Elle (ellexamines)'s Reviews > Metamorphoses

There's honestly something deeply fascinating to me about reading the words of someone who lived 2000 years ago, who wrote these exact words 2000 years ago, and though I completely understand why reading translation is done - I think reading translated lit is amazing - it is undoubtedly more interesting to read this word-by-word, to see connotations and derivatives and line breaks and literary devices.

So yes, I read this in the original Latin! With the help of a lot of vocabulary lists because I don’t speak Latin as fluently as I would like to. (Shouldn’t passing an AP exam make you fluent? Anyway.)

Ovid’s language is... so good. Some story reviews follow:
Deucalion & Pyrrha, 1.348-415
This is the story of an apocalypse, or in this case, a failed apocalypse. This is the story of a world empty “inanem” and of two lovers at its fall, attempting to bring it back. The language of this is so sweepingly gorgeous; the image of Deucalion and Pyrrha in front of the Themis’ watered-down altar is deeply satisfying. Very Adam-and-Eve and very satisfying.

Daphne & Apollo, 1.452-657
Daphne and Apollo is a story that would be cool to see done by like, Catullus. (Poem 64 the only bitch in this house I respect!!) In general conceit, it is about a woman who does not want to get married being chased down by a man who just really wants to have sex with her until she turns herself into a tree. And there’s definitely an air of blaming her for beauty here: the line “but that beauty forbids you to be that which you wish, and your form [beauty] opposes your desire” is fucked up and sad, as well as the ending “destroy by changing my beauty by which I please too much”. The best thing that can be said about this is that the line “let your bow strike everything, oh Phoebus, but let my bow strike you” is so satisfying.

Jupiter & Io, 1.583-746
I absolutely hate this story. This is the one where I decided that he needs to avoid the women-being-chased and-maybe-raped but-I-will-mention-this-with-exactly-one-word thing (“rapuit”). In a situation even more egregious than that of Daphne and Apollo, she is given no character development whatsoever and the general story just angers me, up until around line 630, where she attempts to talk to her father Inachus: “She came to the riverbanks, where she was accustomed to play often, and when she saw in the water, her new horns, she grew frightened and fled having been terrified of herself” — the repetition of the riverbanks here is especially arresting.

I did find this line sort of satisfying:
“...It is cruel to surrender his love, but suspicious not to give; it is shame, what would urge him from that, Amor dissuades this. Shame would would have been conquered by Love, but if this trivial gift were refused to the companion of his race and bed as a heifer, it would be able to appear to be no heifer.” (617-621)

The Ride of Phaethon, 2.150-339
This one is wonderful. I really enjoyed the figurative language and dramatic, ironic setup of this story: the horses hit the doors with their feet (155) and then snatch the path (158). The chariot being shaken on high (166) is a great detail, and the journey into the rapidly-heating constellations is just incredible (and not just incredibly hard to translate). Lots of apostrophe and several rhetorical questions build this into a gorgeous story.

I absolutely adored this set of lines:
“I am bemoaning the lesser things: great cities destruct with their walls, / and with their peoples the fires [whole nations] / turn into ashes; and the forests along with the mountains burn” (214-216)

This section was so good that I forgave it for meaning I had to learn almost 200 lines of translation in a month for a test. Me & my 96 on the test say hi!!

Pyramus & Thisbe, 4.55-166
“Pyramus and Thisbe, the one the most handsome of youths, the other outstanding… that which they were not able to deny, equally they both burned with their minds captured.”
Ah, Pyramus and Thisbe, the original tragic lovers. The only context I have seen this story appear in previously is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a version that is deeply comedic. But this story is, despite some stupidity in plot, so well written. “This flaw had been noted by no one through the long years… but what does love not detect?” Ovid asks; this love affair seems almost inevitable, deeply wrapped around fate and tragedy. “How difficult would it be, that you could allow us to be joined with whole bodies, or, if this is too-much, that you should open this wall for kisses to be given?” Of course, this story ends badly. And it is Pyramus’ fault. Thisbe is a bitch with common sense and did nothing wrong.

The Fall of Icarus, 8.152-235
“The shame of the family had grown, and was exposing / the disgusting adultery of his mother by the novelty of the two-formed monster...”
THE FALL OF ICARUS!! Okay this has always been one of my favorite stories of all time, and reading it in Ovid’s original Latin was such a cool experience. This story is framed by a description and depiction of the tragedy of the minotaur and the abandonment of poor Ariadne (#Catulluspoem64). I loved Daedalus' intro for his plan: “it is permitted that he block the land and sea / but certainly the sky lies open; we will go that way...” And the fall of Icarus is equally emotional, beautifully conveyed through the image of a herder and fisherman watching him, up to its ending: “and his lips, shouting out the name of his father / are taken up by the blue water, water which has taken up its name from him.”

Anyway, I hope y’all appreciated my original Latin translation skills pouring into this review. I SPEND A LOT OF TIME THINKING ABOUT LATIN AND I'M HONESTLY SO PROUD TO BE SHARING IT.

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