The Perfect Translation for Audio

Like most 50-something professional types who went to college before computers, I first encountered Ovid’s masterpiece in a paperback edition of Rolfe Humphries’ free verse translation (1955). Admittedly, I never finished it (even without the Internet, I had a short attention span) but much later I tackled Arthur Golding’s much earlier (1567) metrical, rhymed rendition. Golding’s use of a 14 beat / 7 stress line degenerates too easily into the singsong of ballad meter but was saved (for me) by the delightful invention of his language and the continuity of rhyme.

My callow youth aside, I suspect the lack of rhyme and regular meter to be at the heart of my lack of interest in Humphries’ translation. When reading I need the handholds of form, especially with extended poetic ventures.

Listening, however, is a completely different experience. Intricate poetic invention, the completely unexpected (but absolutely perfect) word or phrase, the inverted syntax that adds grandeur or emphasis, is easier to take in with the eye. What the ear needs is a coherent story that skims along. Ian Johnston’s translation does just that; it is straightforward and unadorned. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying it’s simple-minded. After all, this is Ovid’s Metamorphoses. There is enough invention here even without conscious poetic craft to dazzle the imagination.

One example will suffice. As in every printed version I’m familiar with, this epic of transformations is itself one continuous transformation. You’re listening to one story and then realize with a start that you’re in the middle of the next one. By the slightest of slight-of-hand, Ovid has used one character or location or detail in the first tale to segue into the next. Like the stones rising into men and women or Arachne’s shrinking into a spider, the poem is in a constant state of flux. It is a technique that, irony of ironies, gives the work its permanence and coherence.

David Horovitch’s performance is simply superb. His pacing is as easy on the ear as Johnston’s translation. His voice is a treat to listen to. And he understands the shape of sentences and ideas, presenting them with just the right edge of humor, horror or wonder.

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Fantastic!

I put off reading Ovid for far too long; this outstanding audio version from Naxos finally pulled me in. Metamorphoses is a wide-ranging account of Greek mythology, focusing on changes. Sometimes the changes are simple changes in fortune, "from good fortune to bad," as Aristotle put it, but often they are changes in physical form: a rape victim is transformed into a bird, a self-obsessed youth is transformed into a flower. Jason and Medea are here; so are Achilles, Ulysses, Aeneas, and many of the Roman gods. The versions of myths given here underlie many of the references in Shakespeare and Dante. Listening to this audiobook is like finally getting past the footnotes to a rich primary source.

It doesn't hurt that David Horovitz's voice is wonderful - almost a physical pleasure to listen to. The translation is by Ian Johnston, who has provided, both online and through Naxos, wonderful versions of Homer.

Ovid's poem is famous for the subtle transitions from one story to the next. They are, at times, almost imperceptible; you start out listening to a story about Orpheus and Eurydice and suddenly realize Orpheus is now telling a story about Venus and Adonis. (And maybe within that story, Venus in turn tells a story about Atalanta.) It sounds more confusing than it is, but you do have to pay careful attention. I recommend keeping a table of contents handy. The PDF that comes with the audiobook provides a useful track listing, and there are other outlines of the structure available on the Internet.

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“Oh, Venus, how powerful is your hold over us!”

From the creation of Earth out of Chaos to the fall of Troy and beyond, in Metamorphoses (AD 8) Ovid retells the Greek myths, filtering them through his Roman sensibility and unifying them around metamorphosis: "My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of different kinds." Most of the stories feature some such change, punishment or reward, involuntary or voluntary, terrifying or transcendent, permanent or temporary. People, gods, and objects turn into flowers, trees, animals, birds, fish, statues, mountains, and stars, and some humans change gender. Ovid includes all the famous myths that have inspired countless paintings, statues, and stories, as well as many less well-known ones and some more "recent" legendary histories featuring things like the founding of Rome.

Even though we usually know what will happen in the stories, either because we've read them before or because Ovid foreshadows some doom, his book is still absorbing because of his psychological insights, smooth transitions from one myth to the next, nesting of stories one inside the other, sudden shifts to present tense or to second person (e.g., "They wept for you, Orpheus"), humor, irony, and sympathy. And Ovid regularly surprises with some extra touch, as when, after concluding the story of Narcissus with the youth wasting away and entering "the houses of the dead," he says that Narcissus is still trying to find his reflection in the "waters of the Styx."

A common cause or theme of the changes is love or its opposite, especially when transgressive: "By gods above, how much hidden darkness/ the human heart contains!" If some god isn't lusting after some maiden, a daughter is falling in love with her father, a sister with her brother, a brother-in-law with his sister-in-law, or a princess with the enemy of her people. Among the many illicit loves appear a few cases of conjugal loyalty and affection. Ovid also depicts much hate-fueled violence: patricide, homicide, infanticide, fratricide--and is there a word for the murder of an uncle? Almost as often as he depicts detailed metamorphoses, he shows graphic violence, as when during a wedding feast melee a disemboweled centaur entangles his feet in his entrails and runs them unspooling completely out of his body. There is cannibalism. And there is plenty of rape; at one point a girl ravished by Neptune asks to be turned into a man so that she may never be ravished again.

Indeed, many of the myths reveal a bias towards men, as when female-female love is depicted as more abnormal than female-bull love while post-Eurydice Orpheus' preference for boys is taken in stride. Nevertheless, Ovid writes many strong female characters, and his most compelling monologues are those of conflicted women.

In addition to love and violence, Ovid is interested in things like self-destructive pride (e.g., the fate of Niobe mother of fourteen children), heroic ego (e.g., the debate between Ajax and Ulysses over Achilles' armor), and vegetarianism (e.g., the diatribe against our bloody consumption of other living creatures). He also tosses off pithy lines about life, like "No pleasure ever lasts." It all returns to change: whether fantastically as in the myths or naturally as in Pythagoras' "scientific" account of the world, from earth to water or air to fire, from life to death and death to life, everything changes from one form to another.

At times I experienced metamorphosis fatigue (aNOTHer tree?), but mostly his book is a joy, largely due to its wonderful writing. Ovid writes wonderful epic similes, as when Apollo gives

a cry of grief and pain
just like a young cow makes when she beholds
the slaughterer raise his murderous axe
to his right ear and, with a splintering sound,
smash in the temples of her suckling calf.

He offers memorable cameos to personifications of things like Sleep, Hunger, and, here, Envy: "Wherever she goes, she tramples down fields full of flowers, burns the grass, plucks the tops of growing plants, and with her breath pollutes cities and homes, entire communities."

And in Ian Johnston's lively, readable translation, Ovid's rich descriptions and vivid imagination are transporting, like his vision of a post-flood world in which survivors sail boats over the roofs of sunken villas and dolphins race through submerged woods, or his depiction of Medea's magical concoction, including hoarfrost scraped up by moonlight and "the cut up entrails of the ambiguous werewolf," or his beautiful, terrible account of Daphne changing into a tree:

Scarcely had she made this plea, when she feels
A heavy numbness move across her limbs,
her soft breasts are enclosed by slender bark,
her hair is changed to leaves, her arms to branches,
her feet, so swift a moment before, stick fast
in sluggish roots, a covering of foliage
spreads across her face. All that remains of her
is her shining beauty.
Phoebus loved her
in this form as well. He set his right hand
on her trunk and felt her heart still trembling
under the new bark and with his own arms
hugged the branches as if they were her limbs.
He kissed the wood, but it shrank back from his kiss.
The god spoke:
"Since you cannot be my wife,
you shall surely be my tree."

David Horovitch reads the audiobook marvelously. For pastoral scenes his voice wafts pollen, for spiteful ones it drips poison, for sensual ones it caresses flesh, for brutal ones it gouges eyeballs, and for fantastic ones it stirs wonder. He doesn't strain for female voices. He doesn't change his voice drastically for different characters, but modulates it to suit different moods (his love-sick Cyclops is splendid!). It is a pleasure to listen to him.

Ovid ended his magnum opus confident it would last: "Here I end my work,/ which neither Jupiter's rage, nor fire, nor sword,/ nor gnawing time can ever wipe away." He was right to say, "Men will celebrate my fame/ for all the ages, and, if there is truth/ in poet's prophecies, I will live on."

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Excellent, Engrossing Narration of Classic Mythology

Before listening, print a list mapping Greek gods to their Roman equivalents to avoid confusion.

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Great reading

There are several readings of this work to choose from on Audible, but this is the best one. Horovitch captures Ovid's tone and mood perfectly.

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really changed me

this book really changed the way I see the transition of greek into roman cultural dominance. just as our spines are known to morph into snakes when we die, this read really evolved my perspective

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For those whom love myths

If you could sum up Metamorphoses in three words, what would they be?

Important, because this is one of the only remaining primary sources of Greco-Roman mythology
Consistent, because it has a constant theme of change through out the work
Propaganda, because the last book is so obviously that. The Roman Empire was changing from a republic to a Pricipate and Augusts used propaganda to cement his newly created position.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Metamorphoses?

Ariadne making Athena look at the crimes the male gods of mount Olympus had committed against innocent mortal women

Have you listened to any of David Horovitch’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but he did a wonderful job

Any additional comments?

This will be a confusing listen for anyone who is not familiar with the many names of the characters (i.e. Apollo, Phoebus), their backgrounds (i.e. The Delian God = born on the island of Delos = Apollo) and their family tree (i.e. Son of Latona, brother of Diana)

I suggest it to people who are willing to use some sort of reference or those who are already familiar with these stories

This is a very easy to understand translation otherwise and I would highly recommend to those who love mythology

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One of the Greatest Works of Western Civilization

This is without a doubt one of the greatest works man has ever produced.

Greek and Roman mortals beset by the gods

In this classic there is no real plot, only a series of stories set in various places and at various times which all depict the transformation of people into other things. They get changed into birds, trees, bodies of water, monsters, stars, people of the opposite sex or hermaphrodites. The reason for the transformation may be a curse from a god or a sorceror, or a god rescuing someone from a desperate situation, a punishment for some misdeed, the result of a prophecy, honoring some noble deed, excessive grief or other emotion, or simply accidental bad luck. Many are nymphs or human girls lusted after by male gods, only rarely the result of a woman's desire. A few of the characters who aren't gods appear in more than one tale such as Hercules, not as the person being transformed, many of them only in a single story because the transformation they suffer is final. I think most of the stories come from Greece, but the last chapter concentrates on specifically Latin myths, which were less familiar to me and thus more interesting.

Besides the transformation motif, there are other recurring elements to help with the storytelling. People keep secrets from their spouses, families, and communities. Some transformations are instantaneous, such as the one caused by a glance at Medusa, while others are gradual enough that the person being transformed just starts to notice it happening, reacts with horror or amazement, and might even give their last words as a human. Mostly mortals are undergoing metamorphosis caused by a god they have no power to do anything about, but there is one goddess, Proserpina, who becomes an underworld goddess when she consumes pomegranate seeds there, and is only partially compensated for the trouble. There isn't any big discussion of the origin of the major gods or their family relations before they became gods, you just have to accept that they are realities in this world with their given traits and attitudes.

With any work of this age there is a lot of cultural adjustment the reader has to make to get into the different plots. When I told my friend that I was reading this, his reaction is that it was terribly "rapey," which isn't inaccurate. There is a fair amount of graphic violence Overall the attitude toward young women whether mortal or semi-divine is that of subjugation, which may elicit pity but almost never lead to action out of indignation. The only exception I can think of was the story of Atalanta, who is able to rise above her role through her devotion to Diana. There are other implicit attitudes toward enslaved people, the elderly, nobility, and barbarians which we might not match today. I was able to make allowances for all these differences, but other people might not want to and would find that they spoil their appreciation for the work.

I listened to an audiobook version of the work translated by Ian Johnston and narrated well by David Horovitch. I think they elevated the text for me and kept what might have been a repetitive set of myths (over two hundred) varied enough to want to keep going. I didn't really try to keep track of all of the different characters and settings but imagine that this would be hard even reading a printed version. It was not a verse setting of Ovid's work, and I like to think that someday I might take a look at the original and try to get a sense of the music of the lines to see what I missed. The narration comes in at over seventeen hours so it's hard to imagine experiencing the whole thing again, but maybe I will dip into one myth or another to refresh my memory.

Surprisingly insightful for a book written in 8A.D

But dont zone out for more than a few second or else all the names, locations, and action will change and you'll have no idea what's happening anymore.