The Metamorphoses of Ovid
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
“The first taste I had for books came to me from my pleasure in the fables of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. For at about seven or eight years of age I would steal away from any other pleasure to read them, inasmuch as this language was my mother tongue, and it was the easiest book I knew and the best suited by its content to my tender age.” –Michel de Montaigne
The Metamorphoses of Ovid (8 AD) is an epic poem by Ovid. Published the same year the poet was sent into exile for the rest of his life, the Metamorphoses are the crowning achievement of the first major poet of the Roman empire. Written in dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and of Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s work is an epic poem of transformations, of shape-shifting matter and beings bound to the power of love. Taking as its scope the whole history of the universe from the arrangement of order from chaos to the death of Julius Caesar, the Metamorphoses pays heed to desire’s ability to enact long-lasting and at times irreversible change.
The story begins at the very beginning, with the creation of the cosmos out of nothing, of order out of unimaginable chaos. Gods and goddesses have their moment in the sun, mankind is born only to be wiped out by an immense flood, then to rise again. Amidst countless little-known descriptions of war, romance, and change are the timeless tales of Perseus, Jason and Medea, Theseus and the Minotaur, and the labors of Hercules. Icarus soars too close to the sun. Orpheus tragically condemns Eurydice to the underworld. Troy is built and destroyed, the immortal Achilles is killed, and Aeneas sets sail to save his life and lay the foundations for Rome itself. Throughout these interwoven stories of individual and epochal change, Ovid explores the inescapability of love and death, essential themes both shared by all and constitutive of everything that was or ever will be. The Metamorphoses of Ovid is an intricate masterpiece of world literature that stands the test of time just as much as it defines it.
This edition of The Metamorphoses of Ovid is a classic work of Roman literature reimagined for modern readers.
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Composed between 2 and 8 A.D., Ovid's (43 B.C.-?A.D. 17) epic poem purports to tell the story of the universe. Competing over the centuries with such formidable adversaries as the Bible, the Upanishads , Darwin, and modern physics, The Metamorphoses remains one of the world's most engaging cosmologies. The primary strength of Slavitt's ( The Fables of Avianus ) translation is its conversational diction, which accurately conveys the style of storytelling pervading the original. His departs from most existing translations by resisting slavish preoccupation with detail, allowing him to anticipate and engage a restless and modern reader. For example, in Book Seven, Slavitt interrupts the narrative to comment on Ovid's often long-winded style, and replaces ``forty lines of travel'' (Medea's) with 40 verse lines of his own criticism of the text. Another characteristic touch is the presence of innumerable loan words, mostly from French. Unfortunately, Slavitt's poetic line has the mildly irritating tendency to throw the reader off the back of its lumbering cadence. As poetry, the translation neither invigorates nor inspires, and much of it seems to have been written with a shrug, as if to Slavitt verse held a secondary position to subject matter. Otherwise, his Ovid displays poise and a refreshingly varied texture. His translation is constructed like a Shakespearian play: it satisfies those who want only to enjoy the vaudevillian spectacle of Jupiter and Juno's marriage, and relive the adventures of the Argonauts or the Trojan War. Yet it will also charm those stimulated by subtle references to postmodern ideas, by a liberal, multilingual vocabulary, and by the occasional lame joke.
