Ovidius, İÖ 1-2 yıllarında kaleme aldığı Ars Amatoria (Aşk Sanatı) adlı şiiriyle Romalı genç erkeklere ve genç kızlara aşk öğretmenliği yapmak isterken tanık olduğu, görmemesi gereken bir olay hakkında boşboğazlık ettiği için İS 8 yılında Augustus tarafından Karadeniz kıyısındaTomis’e sürgün edilmiş.

Bütün bu Karadenizden Mektuplar'da eşine dostuna yakınıyor, affedilmek istiyor. Milattan önce yazılmış bir eser olduğu için ilgimi çekmişti. O günün insanlarının meseleleri, kendilerini ifade ediş biçimleri hakkında bir örnek görmek istemiştim. Kitap, bu merakımı gidermiş oldu ancak bir yerden sonra gerçekten katlanılmaz yakınmalara dönüştü. Nitekim Ovidius da bunun farkında olarak adeta kitabı özetlercesine şöyle söylüyor:

"Birbirinin aynısı şiirlerden size gına geldiğini,
ve dileğimi hepinizin ezberlediğini düşünüyorum."

Allah kimseyi sürgün etmesin diyor ve incelemeyi burada noktalıyorum.

Ovid was the bad boy of Augustus' Rome. He lacked Virgil's patriotic mythmaking or Horace's skeptical breadth, but his Latin is said to be more fluid than that of either of them. Ovid's youthful books are about love, common enough among Roman poets, but with a callowness beyond youth; one of them instructs women on applying make-up. After a middle age trying his hand at retelling myths, including the "Metamporphoses", August exiled Ovid from Rome for reasons that have not come down to posterity but are thought to be related to the sex scandal of the age, which involved the Emperor's daughter. (If so, it is one more of Augustus' hypocrisies, the Emperor having set the tone in that subject). If Augustus' intent was to wound Ovid in what mattered most to him, he hit his mark; this most sociable of poets apparently found living among the Getae unbearable. Howerver, Ovid's loneliness inspired his most moving poetry, including this volume, which is a translation of the five books of the "Tristia." One can question translator A.D. Melville's to use rhyme, no doubt to give a sense of the original, but English has nowhere near the number of rhyming words that Ovid had at his disposal. Still, this translation captures the bitterness of this poetry, some of it composed of letters to the Emperor, to friends both false and true, and to his wife. This is how he started the first book: "You'll go, my little book -- I feel no envy --/Without me to the City where, alas,/Your master may not go." On hearing of his exile, he tells how his wife fell to the ground. A man who lived by language, he is reduced to gestures for communication with the locals, who even dress in the Persian style. "I'm the barbarian--no one understands me;/My Latin speech the stupid Getae mock,/Safely, before my face, the will malign me;/Exile, no doubt, a laughing-stock." And "This 'health' from Getic shores your Ovid sense you,/If anyone can send a thing he lacks." Bitterness, sad to say, made Ovid's poetry more fully human.

"I never corrupted
a single innocent girl or respectable bride
or matron, but wrote only for those who already were fooling
around on the wrong side of the sheets . . ."

[Besides, if you look at the classics, every poet
writes of love. The readers expect it, even demand it.
Anacreon writes of venery and wine;
Sappho, whom all the ladies read, teaches of love.
Callimachus confesses to wanton delights
of illicit love. Will you exile them, or will you ban
their books?]

". . . You know as well as I do, it wasn't only the poem
that got you sent out here, but the other business
—we needn't go into details . . . " —Epistulae Ex Ponto, 3.3; [Tristia,3]
__________
You have the choice
of walking away. Nobody's forcing you to read this.
Do you exclaim how awful this is, how sloppy?
I agree. I urge you to put it aside. Drop it,
read something with polish and wit. I would!
I'll tell you the truth: I don't even revise these things
but send them out as they are . . .
. . . My reputation? You think I still care about that? —Tristia, 5.1

___________
In 8 AD, Ovid was exiled from Rome to Tomis, by the Emperor Augustus. His crime? A poem, and a mistake; a blunder . . . All of which is pieced together from what he wrote in these works.
_____
This volume contains 3 works written by Ovid whilst he was in Exile:
• Tristia
• Epistulae ex Ponto or The Black Sea Letters
• Ibis

The first two are epistolary poems, the second of which contains poems addressed to, and talking about, individual people. The third is a rather strange work, which Wikpiedia informs us

n  is "a stream of violent but extremely learned abuse," modeled on a lost poem of the same title by the Greek Alexandrian poet Callimachus.

The Ibis attracted a large number of scholia and was widely disseminated and referenced in Renaissance literature . . . An English translator noted that "a full reference to each of the allusions to be found in this poem would suffice to fill a small volume."n

The works have not garnered a lot of praise throughout the centuries, mostly because the works, as Ovid himself acknowledges, contain a large amount of sorrow and lamentation.

n  I'm sorry, my old friend, that I don't seem to have much range.
I wish I could strike other notes from time to time,
but this is my life, its condition: I am mournful.n

I for one could sympathise with his situation; we are both

n  gentle soul[s], used to the comforts of life . . .n

who

n  agree that Rome
is the best of all possible places . . . n

Having said that, he can get a bit repetitive in these works, so

n  Consider yourself warned: it won't be fun and games,
naughty double entendres, witty conceits,
or any of those things I used to do.n

Although there are some flashes of art to be found within the pages, I would only recommend reading these for two reasons:

1. To complete Ovid's Oeuvre
2. To mine the works for details regarding his exile

Otherwise, one will be very likely to give up halfway through . . .
__________
Tristia
Homer's talent burdens every poet (1.?)

I'm no Homer. I never was . . . (1.6)

The lesson is ancient. (3)

I wasn't cut out
for any of those serious, sensible public careers.
I gave it all up and returned to the Muse
whom I had been anyway meeting in surreptitious trysts. (4.10)

. . . strewing his path with flowers (4.2)

I was one of those happy youngsters
ages ago. (1.?)

Like old times when you and I
would talk about life and art on those rainy afternoons . . . (5.13)

It's life exaggerating art . . . (1.10)

What kind of world, what kind of life is this? (3)
__________
Expistulae ex Ponto
The world is harsh
and life is short and sad . . . (2.9)

But let's not be any gloomier than we have to. (3.1)

What is more useful than this art that has no use?
It isn't a mere means but an end in itself. (1.5)

A man of learning,
a patron of arts, a connoisseur of refinement . . . (2.9)

Your hair must be different now . . .
. . . but I rather suppose it feels the same and smells
the way it did. I yearn to touch it, to stroke it again,
to kiss it as I used to do. (1.4)

It's all I live for. (1.4)

. . . all his life
had reverenced her at the shrine he keeps for her in his heart. (3.6)

My heart is full
and cannot be restrained. (4.1)

There isn't a single literary work
without its risk to the soul to which it presumes to speak,
but that doesn't mean poetry ought to be banned. (3)
__________
I've been assuming
readers will know who I am. Probably some of you do,
or think you do—that clever naughty fellow
I used to be, the one who wrote so much about love.
Well, yes, I was. But time has changed all that
and will, no doubt, make further revisions. Who knows whether
in fifty years or in five hundred fame,
which is always fragile, will have deserted me utterly. (Tristia, 4.10)

My books are still on your shelves . . . (Tristia, 3.14)

Restored to the city of Rome, to life . . . (Tristia, 3)
__________
To the other obvious question, the answer is also, No—
I haven't been whoring around. (Epistulae Ex Ponto, 1.10)

Remove my one blunder, and I am entirely spotless. (Epistulae Ex Ponto, 4.8)

Be circumspect yourself—as I should have been. (Tristia, 1.?)
__________
We're all going to die . . . (Tristia, 1.?)

End quote. (Tristia, 3.1)

You can really see the impact of the exile through these poems. The epistles are sad and repetitive and Ovid knows it, however I did find his descriptions of Tomis and the getae quite interesting (especially as a romanian). Reading his lamentations while waiting for the tram at night in Bucharest is a vibe which I 100% recommend.

Although kind of a “one-note” work — I’m in exile and I hate it — one can hardly blame Ovid for feeling as he does. The contemporary translation seems excellent (at least the translator footnotes many choices in which he displays the original Latin, and his choices seem to me good at those points; I have not looked at it in a parallel edition, still less attempted to dust off my “slightly more antiquated than Rome itself” Latin vocabulary and read the original) and the sense of the poems are scanned and rhymed verse is preserved. I have never been a serious classics scholar—literally little Latin and less Greek—but I do enjoy seeing how so many essential aspects of human nature seem to remain largely unchanged over the millennia.

“I’m not what I was. Why trample an empty shadow?
Why stone my ashes, my tomb?
Hector was Hector while fighting but Hector’s cadaver,
dragged by Achilles’ horses, was not…
…I beg you, stop troubling my ghost!”

The verses of exile are rough, conversational, contentious, confessional, and often saturated with language that has spoiled being left so long untouched in the damp nest of mourning. The nouns and verbs and adjectives are deployed here with far more caution and groaning. Ovid, at this time, was a most ambivalent, even suspicious poet. Either (as he claims) he was first gotten in trouble by the Art of Love and then compounded his misfortune with some sort of serious (albeit unmotivated) faux pas OR whatever it was that threw him across the sea, his poetry in no way SAVED or SPARED him the horror of exile to “the wintery pole.” And yet, despite this realization almost all of these works contain some plea, somewhere, to Augustus, for reconsideration (even if Augustus isn’t the one initially/directly addressed).

My one caution—this is a profoundly repetitive book and most of the Black Sea Letters (Epiatulae ex Ponto) are close echoes of Tristia if not carbon copies of the language, imagery, and tone. If anything Tristia is the true, haunting work whereas the Black Sea Letters are desperate, sparse, and frankly monotonous finally concluding with Ovid lamenting that “There is no space in me now for another wound.” If you read only Tristia, you’ve read his true work in exile.

A final note—when these works are most effective it is due to their autobiographical and “day in the life” moments. When he complains of having to strap on a breast plate and buckler to defend against Goths (something he had never imagined doing in his wildest dreams) one cannot help but smile. Maybe it wasn’t all “that bad” for the man of many changes?

Well could I wish, since they were destined to work me harm, that I had never set hand to the holy service of the Pierian ones. But now, what am I to do? The very power of that holy service gripes me; mad man that I am, though song has injured me, tis still song that I love. So the strange lotus tasted by Dulichian palates gave pleasure through the very savor which wrought harm. The lover is oft aware of his own ruin yet clings to it, pursuing that which sustains his own fault. I also find pleasure in my books though they have injured me, and I love the very weapon that made my wounds.

The Tristia and Ex Ponto are notorious, at least with people I know, for being tedious, depressing, and most of all repetitive. I’ve often heard people joke about how much Ovid begs and whines about being exiled to the literal edge of the Empire. What a lot of these people failed to mention was just how touching these poems were.
You really need to put yourself into Ovid’s mindset here. Imagine living in the center of the known world, an urban metropolis whose political and cultural authority was felt in every other major urbanized center. A large city of close to, if not over, a million people. Add on to that Ovid’s disinterest in military service and hardship. Now imagine that you are forced to leave the center of the world to move to the edge of the known world. A place where your familiar political and social world is almost nonexistent and beyond which antiquity thought laid a hellscape of snow and ice.
What Ovid’s poetry in exile really shows is a spectrum of human resiliency and despair. The poems are tumultuous and touching. Ovid gives thanks to his steadfast friends, motivation to others that fear being associated with him, and grows angry with those that distanced themselves after his exile and those that attack him and his wife. There is a constant note of hardship revealing one’s true attributes. For his friends, it’s the ones that provided comfort on his last night in Rome, the ones that petition Caesar for his recall, and the ones that write to him. Ovid’s wife is given the attributes of a mythological Woman. The type whose virtue, and fame, burn the brightest in challenging times and whose suffering elevates them to eternal remembrance.
For me, the most visceral sections of the collection were Ovid addressing his muse and his poetry. Ovid’s true pain reveals itself in these sections. He discusses burning his incomplete draft of The Metamorphosis and constantly curses his Art of Love as a cause of his exile. But in the same breath Ovid cannot deny the importance of poetry in his life. The cause of his exile is the same which provides him succor while in exile. He curses his popularity and his muse but takes solace in the fact that his poetry can still be in Rome and that through his works he will become immortal.
While I enjoyed both the Tristia and Ex Ponto, I felt that Tristia was the better collection. The first book of Tristia was by far my favorite. The fierce winter storms echo the mental anguish that Ovid is going through. With a sense of bitter irony, he begs the winds and the sea to be calm even though the peaceful journey he wishes for is one that will see him into exile.

These poems are not an easy read. They are bitter and depressing. But at the same time, they are worth the read. They speak of the highs and lows that man experiences in his despair and I cannot say I have read anything from antiquity that was so startling human and imperfect. Are these poems for everyone? Definitely not, but if you love Ovid’s works or interested in early yet amazing autobiographical poetry these poems are for you.

Ovid’s laments and pleas are a salutary reminder that might makes right.

The Tristia is acknowledged by Ovid to get a bit samey; an extended whinge on the subject of his exile. As the Tristia and Ex Ponto continue the sight of Ovid, whose poetry had so much life and innovation, sinking into repetition and complaining that "writing poetry without an audience, is like dancing in the dark" is a bleak one. He rails against those who've dropped him as a friend, and flatters and cajoles those who have not, to speak up for him and he toadies to the Caesars as Gods he worships. It is interesting and has moments, but the psychological pain of the exile here is not a laugh and (other than the Fasti) these are Ovid's least readable poems.

Ovid blows

Ugh, this was dense and whining for hundreds of pages in prose! Despite my strong dislike I searched (hard) for some jewels, and found a few.
"...what heals can also hurt."
"Misfortunes have broken my talent..."
"So I relish the boys that have hurt me,/love the weapon throat inflicted my wounds./Perhaps this obsession may be seen as madness;/but the madness has some utility..."
"Unseen, unacknowledged in good times, in hardship courage/stands apparent, asserts itself."

This wasn't really my thing. Probably should not have started with this as my introduction to Ovid. My area of interest and expertise is more Chinese poetry and I think ill stick with that.