Product Description

"A version that has been long awaited, and likely to become the new standard."—Washington Post

Ovid's epic poem—whose theme of change has resonated throughout the ages—is one of the most important texts of Western imagination, an inspiration from Dante's times to the present day, when writers such as Salman Rushdie and Italo Calvino have found a living source in Ovid's work. Charles Martin combines a close fidelity to Ovid's text with verse that catches the speed and liveliness of the original. Martin's Metamorphoses will be the translation of choice for contemporary readers in English. This volume also includes endnotes and a glossary of people, places, and personifications.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67928 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780393326420
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
A reader who wants to understand Ovid's poem as a whole...will find Mr. Martin's clarity and tact invaluable. -- New York Sun

Martin's complete text is clearly something to look forward to with high expectations. -- Bernard Knox, New York Review of Books

Smoothly readable, accurate, charming, subtle yet clear....A lucidly fluent version of this most flowing of poems. -- Richard Wilbur

About the Author
Charles Martin's Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, as were two previous volumes of poetry. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

A great classic and great translation
Ovid, or Publius Ovidius Naso, justly deserves his acclaim as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature alongside Horace and Virgil. And he knows it and doesn't bother to hide it, as he appends this bit of encomium to himself at the very end:

My work is finished now: no wrath of Jove
nor sword nor fire nor futurity
is capable of laying waste to it.
...
wherever Roman governance extends
over the subject nations of the world,
my words will be upon the people's lips
and if there is truth in poets' prophesies [sic, Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus, as the Romans would say]
then in my fame forever I will live.

So he is the worst kind of genius: a genius who knows he is a genius. Witty, elegant, and lively, his Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of epic poetry that tells of the myriad odd transformations that mythical (and sometimes historical) figures from Orpheus and Icarus to Romulus and Julius Caesar go through. Throughout, he is delightfully and cuttingly mocking of pretty much the entire epic tradition and every great poet that came before him, including no less authors than Virgil and Homer themselves. In at least three elaborate scenes, he makes so much fun of epic battles and they are hilariously and eerily reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino's comical massacre scene in his Kill Bill Vol. 1. Hell, Ovid can be tragic, comic, moving, and sarcastic/satirical all at the same time without lacking in elegance. The poem, 15 books of 1,000 lines per book, so seamlessly integrates story after story of wildly differing genres and plots and lengths that it feels like you're reading a single monomyth without getting bored or overwhelmed. In fact, befitting its title, the stories are constantly changing and sprouting out - each little story feeding into the next and each book spilling into the next without pauses - always keeping the reader on his toe and more often than not leaving the reader breathless and reeling.

Charles Martin did a superb job translating the work. He uses free verse in rendering Latin dactylic hexameter into iambic-friendly English, and it is really good. It's lively, swift, and above all, elegant - or in other words, as Ovid ought to be. Except in the scene where the Muses battle it out with the Pierides, a.k.a. P-Airides whose verse is rendered in modern rap, the translation had everything right and good (though even the surreal rap battle scene was not so bad - just weird). If you're looking to read Ovid, buy this edition. It apparently doesn't add anything new to the original (as many editions do, rather profusely and liberally and thus preposterously), faithful to the original, and very reader-friendly. In my opinion, it belongs to the best translations of the classics.

Outstanding Translation of Ovids masterpiece
Ovids Metamorphoses was Leonardo Da Vinci favorite piece of literature with this well written translation I have become a lover of his work. This edition is both well documented with footnotes and endnotes that are clear and concise. The books print is also easy to read. Metamorphoses is collection of short stories some with morales and many with just plain ideas on conduct with in society. Ovid is a master story teller with beautiful fluidity of prose and ideas. His imagery is so colorful that the characters truly come to life on the page before us. This is the third translation I have read and this is by far the best version it is well worth the invest because to introduce your children to this epic with this translation will be magic to their imaginations. Good reading.

My Workshop Participants Love this Translation!
I teach mythology and literature in translation. In my mythology section I had my students read a version of Ovid available online. They found the experience painful and dull, even though they were somewhat familiar with the story line. So, when I assigned a translation for my workshop on Ovid, I chose this one on the strength of various reviews. Its a real pleasure to have a group of students become ecstatic about a piece of ancient literature! The Lukeion Project will now being using this translation as required reading.