Roger’s Comments (group member since Aug 29, 2018)

Roger’s comments from the Ovid's Metamorphoses and Further Metamorphoses group.

Kalliope, you got me looking at other illustrations of the Creation myth. Here are four more, the first three specifically from Ovid, the fourth general. R


Hendrik Goltzius, plate 1 from 1589 Dutch edition. A very paternal Creator figure and a couple of Renaissance putti, so clearly influenced by Christian painting. But I am impressed nonetheless by his success in depicting the emergence of form from chaos.


Antonio Tempesta, 17th century. This seems to refer to line 100 or thereabouts, which describes the creation of the plants and animals. It is a rather charming link to 17th-century landscape painting in general, and depictions of Eden in particular. I sense more Genesis here than Ovid.


Opening page of the Garth/Dryden translation, 1717. Whoa, what a mishmash! The artist (do we know who?) seems to have combined moments from the entire sequence, including the construction of quite elaborate buildings. He needed a whole wall to paint on, not a book page!


Ivan Aivazovsky, Creation of the World, 1864. Although Aivazovsky painted a number of sacred works, this interests me for its lack of religious specificity; it could as well be Ovid as Genesis. The artist apparently specialized in seascapes.

How lovely, Kalliope! I know the inside of the triptych well enough, of course, but if I have looked at the outside, it was only to forget it immediately. We should add some other creations to the gallery. R.

Totally tangential, but may I recommend David Malouf's wonderful novel about Ovid in exile, An Imaginary Life ? My review of it is here. R.

We have a few hours before the discussion officially starts in Europe (it is early evening here), and already there is a lot to think about. I was thinking of making the Genesis parallel my own first post, but will confine myself to two commentlets:

• Are the Latin and Hebrew sources the only two with similar Creation myths? I assume the Roman one was developed out of something Greek. But what about similar myths in non-Western cultures?

• It is a very timely reminder that translators are affected by the literature they themselves have read, and can assume their readers also have ringing in their ears. Is there any way of doing a cross-check on that? Has the Met been translated into any non-Western language, Arabic for instance, and what are the cultural resonances there? R.

Personal update: I looked in my local Barnes & Noble last week to see what translations they had. There were three:

• The David Raeburn one from Penguin Classics. They had it in a rather nice hard-bound edition, rather similar to the World's Classics format, and nice to hold. But for some reason, at least one line in two exceeds the page width and so is wrapped around. So far as I can see, this is a problem with the paperback edition too. Roman Clodia recommends this to her students, and I can see looking into it for accuracy, but the jerky effect on the eye makes it totally unacceptable as a first source for me.

• The 1916 prose translation by Frank Justus Miller reprinted (with notes and additional materials) in the Barnes & Noble Classics. Although I had assumed I would only read verse translations, I found that this read so smoothly, and that its slightly archaic language conveyed so much of the sense of poetry without the actual prosody, that I bought it. I suspect it will be my go-to version for getting quickly into the stories before going back to look at them in some other form.

• The verse translation by Charles Martin published by Norton. Although I have not read much into this yet, I like both the feel of the book and the flow of the verse. I bought it, and will probably refer to it for close study.

Just the other day, I read an article in the New Yorker that quoted a longish passage from the Rolfe Humphries verse translation, which impressed me quite a lot. It is available on Kindle for a reasonable price in the new annotated edition, so I downloaded it. The only problem (and you already know how annoyed I can get by such things) is that there are so many annotations that the text is dotted with asterisks.

I once had a lot of Latin crammed into me, and can still return to Ovid's original for reference, though not for a first reading. But I have become very fond of the 17th-century language of the Garth/Dryden compilation, which is available online without charge.

Roger.

Dear All,

Although I am a founding member and co-moderator of this group, I have been out of things for the past month, although some of my activity (on a series of art-history lectures) has been tangentially connected to Ovid in ways that continue to surprise me by their ubiquity. I am thrilled so see so many people sharing our interest, and the range of backgrounds you come from. Welcome all!

Talking of tangents and ubiquity, I think that when the three of us envisioned this group (Kalliope as the prime mover, but triggered by reviews and comments from Roman Clodia and myself), it was the Protean quality of the myths that most attracted us: the fact that they have inspired so much, been subject to so many changes, been expressed in so many media, been translated in so many ways—and remain relevant in surprising ways even today. So yes, tangents are welcome. I imagine we will all know if we get too far afield, but it would be wrong to let the fear of digression get in the way of discovery. Roger.

There was a very interesting article in the NEW YORKER recently about the myth of Arethusa from Book V. The author, Jia Tolentino, develops it into an interesting essay on the classical idea of the "heroic rape" — and of course the anathema of that idea to our modern age. I'm putting the link in here for reference when we get to it. Roger.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cul...

My copy of After Ovid arrived this evening by Amazon Prime. I've only glanced through it as yet, but wow! Four poems that Ted Hughes would later include in his book. Two by Seamus Heaney. Others by such names as Alice Fulton, JD McClatchy, Paul Muldoon, Robert Pinsky, and Charles Simic. Some straightish translations, some extended all-angles treatments, some tight little stanzas, some free verse, some knotty and experimental. All new. All written in response to the request by Michael Hoffmann and James Lasdun—who have some magnificent contributions themselves. But it is more than honoring the request of two younger colleagues; the energy and invention here is testament to the continuing power of Ovid to inspire two thousand years later. R.

Kalliope's unearthing of the previous GR thread about translations gives us a number of possible names to whom we might reach out.

I also see that, on Amazon, no matter what translation you look up, it still lists 199 reviews—which is quite ridiculous, as it is the translation one wants to know about, not the work itself! However, it would not take long to look through these reviews and note the ones with any substance. They might give us a few people we would want to hear from… although I am not sure how to get from an Amazon review to a Goodreads invitation! R.

Update. I have now added all the translations listed on the link that Kalliope sent. Many of them are out of print, though still available through Amazon. There are several among them that seem quite interesting, however. R.

Thank you both. I added the Loeb and corrected the Raeburn/Feeney. I also added the translation by Simpson.

I put a link to the other GR thread up in my original post, so as to keep the information in one place. It is an interesting discussion, with samples from more versions even than I have listed here, but I have not (yet) added them. Incidentally, there are some people here that we may want to invite to join our own group.

I looked at the review of the French translation by Marie Cosnay, but have not added it. If we get a few more participants with other languages, we might well be glad to know about translations other than in English. But I suspect it will be a huge subject, too big to go into systematically at this stage. R.

A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

I have begun compiling a rough checklist of the various Metamorphoses translations, old and new, available either online or in the Amazon catalog. I am no bibliographer, so these are not proper MLA citations, though anyone is welcome to correct them. The dates, similarly, are the earliest I can easily find, but as this is a work that seems to invite reprints of reprints, there may well be older versions in many cases. Bound books are identified by the publisher of the edition listed on Amazon.

Unless otherwise stated (e.g. Miller, Kline, Simpson, and Moore), all these are in verse of one kind or another. My comments on some of these versions are based on a brief glance only. However, discussion of the merits of various translations is one of the stated goals of the group.

For those who get interested in older editions, there appear to be comprehensive online resources available through the University of Virginia: http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/

As noted below, there is also an older thread on Goodreads that compares translations, giving samples of these and more: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Additions and corrections are very welcome! R.


LATIN OR BILINGUAL TEXTS

8 CE
P. Ovidius Naso
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid.html
— the Latin original

8 CE / 1915
Miller, Frank Justus
Loeb Edition (two volumes)
— bilingual edition with literal prose translation on facing pages


TRANSLATIONS AVAILABLE ONLINE

1567
Golding, Arthur
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Metamo...
— the translation read by Shakespeare

1626
Sandys, George
http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/sandys/1...
— includes engravings to accompany each book

1717
Garth, Samuel ed.
http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.html
— compilation by Dryden, Pope, Congreve, and others

2000
Kline, A. S.
http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Me...
— modern prose translation


TRANSLATIONS AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON

1567
Golding, Arthur
Paul Dry Books
— reprint of 1965 version of the classic

1893
Riley, Henry T.
Enhanced Media

1954
Watts, A. E.
University of California Press (out of print)
— deluxe volume with etchings by Picasso

1955
Humphries, Rolfe
Indiana University Press
— new annotated edition, 2018

1955
Innes, Mary M.
Penguin Classics (older edition, now out of print)
— a prose translation

1958
Gregory, Horace
Signet Classics (out of print)

1986
Melville, A. D.
Oxford Word's Classics

1989
Boer, Charles
Johns Hopkins
— verse translation in rhyming heptameters

1993
Mandelbaum, Allen
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

1994
Slavitt, David R.
Johns Hopkins
— long lines of almost proselike verse, witty and fairly free in tone

2000
Kline, A. S.
Poetry in Translation
— as above, with Hendrik Goltzius engravings

2004
Ambrose, Z. Philip
Focus Classical Library
— illustrated by various period engravings and woodcuts

2001
Simpson, Michael
University of Massachussetts
— modern prose translation

2004
Raeburn, David
Penguin Classics

2009
Martin, Charles
W. W. Norton

2010
Lombardo, Stanley
Hackett Classics

2017
Moore, Brookes
Lazy Raven Publishing (Kindle)
— prose translation


ADAPTATIONS AVAILABLE THROUGH AMAZON

1994
Hoffmann and Lasdun, eds.
After Ovid
Farrar, Strauss, Giroux
— new poetry inspired by Ovid, by Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Alice Fulton, Paul Muldoon, Robert Pinsky, Charles Simic, and many others

1997
Hughes, Ted
Tales from Ovid
Farrar, Strauss, Giroux
— free versions of 24 selected tales

And then, also in the Borghese gallery, the other Bernini two-person sculpture, The Rape of Proserpina. In this case there is no immediate metamorphosis (though Ovid includes the story), but the way Bernini, like another Pgymalion, turns marble into what you would swear is yielding flesh is a miraculous transformation all on its own!

Thanks, Roman Clodia; it's a lovely statue. Even better when you can see it close up, with her hair and hands turning to leaves, and the bark inching up her thighs like tight-fitting denim:

I mentioned that I was offering a course on Ovid, which may or may not be taken up by the powers that be. The above is my sampler page from my catalogue of courses, posted at: http://www.brunyate.com/oshergeneral/...

Here is the text at normal size:

"The five paintings shown here (Actaeon, Andromeda, Venus and Adonis, Danaë, and Europa) are among those painted by Titian for Philip II of Spain, based on myths told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (8 CE). They are but one example of the hold Ovid had on the imagination of poets, artists, and opera composers in the renaissance and baroque—one that continues to this day, for instance in adaptations by the poet Ted Hughes (from whom we borrow our title) and director Mary Zimmerman. In this six-week course, we shall look at Ovid himself in the crux between the death of the old world and the birth of the new—and, by following selected stories, we shall look at the many different ways his work has been translated and adapted from the renaissance to the present.

Roger Brunyate first studied Ovid in Latin at school, and has retained an interest through his degrees in literature and art history, and in his long career as a director of opera."

This, of course, is a kind of dress rehearsal for what I personally would hope to contribute, and learn more about, in this discussion group. R.

PURPOSE. By this, I mean the personal reasons why the three of us agreed to start the group, together with the reasons why other people eventually join. I suspect there will be slight differences in each case, which is fine. I may be especially interested, for example, in Ovid's influence on the renaissance and baroque, but that does not mean I can't benefit by learning more about the poet in his own time.

As I said earlier, I was made to read at least a few books of the Metamorphoses in school. I remember enjoying them (though I also enjoyed his Tristia, which is very different). So one of my personal purposes is nostalgic: to revisit that old experience and seeing it in the fuller context, both of the complete work in its time, and in terms of my own increased knowledge.

However, my main interest as a former opera director, art historian, and writer, is to see how Ovid inspired later generations, especially in the 15th through 17th centuries.

• As an opera director, I have staged Cavalli's Calisto three times and Charpentier's Actaeon twice. There are also many operatic settings of the Orpheus legend, and at least one each of Semele and Venus and Adonis. Richard Strauss added a Daphne and Danae.

• The chief renaissance painter who was inspired by Ovid is of course Titian, who painted six paintings after Ovid for Philip II: Danae, Venus and Adonis, Perseus and Andromeda, Europa, Callisto, and Actaeon. But there are many, many other interpretations by Rubens, Poussin, and others.

• However violently they force Ovid into the Procrustean bed of another style, I must say I get a special kick out of the older translations, such as the 1567 one by Arthur Golding and the 1717 compilation by Samuel Garth, including contributions by Dryden and others. I would also be interested to see the collection After Ovid: New Metamorphoses put together by Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun in 1994, in emulation of the Garth collection.

All of which goes to show that I am less of a purist, perhaps, than others. My main interest is less Ovid himself than the children born of his seed from the wombs of numerous other poets, artists, and musicians throughout the centuries. R.

SPEED. Your proposal of one book a week seems wildly over-ambitious, Clodia. I was thinking more in terms of spreading it over an entire year! But I doubt we can be that fixed in our plans. There are some books like the first that contain so much they will take weeks to unpack. I'm pretty sure that there will be others that, though they contain new material, will lead us back merely into new instances of ideas we have already explored.

I therefore urge flexibility, and that we let ourselves be guided by the responses of others. R.

TEXT. I agree that it is a very good idea to keep a folder/thread dedicated to translations, and the various criteria on which they might be judged: completeness and fidelity being an obvious two. However, Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid is neither complete nor faithful, and yet it is quite marvelous. I can foresee that there will be two threads to our study: what Ovid wrote, and what others have made of him. Right now, I am more interested in the latter.

All the same, if we don't keep "what Ovid wrote" as a basis somewhere, we will just flounder around. Which means, at some level, the Latin original. My own Latin reached its peak 65 years ago (yes, when I was 13 and actually reading Ovid). I couldn't read him from scratch now, but I still know enough Latin to be able to use the text as a reference when I know what I'm looking for.

So I think one of our first goals might be to find a modern translation that it faithful enough to serve as a stand-in for the Latin. I shall probably continue to enjoy dotting around among different translations, however.

And sometime, Clodia, I would like you to demonstrate what you mean by Ovid's wit, that you have mentioned several times as being a feature of his Latin style. R.

HISTORY. Just for archival purposes, a note on how this all came about. I wrote a review of The Overstory by Richard Powers, a modern novel that nonetheless has several references to Ovid. I included two Ovid snippets in my review.

At this point, I recalled that I had Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid on my shelves unread. I read this also, and my review sparked a whole trail of comments, from Kalliope, who is very much into the legacy of Ovid in the visual arts, and from Roman Clodia, whose professional field, I believe, overlaps with the reception of classic authors in the Renaissance. The whole thread is worth reading, actually, but too long to reproduce here. R.