David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life envisions the life of the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso in the first century CE after Emperor Augustus banishes him to Tomis, a desolate village bordering the Black Sea, on the outskirts of the Roman Empire, at the edge of civilization. Malouf imagines the author of Metamorphoses recounting his own experience with metamorphosis through his first-person voice.

Deprived of the comforts of a life of luxury in Rome, Ovid endures an existence stripped to its bare minimum at Tomis. He lives in a hut, relies on others to survive, and since none speak Latin, is bereft of speech until he learns to speak their language. He is painfully self-conscious of his status as an outsider, viewed with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity by the villagers.

Ovid’s transformations are gradual, internal, and experienced in separate stages. First, he learns the villagers’ language, joins them on their hunts, assists with net-making, and cultivates an appreciation for their lifestyle, recognizing it as one more grounded in reality than his previous life in Rome. He sheds his former identity and is born anew:

It is about to begin. All my life till now has been wasted. I had to enter the silence to find a password that would release me from my own life.

One day, Ovid sees a young feral boy in the distance. The boy is captured and brought back to the village where Ovid becomes his caregiver and teacher. He tries to tame the wildness out of the boy and teach him the ways of living among humans. But circumstances change and, in an ironic twist, the novel concludes with the boy as guide and Ovid as student.

In lyrical, luminous language, Malouf explores the boundary between civilization and nature. He uses Ovid as his vehicle to articulate a metamorphosis from an urbane existence to one of total immersion in the natural environment. Ovid learns from his feral companion to read and appreciate nature and to live in total harmony within it. His final transformation, a merger with the earth from where he sprang, is accepted with total peace and equanimity.

The narrative unfolds in a beautiful, poetic prose laced with mysticism and mythology. It includes flashbacks to Ovid’s childhood, recollections of dream sequences, and meditations on his life. From his initial assessment of living with barbarians, Ovid re-fashions himself twice over. By releasing his former self, he embraces his new identity, first as one of the villagers and then as a student of nature learning at the feet of a child master teacher.

The novel can be interpreted on multiple levels. It is an allegory, situating Australia at its center, and representing Ovid’s metamorphoses as a culture’s gradual acceptance of and appreciation for the indigenous people and their knowledge of the environment. It conveys the wisdom and re-prioritization that can come with aging. It is an account of the internal metamorphoses and life-altering experiences of the author of Metamorphoses. And, finally, it recounts a man’s quest for self and belonging.

Recommended.

You can see more of my book reviews at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

Strange and stunning.

I’ve been going through books read years ago with the intention of keeping a few and taking the rest to our local used book store. So far, it’s been a losing battle—I keep finding ones I want to read again like this book where the author places the poet Ovid in a hostile land after he is exiled from Rome by the emperor Augustus and finds a feral child living there among the deer.

Enjoyed it for what it was, but disappointed that it was not so much a straight story about Ovid-in-exile [although that WAS there as a narrative foundation] as much as a meditation on the balance between civilization and nature, with psychological and philosophical underpinnings. Writing was luminous, with gorgeous descriptions. Worthwhile to read once but I don't feel it warrants rereading.

"I have stopped finding fault with creation and have learned to accept it. We have some power in us that knows its own ends. It is that that drives us on to what we must finally become. We have only to conceive of the possibility and somehow the spirit works in us to make it actual. This is the true meaning of transformation. This is the real metamorphosis. Our further selves are contained within us, as the leaves and blossoms are in the tree."

An Imaginary Life talks about the everyday life and times in the remotest village among tribal folks away from the ancient Roman Empire after the exile of Poet Ovid in his own voice and narration.

Poignantly struck with the ponderings of the poet with his initial inability, frustrations and attempts to connect with people, the feral lone child in the forest, even with the reticent spiders and other creatures, the story takes on a journey of experiencing mix of the otherness and inebriated oneness in a more spiritual way than previously imagined possible.

It was so beautiful, philosophical and poetic. Wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's one of the best books I've read in a long time and I could only wish that I had read this for the first time in a relatively more relaxed composure considering the crazy times we happen to live lately. Yet nevertheless grateful and glad about reading it.

"It is summer. It is spring. I am immeasurably, unbearably happy. I am three years old. I am sixty. I am six... I am there."

I give it 5 stars for two reasons: First, the ideas are interesting and provoke a lot of thoughts that I don't believe I'm old enough to fully understand, but they are nevertheless captivating. And second, the writing is gorgeous. I want to read every line aloud, like a good poem. If you're looking for a historical fictions about Ancient Rome, read "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves I, Claudius, but you should still read "An Imaginary Life" just for the sheer joy of it.

It is always a joy to read Malouf's work, but there's a special frisson about reading very early novels. This one from 1978 is exquisite.
To see my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...

Este é um livro para ler á sombra de uma árvore, ouvindo o cantar dos pássaros e saboreando cada palavra. Pois "Uma vida imaginária" é uma verdadeira pérola literária, uma fábula sobre a comunhão do Homem com a natureza.

Através do diário ficionado de Ovídio, acompanhamos o poeta latino nos últimos dias, exilado numa pequena aldeia, e como o aparecimento de uma criança selvagem é capaz de transformar sua vida. Esta é uma obra feita de profundas reflexões sobre a fragilidade humana, a infancia, a brevidade do tempo, a memória, o sonho. Uma obra que nos faz regressar á um tempo que o Homem vive em harmonia com a natureza, e vivia feliz observando as suas várias metamorfoses.

"Papoila, papoila escarlate, flor da minha infancia longínqua e das searas á volta da nossa quinta de Sulmo, voltei a dar-te á luz, ergui-te das minhas mais remotas memórias, do meu sangue, para por-te no vento."

7/10

For me, it is sad that sometimes the sequence in our reading affects our appreciation of some books. For example, this beautiful book, n  An Imaginary Lifen, first published in 1978, has a wonderful poetic prose and it is about the last Roman poet, Ovid. However, my reading of this was “eclipsed” by Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Ian McEwan’s The Cement Garden that both use straight, brutal storytelling that keeps you leafing from one page to the next. I mean, I had a hard time appreciating what David Malouf (born 1934), an acclaimed Australian writer, was trying to send as a message, as in this book, he tries to fill in the blank about the unknown part of Ovid’s life: his exile in Tomis. This is in the same fashion as how Anne Rice imagined how the child Jesus lived in Nazareth prior to his baptism in Jordan River in her books, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. Well, the other problem is that I don’t know anything about Ovid so I had to consult Wiki. I saw Metamorphoses and I thought it was written by Franz Kafka about the big bug. Oh well, my pardon my untrained literary brain. While writing this review, I have 5 Wiki screens already open so I do not create a mistake. The Metamorphosis (1951) is a novella by Franz Fafka about a monstrous insect and Vladimir Nabokov has a lecture on this that can be downloaded while Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem in 15 books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from creation to deification of Julius Caesar. Maybe, I have to read both of this book and they seem to be both interesting.

Back to Imaginary, this also reminded me of a recent read, Bernard Malamud’s (1914-1986) God’s Grace, the narrator, Calvin also tries to teach a monkey on how to communicate using English. In Imaginary, Ovid is teaching a Tarzan-like child, i.e., born and reared by wolves, on how to speak Latin. The comparison stops there though. Malouf goes a step further, The Child also tries to teach Ovid of his “language” and their roles were reversed in the end as The Child becomes Ovid’s protector. How, Malouf tries to show how powerful language can be if you are suddenly thrown into a place where no one can understand you.

Don’t be misled by my 2-star rating. This is a beautiful book that just came to me at a wrong time. After all, this won a national award in Australia in 1958 and it is said to have a deeper meaning: about Australia White Policy and the treatment of the indigenous people in that country. Strong positive message. I hope I will have another a chance to re-read this book someday. Maybe when I am reading an equally poetic book similar to Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces.

Baseado em duas pessoas reais (Ovídio e Victor de Aveyron), David Malouf cria um diário imaginário, no qual o poeta relata os últimos anos da sua vida junto de pessoas cuja linguagem e tradições lhe são estranhas. Neste meio agreste - quer em termos de natureza, quer humana - encontra um menino selvagem que tenta educar.

Mais do que uma história, este livro é uma reflexão sobre a natureza e a civilização; talvez sobre onde reside a Felicidade: em qualquer lugar, em qualquer idade - desde que sejamos livres, genuínos...
"É Verão. É Primavera. Estou incomensuravelmente, insuportavelmente, feliz. Tenho três anos. Tenho sessenta. Tenho seis.
Estou lá."

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Ovídio (43AC-17/18DC) no ano 8DC foi banido de Roma, pelo imperador Augusto, e desterrado para Tomis, onde viveu até à sua morte.

Victor de Aveyron (1788-1828) foi um menino selvagem encontrado num bosque no sul de França. Teria cerca de doze anos e, embora andasse em posição erecta, apenas emitia sons incompreensíveis, rasgava as roupas que lhe vestiam e fugia constantemente. Foi adoptado por um educador (J.M.G.Itard) que tentou civilizá-lo mas com pouco êxito, apesar de os exames psiquiátricos não revelarem qualquer anomalia mental. Só quando foi entregue à governanta - que o tratou com carinho - conseguiram algum desenvolvimento no seu comportamento; aprendeu algumas palavras e a cuidar da sua higiene mas não se interessou por jogos e brincadeiras. Nunca perceberam se ele não queria, ou não conseguia, adoptar o comportamento humano normal.


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"Que mais devem ser as nossas vidas senão uma contínua série de começos, de dolorosas incursões no desconhecido, saindo das margens da consciência para o mistério daquilo em que ainda não nos transformámos..." (Uma Vida Imaginária)
— n  David Maloufn



David Malouf nasceu em Brisbane, Austrália, no dia 20 de Março de 1934.

Very strange book, hard to read and follow. Took me over a year as I much preferred the 50 other books I read in the past 11 months, mostly non-fiction.

I'm sure Malouf's other fiction is much more readable.