Metamorphoses
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Metamorphoses
Ovid
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 12, 2018
Ovid is the most magical of the Latin poets; his Metamorphoses is a pagan holy book in which Jove and his fellow divinities consort with natural elements to inspire, confuse, and intoxicate human beings with the ever-changing forms of spirit. Echo and Narcissus, Pentheus and Bacchus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Perseus, Tiresias, Jason and Medea, Pygmalion, Adonis, Midas, to say nothing of the familiar gods and goddesses—no book has a grander cast than this fabulous poem, which marks humankind’s long graduation from myth to history. A great many of the tales Ovid relates are enchanting, and many have served as inspiration for artists from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Benjamin Britten and Jean Cocteau. Others are disconcerting in their sexual assumptions; love conquers all in Ovid, even the gods, and its conquests are often violent. Still, to read the Metamorphoses, even at random, is to enter an enduring landscape fed by waters of tragedy and comedy that, for all the poet’s fertile invention, seem drawn from the deepest, most unfathomable wells of human experience.
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Eli
Jan 29, 2024
Must read!
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