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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
So I've been meaning to read Ovid's Metamorphoses for ages and never gotten round to it. What I found fascinating was the way in which there was no stable sense of morality or correct behaviour throughout the text. Something that was completely unacceptable in one story and the narrator would criticse was passed over in the next and praised in the one after that.
I also found that some of the stories were surprisingly affecting Io and Orpheus being ones that I actually took a break from the text after reading.
Other stand outs are: Actaeon, Echo, Callisto, Arachne, Minos, Icarus, Atalanta and Hecuba
I also found that some of the stories were surprisingly affecting Io and Orpheus being ones that I actually took a break from the text after reading.
Other stand outs are: Actaeon, Echo, Callisto, Arachne, Minos, Icarus, Atalanta and Hecuba
adventurous
challenging
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
challenging
dark
slow-paced
It's finally over. I am doing a dance right now. I had to read this for class, and I enjoyed parts of it and absolutely hated most of it. The most intriguing part is seeing how these stories tie into modern stories. But this has got to be one of the most gruesome books I have ever read.
That strength of yoursThere's a great deal that's been wiped out during the inexorable descent of the ages upon the world, and what has managed to survive through one Frankensteined agenda'd form or other could very well have been better off lost and/or forgotten. Two thousand years has done little more than to shift the biases and the brainwashing into as many directions as new breeds of hyperconnectivity in awareness, intelligence, fact, and fiction thrust themselves upon us, and after spending some time following one combative trajectory or another, I simply have to think: does a particular piece take on a worthy task, and does it do it well. I'm not as enamored with Ovid as artist, thwarted fate and all, as are the various types of explicators who had a hand in putting together this edition through the warp of translation and the woof of expository notes, but there is a playful yet well mastered, fully engaged yet satirical, and brutally through yet every so often compassionate tone running throughout this text, so averse to the modern day sensibility that being good at something automatically entails being an absolute cunt in every respect associated and otherwise that I must take heed. Couple that with the glory of the language that made me especially grateful I thought to supplement my older, prosaic, barely acknowledged edition with this one, as well as a richly infused vision of the canon of folklore and philosophical treatise, drama and epic, forthright science and conflicted mythos that Ovid informed and was informed by in turn, and you have a text of the crossroads that is old enough to be removed from much of today's banal malignities, and in return hands down to us much of what would otherwise be in question or simply not exist. There's no mincing about the rape and other forms of violence portrayed in the text, but to be fair, Ovid doesn't mince either, and if certain folks weren't so obnoxious about refusing to make their pwecious academia actually academic for everyone who has the right to be involved (aka, everyone everywhere), it'd be possible to enjoy this text for what it is instead of what is gossiped about it. An inevitability in this day and age that doesn't consider compassion part of a lucratively viable skillset, which may be another reason to read certain sections of Ovid these days. Really quite (justifiably) full of himself in regards to his craft, but intensely interested in the psyches of others, and giving a number of the best monologues in this piece to women has to mean something, no?
Is mindless; my concern is for the morrow.
[The Metamorphoses' ingenuity] in itself would not recommend it: the literature of Hellenistic Greece and her Roman imitators abounded in the ingeniously unreadable.During the brief year when I returned to and finally finished up my undergrad, my goal was to acquire a mixture of both the marginalized areas and the ironclad centerpieces in that thing called "literature", which is why alongside the courses I took on women's experimental literature, postcolonial short stories, and female saint hagiographies were ones on Paradise Lost, Shakespeare tragedies, and Canterbury Tales, with ones on Evans' Middlemarch and the Brontës forming a sort of middle ground between the two points. Much as I wanted to go further into the unknown in the realm of writing, I also wanted to clean its skeleton of as much of the detritus of sodden on lies, glossing overs, whitewashings, and general instances of conforming the piece to the 'common sense' of one era or another: in other words, to not only see, but to become capable of judging how much of the white boy wonderland that continues to plague the representation of literature from every era is worthy, and how much is tacked on for the sake of stabilizing certain ideological complacencies. I would've taken a course on 'Metamorphoses' if it had been offered, but I suppose that was a bit beyond the purview of a degree that didn't overtly force one to read it in the original Latin/Greek (all my foreign language tokens were in German), so I've come to it now in my customary autodidactic fashion, and in all honesty, it went much better than expected.
They mate and rear their young and in winterMy liking this is, as always, highly subjective. Well inclined as I am towards the long, rolling, plentifully complicated/punctuated/syntaxed sentences, whether transcribed directly from the speaking habits of preachers or drawn from the linguistic dances of one's consciousness, the way Ovid had no fear of going on when needed and the translation accommodated accordingly meant it was rather easy to become lost in many of the passages, especially when there was no school assignment or other such academic tedium sinking its tendrils into it. It was also rather humorous to follow the end notes and witness how often the author made highly absurd transitional leaps from one necessary tale to the next, or shifted the entire scope of interpretation and/or overriding emotional appeal from its origins to something new, or was intentionally vague at certain strategic points whenever there was an ongoing debate regarding the technical details of one tale or another. Taking on the task of reading 200 pages of annotation alongside nearly 400 pages of original text also means getting the juicy details regarding one "politically correct" reality or another, which means I can credibly say that Ovid's tales include black people, men loving men (emphasis on the 'men' part there), women loving women, and more than one trans person. Also, some of these stories/sections are just really fucking good in terms of holistic composition, such Cyclops' appeal to Galatea, Ajax and Ulysses and the Arms of Achilles, Ceyx and Alycone, Philemon and Baucis, and the speeches of Hecuba, Myrrha, and Althaea. All that amounts to maybe 5-10% of the work, so if you'd rather skip around, be my guest, as the fight scenes get tediously 'and then this random name got speared in the groin and then this other random name got his head split in half' if it goes on for more than a page, and some of the descriptions really are just Ovid been a longwindedly stuck up prat about his rhyming skills. In any case, I'm not the type to demand that others adhere to the standards that I set for myself, but if you absolutely have to pick an old dead white dude for one reading purpose or another, this is one of the better ones.
For seven days of calm Alcyone
Broods on her nest, borne cradled on the waves.
Calm lies the sea. The Wind-god keeps his squalls
Imprisoned and forbids the storms to break,
And days are tranquil for his grandsons' sake.
Guardians of the shrineThe end notes did a great deal to note when Ovid drew from one similarly venerable text of the Ancients or another, to the point that I'm very much set on getting to Lucretius' [b:On the Nature of Things|195771|On the Nature of Things|Lucretius|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347656033l/195771._SY75_.jpg|189338] next year, as well as doing a reread of 'The Odyssey' as soon as I get my hands on the Wilson translation. For now, I'm rather burnt out on the whole 'have to slow down in order to get all the notes/understanding/appreciation in' thing, especially as I just finished an example that may be more modern but is much further removed from this canon that, let's be honest, is shoved down the throat of nearly every kid in the "Western" world long before they even know what the words "sexual assault" even mean. So, it's time to take a break and move to pastures that are likely just as complicated, but whose paradigms are much more embedded in the frame of my time than that of Ovid's, whose poor head would likely spin off its axis with the briefest mention of simple near ubiquities such as the Internet or memes. On the other hand, the author's conclusion involving a rather odd (to modern sensibilities, at any rate) mixture of kowtowing religio-political mythologizing and pontificating (although extremely engagingly modern in parts) screed on the ethical profundities of vegetarianism doesn't detract from the triumphant and, in some ways hair-raisingly prophetic, declarations of the ubiquity of metamorphosis on the scale of rulers and civilizations. For Ovid's name and his work lives on long after the centuries-long sundering of the Roman Empire in all its parts, which these days survives as little more than an aging and squabbling storage shed equipped with one too many guns with which it convinces itself that it is still the center of the known universe. Would Ovid find a place amongst all this noise and fearmongering that, for all its nonsense, has infused centuries of art and literary works with themes, phrases, and ideas drawn from his own pages? Probably, and I have a hard time believing that he would do it with no small measure of compassion, which, these days, is the most valuable thing at one one's disposal.
They were while life was left, until one day,
Undone by years and age, standing before
The Sacred steps and talking of old times,
Philemon saw old Baucis sprouting leaves
And green with leaves she saw Philemon too,
And as the foliage o'er their faces formed
They said, while they still might, in mutual words
"Goodbye, dear love" together, and together
The hiding bark covers their lips. Today
The peasants in those parts point out with pride
Two trees from one twin trunk grown side by side.
Fair Galatea, whiter than the snow,Not sure if I'll ever tackle any of Ovid's other works, but I could be persuaded.
Taller than alders, flowerier than the meads,
Brighter than crystal, livelier than a kid,
Sleeker than shells worn by the ceaseless waves,
Gladder than winter's sun and summer's shade,
Nobler than apples, sweeter than ripe grapes,
Fairer than lofty planes, clearer than ice,
Softer than down of swans or creamy cheese,
And, would you welcome me, more beautiful
Than fertile gardens watered by cool streams.
Yet, Galatea, fiercer than wild bulls,
Harder than ancient oak, falser than waves,
Tougher than willow wands or branching vines,
Wilder than torrents, firmer than these rocks,
Prouder than peacocks, crueller than fire,
Sharper than briars, deafer than the sea,
More savage than a bear guarding her cubs,
More pitiless than snakes beneath the heel,
And—what above all else I'd wrest from you—
Swifter in flight than ever hind that flees
The baying hounds, yes, swifter than the wind
And all the racing breezes of the sky.
emotional
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
ovid cooked with this so fun to read definitely recommend
I've only read this particular translation from David Raeburn. So my review only is about this version of Ovid's poems.
There were a lot of stories in here in which I already knew due to ancient Rome and Greece overlaping in some areas of their mythology (BUT IN SAYING THAT, THEIE DIETIES ARE DIFFERENT, SAME WITH THEIR HEREOS AND MONSTERS AND BLENDING THEM IS ERACING A CULTURE AND RELIGION) but it was interesting in seeing how similar and different the stories are. Which attributes of the stories are highlighted and what ancient Rome prioritised in teaching through their mythology.
The stories at time felt like a dry translation and that I needed to force my through them. However, others were translated with rhythm and flowed nicely. Those poems I personally had the most annotations on as the flow made it easier to grasp.
A lot of the stories with deities in had a similar overaching lesson about respect and humbling yourself. Although there are a few outliers as well which unless you don't know the culture then (or use that for perspective) you may get frustrated and annoyed with the mythology. These are normally when female deities take their anger out on mortals due to the action of male deities. It is important to note, that mythology is mythology and is shaped on their culture and their values. And although mythology can teach you about deities, the deities are not their mythology.
Something I love about this collection of poetry is what they placed under the umbrella of 'metamorphosis'. Metamorphosis is the change if physical form, this has been done in a variety of ways. Some are obvious in depiction, whereas other depictions involve a bit more discernment.
I do think this is a good text if you are interested in Ancient Rome and/or Religio Romana. I do want to preference that this particular collection of poems does have dark themes and it is read very bluntly in the text. It doesn't shy away from the topics (similar to most ancient Rome or Greek texts) so please read the trigger warnings. If any of the topics are too much, but you are interested in learning, OVID does have other works which have limited the amount of triggering scenes.
There were a lot of stories in here in which I already knew due to ancient Rome and Greece overlaping in some areas of their mythology (BUT IN SAYING THAT, THEIE DIETIES ARE DIFFERENT, SAME WITH THEIR HEREOS AND MONSTERS AND BLENDING THEM IS ERACING A CULTURE AND RELIGION) but it was interesting in seeing how similar and different the stories are. Which attributes of the stories are highlighted and what ancient Rome prioritised in teaching through their mythology.
The stories at time felt like a dry translation and that I needed to force my through them. However, others were translated with rhythm and flowed nicely. Those poems I personally had the most annotations on as the flow made it easier to grasp.
A lot of the stories with deities in had a similar overaching lesson about respect and humbling yourself. Although there are a few outliers as well which unless you don't know the culture then (or use that for perspective) you may get frustrated and annoyed with the mythology. These are normally when female deities take their anger out on mortals due to the action of male deities. It is important to note, that mythology is mythology and is shaped on their culture and their values. And although mythology can teach you about deities, the deities are not their mythology.
Something I love about this collection of poetry is what they placed under the umbrella of 'metamorphosis'. Metamorphosis is the change if physical form, this has been done in a variety of ways. Some are obvious in depiction, whereas other depictions involve a bit more discernment.
I do think this is a good text if you are interested in Ancient Rome and/or Religio Romana. I do want to preference that this particular collection of poems does have dark themes and it is read very bluntly in the text. It doesn't shy away from the topics (similar to most ancient Rome or Greek texts) so please read the trigger warnings. If any of the topics are too much, but you are interested in learning, OVID does have other works which have limited the amount of triggering scenes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
Moderate: Death
Although I can't say much on the translation - I have only read this one.
This remains as what I think is the best piece of literature history has ever produced.
This remains as what I think is the best piece of literature history has ever produced.
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix