesting themes, like the powerlessness of humans against gods, women in the face of men who want them (so many chapters are titled 'X rapes Y', like a huge amount of them, so read with care), but also quite a lot of queerness, gender type of metamorphoses and some sweet gay love. A lot of the characters (too many, I have to confess I couldn't always remember who we were talking about, because there are many many names of characters and complex relationships between them) are turned into plants, trees, birds and so on - and it seems to me like they're objectified further, after the transgressions against them, by becoming only a reminder of what was done to them. Well. In some cases it's what they've done.

Actaeon, transformed into a stag by Diana, goddess of the hunt, asks: 'For how is error crime?' and yeah, the gods are cruel.

Love and Hymen shake their wedding torches.

Oh yeah, Hymen's the god of marriage.

Even if the injustices done to women in this book are many and rendered compassionately, there's still a bit of a sexist bent to these stories, like the witchy Medea and Circe and their stories. There's also a... checks notes... woman rapist? (Aurora) Enjoyed the story of Iphis, who becomes a man in order to be a husband to his beloved, Ianthe. It was an interesting gender-transitioning sort of story, but also Iphis did not know how to satisfy Ianthe without a penis so... can he find the clit though?

Also enjoyed quite a few stories I knew already from Greek myths, like Orpheus and Eurydice, some bits of the Illiad, and so on. Also, catching a lot of characters and places with names used by Tamsyn Muir in The Locked Tomb, lol. (Cytherea, Ada, Protesilaus, Ianthe, Palamedes, Sarpedon etc). Oh and the lengthy bit about Pythagoras and metempsychosis (the soul moving from one body to another), which is also an interesting plea for vegetarianism, but also describes a lot of beautiful transformations / metamorphoses that take place in nature - including the transness of hyenas!

Another thing that was nice was all the places mentioned here that I've been, like Mount Hymettus, the island of Euboea, driving past the coast of Corinth and others.

If we accept as true the idea that great literature can be read again and again and still yield new insight, then the ancient Greek and Roman myths might be the greatest writing of all. Read 'em for fun, read 'em for philosophy, read 'em from different schools of critical theory - they are gifts that keep on giving!

Familiar stories, these myths are given new life through Charles Martin's excellent translation which is (take your pick) energetic, vivid, dramatic, cheeky, but above all: memorable. 5 stars.

Metamorphoses is an epic poem written by Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso, also known as merely Ovid. It's compounded by fifteen books that narrates this author's perspective of the world, from the Creation of it to his days in the Roman Empire through a recollection of fantastic myths about transformation, either out of prayer or punishment, but always by divine intervention. It is important, however, to take into account that often, when Ovid refers to these deities, throughout his epic verses, he's actually making allegories about the Roman rulers. He depicted the deeds of those who had power over those who weren't through a transference towards the pagan myths that were very well known in Rome. He basically conveyed how that great nation worked in former and current days, in which peace just began to flourish.

Personally, when I read Homer or Virgil, I'm astounded by their works, but I never felt as connected with them as I feel with Ovid's magnum opus. I would say that this is due to the fact that I do not relate to metaphors on homecoming, war or pagan rites; but ultimately Ovid does the same: he used the art of literature to denounce and to enhance life. However, for me, Ovid's subjects span several fields and issues that still concern us these days. Trust me when I say one will hardly ever read a better written poem that includes rape, abuse of power, injustice and stalking in perfectly constructed verses. But do not think Ovid's only goal was to narrate deviousness and how to get away with it: he shows the sorrowful aftermath. See for instance how many occurrences of suicide happen in this collection of myths out of heartbreaks, the death of a beloved or after divine punishment.

There are several humorous episodes all along the book, but there are also others that are quite touching (at least for me). I remember Narcissus' for example, whom I used to think of as a despotic and egotistic being, but who's actually rather innocent and somewhat pure. There is also Hermaphroditus and how after Salmacis' rejection, intend of rape and caprice lost his virility by union to the latter. Or Daphne, who to after being stalked by Apollo, prays for her beauty, cause of her sorrows, to go away, being thus transformed into a laurel tree. We find also Iphis who was born a girl but it's treated as a boy, her sexuality concealed, just because her father threatened her mother to kill the newborn if it wasn't a boy. Iphis then falls in love with a woman who intends to marry, but she suffers because secretly finds herself amidst a sorrowful trial due to the claims of lesbianism as something unnatural. However, after divine intervention, she's finally turned into a man, happily married. And see Caenis too (another one of my personal favourite myths), who is raped by Poseidon and as a reward is granted a wish. So she wishes for her sex to change, being thus turned into Caeneus who would later be mocked at in fight against a centaur because of his change of sex: people believed his strength would be rather null because of his womanly origins. So my point is that Metamorphoses is filled with contemporary issues, specially those concerning gender identity. We often find news about women harassed by men, the latter claiming to be victims of the former's 'provocative' beauty, like Daphne thought of herself. We find men or women coping with gender dysphoria who have to live through it out of fear of rejection or sometimes death, like Iphis. Little did the author of this book think about his work outliving people's incomprehension about human nature being out of humanity's hands.

However, the myths mentioned above are only a few: the diversity found in the book is really vast. Ovid made an outstanding job with his epic poem recounting human nature and how it can be transformed. According to him, we all change; we are like a river that never stays the same. He closes with a flourish in Metamorphoses' final book that tells the teachings of Pythagoras as a treatise on the art of peace. As stated by him, there's no reason why people should feast in the death of another being. He denounces the pagan practices that pointlessly take an innocent life for a sin that they didn't commit. He, overall, teaches the reader how precious life — any life — is.

n  "Our bodies too, are always incessantly changing,
and what we were, or are, is not what we will be
tomorrow…"n

Even before Book XV I knew this was, without question, one of my favourite books. But after the book in question, I think this is one of the books I'll try to keep rereading for the rest of my days to remind myself that change is normal, that life, regardless of its form, matters; and this will, hopefully, stick to my mind for a while.

YouTube kanalımda İtalyan Edebiyatı'na başlangıç yapabileceğiniz kitap önerilerimden bahsettim: https://youtu.be/nTxrw0TosEg

Henüz bu kitabı tam olarak anlamaya kapasitem yetmediği için 5 yıldız verip faydalanabildiğim kadar faydalanmakla yetindim. Yunan mitolojisi okumalarınızdan sonraki durağınız Ovidius'un Dönüşümler adlı kitabı olmalı. Yanınızda bir mitoloji sözlüğü bulunsa iyi olur, zira bu kitap bugüne kadar okuduğum en ağır kitaplardan biri.

Now since the sea's great surges sweep me on,
All canvas spread, hear me! In all creation
Nothing endures, all is in endless flux,
Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing up
And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow,
A rolling stream- and streams can never stay,
nor lightfoot hours, as wave is driven by wave
And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
So time flies on and follows, flies and follows,
Always, for ever new. What was before
Is left behind; what never was is now;
And every passing moment is renewed (p.357)

The Melville translation was recommended to me. I have not read any others and have no idea how varied the field is. In this epic around the theme of metamorphoses Ovid weaves a continuing narrative of classical myth, each one transforming into the next, it could be a good book to read for an introduction to the ancient myths of classical Greece, but really maybe more as a companion to European renaissance art, or occasional operas like Handel's Acis and Galatea

It is an impetuous, non-stop rush from creation - here an act of division and separation - from adventure to adventure and narratives nesting inside each other down to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar and the triumph of his (adopted) son Augustus.

In places as Ovid rushes through time and space he alludes through people and places to other stories, not included in Metamorphoses giving a sense of a universe of narrative that Ovid's poem is relentlessly driving through.

The unifying theme is of change - people becoming trees, or rocks, women becoming monsters (or men), people becoming birds and other animals, frequently as a result of contact with gods or semi or demi divine beings, often as a result of the lust of said divine persons, repeating the subversive message of Ovid's love poems that desire is the driving force of history.

It is often violent - retelling sections of the Trojan war for instance and the centre of the poem is the hunt for an epic boar in Scilly when Nestor was a young man and helpfully for him still capable of vaulting into a tree, toward the end of the poem is the really grisly and horrifying battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs which I hope was not based too much on Ovid's personal experience of weddings. And yet in the final of the poem's fifteen books we have the figure of Pythagoras, not telling us about triangles, but promoting vegetarianism - because of, as he also taught, the transmigration of souls which feeds back to the poem's theme of change, it is not just that arbitrary gods may turn us from ants into unusually hard working men, or from men and women into snakes, but that changes is part of the nature of existence in a fundamental way, in this life we may be humans, in the next life we may be chickens or sheep.
Although the poem ends with the triumph of Roman power and the deification of Rome's rulers, the poem has a subversive energy. Earlier great powers had fallen, even gods have been toppled, while new gods and new great powers rise and have their day too, why then will Roma and its Caesars be any different?

Jupiter decries disorder and sin, but he overthrew his father and pursues girls and boys insatiably  but not I think women or men. The victims are blamed, persecuted and then left voiceless - but here Ovid memorialises them in to a fabric as complex as Ariadne wove, or now might still weave in her transformed state.

I have intended to read this translation for a long time and finally got around to it (been on my shelves for years). It is the version read by Shakespeare; Ezra Pound called it "the most beautiful book in the language." Ez was opinionated and some of his literary judgements erratic; certainly this one was.

This is not a modernized version. While Nims has provided a lot of very helpful notes on obsolete terms, it can still be slow going. Golding is wordy and the translation is significantly longer than the Latin text. His verse can also become a bit sing-songy, whether you read it aloud or just hear it echoing in your mind.

Ovid's stories are good in any case, and not always the versions most commonly encountered elsewhere. His versions tend to be prettied up and literary, lacking the raw power of Hesiod, Homer, and the tragedians. Not surprising, since Augustan poets were more in tune with the Alexandrians, who tend to be to precious for my taste.

Превращения начинаются из Хаоса в мир, из камней в людей и идут бесконечной чередой. Есть ли мифы без волшебства, как наказующей или мстящей силы, властного приговора? Есть ли жизнь без превращений вещества? Есть ли что-нибудь в природе, не испытывающего метаморфоз? Нет ничего вечного, есть череда преобразований, есть власть природы. Мифы тоже продукт преобразования. Верования превращаются в мифы, когда люди перестают в них верить.

Oh, Ovid. What I wouldn't give to travel back in time and make sweet love to you on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean.

No, I don't think it's unhealthy to have lustful fantasies about Ovid. I don't care what you think! I do very much care that his work was lush, provocative and unforgettable in its revolutionary translation (often taking liberties) of what was at the time contemporary folk literature. A treasury of verse!

Second reading completed Nov 17, 2023. This time I read the new Stephanie McCarter translation. I liked it. She uses a flexible blank verse, which moves along nicely. She also worked hard to keep the text concise, to echo Latin's compactness, and to employ Ovid's poetic devices where compatible. As others have noted, she has a strong commitment to name rape and violence as such. Reading the text with that in mind, it seems clear that Ovid too was calling on the reader to see it for what it was. This decision on the part of both poet and translator is not intrusive, just present when appropriate.

I've compared a selection from her version to the same lines from three other translators just below, if you're trying to decide which one to read. There are others, but these are on my shelf. I would take McCarter, although my 2013 review (below) of Gregory's translation was also enthusiastic.

This time around I was struck by the poetry of Jove’s seduction of Europa, Orpheus’s charming the trees, and Pythagoras’s tirade against eating meat. I found that my just finished read of Bren Smith’s Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer, with its graphic and material reasons for a mostly plant based diet, and Pythagoras’s argument that what’s on your plate was likely reincarnated before you slaughtered it, reinforced my mostly successful growing commitment to vegetarianism. ;-)

I’ve selected a passage to illustrate McCarter’s choice to use the word ‘rape’ for Ovid’s rapio (not ravishment or any other euphemism)

[Context: Cyane, the nymph of a spring, has attempted to stop Pluto on his way to rape Proserpina, daughter of Ceres, but the god forced his way by her. (Cyane has said that at least her lover Anapis had not forced her to become his bride; he asked her.)]

McCarter:
But Cyane laments for the raped goddess
and for her spring’s scorned rights. Her silenced mind
now bears a wound that’s inconsolable.
She melts completely into tears, dissolving
into the spring she just had ruled, a mighty
spirit. You could have seen her limbs turn soft,
her bones contort, the hardness leave her nails.
Her thinnest parts were first to liquefy:
her sea-blue hair, her fingers, legs, and feet—
for thin limbs quickly change to icy streams.
Next shoulders, back, flank, chest—all disappear.
At last, her ruined veins flow not with blood
but water. Nothing’s left that you could grasp.

Rolf Humphries:
Cyane
Grieved for both violation, girl and fountain,
And in her silent spirit kept the wound
Incurable, and, all in tears, she melted,
Dissolving, queen no longer, of those waters.
Her limbs were seen to soften, and her bones
Became more flexible, and the nails’ hardness
Was Gone: the slenderest parts went first, the hair,
The fingers, legs, and feet: it is no great distance
From slimness to cool water. Back and shoulders,
The breasts, the sides, were watery streams, and water
Went through her veins, not blood, till there was nothing
For anyone to hold.

Allen Mandelbaum
“’But Cyane nursed an inconsolable—
a silent—wound that was incurable;
a sadness for the rape of Cere’ daughter
and for the violation of the waters
of her own pool—for Pluto’s scorn and anger.
She gave herself to tears and then dissolved
into the very pool of which she had—
till now—been the presiding deity.
You could have seen the softening of her limbs,
the bones and nails that lost solidity.
Her slender hairs, her fingers, legs, and feet—
these were the first to join the waves. In fact,
the slenderest parts can sooner turn into
cool waters. Shoulders, back, and sides, and breasts
were next to vanish in thin streams. At last,
clear water flows through Cyane’s weakened veins,
and there is nothing left that anyone can grasp.

Arthur Golding (Shakesspeare’s Ovid)

Dame Cyan taking sore to heart as well the ravishment
Of Proserpine against hir will, as also the contempt
Against hir fountains priviledge, did shrowde in secret hart
An inward corsie comfortlesse, which never did depart
Until she melting into teares consumde away with smart.
The selfe same waters of the which she was but late ago
The mighty Goddesse, now she pines and wastes hirselfe into.
Ye might have seene hir limmes were lithe, ye might have bent hir bones:
Hir nayles wext soft: and first of all did melt the smallest ones:
As haire and fingars, legges, and feete: for those same slender parts
Doe quickly into water turne, and afterward converts
To water, shoulder, backe, brest, side: and finally in stead
Of lively bloud, within hir veynes corrupted there was spred
Thinne water: so that nothing now remained whereeeupon
Ye might take holde, to water now consumed was anon.


Original 2013 review:

Fantastic. This is powerful stuff. I especially liked the speeches by Ajax and Ulysses when they compete for dead Achilles armor, even if it is a spot where Ovid strays from the metamorphoses theme. Also, the descriptions of nature and emotion throughout are vivid. No argument that it sags a bit at times, but overall the intensity is compelling.

I actually listened to the Horace Gregory translation, but am citing the print edition because otherwise the pages don't get calculated into one's annual reading total. After reading some reviews, I decided that I need to get ahold of the Melville translation to see how much difference there is and which one I prefer. I found Gregory plenty gripping.

What a master piece. This is a great comglomeration of the old Greek myths along with the Roman myths of this time period. It is very sharp and whitty.
This translation is so good and easy to understand. I recommend this to all.