Customer Reviews

The Metamorphoses of Ovid

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Slavitt's free translation of Ovid is generally very true to the tone of the original, & only sometimes slightly awkward. Slavitt's understanding of Ovid & of translation is great. The Ovid he presents modern English-speaking readers with is much more human & easily flowing than the Ovid of many other translators. Ovid's Metamorphoses is one of the greatest classics of western literature, Ovid one of the most significant writers of our thousands of years of literature, & Slavitt does the man, the book, & readers a good service with this translation.

I can see why, if you are a Latin scholar, or very serious about Ovid, you might be put off by this free translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Slavitt writes, in the middle of Book Seven, that "any sensible poet would lay (the background story) out somehow", and that Ovid has written "footnotes without a text, a quiz, or a gazetteer of distractions, its only sense in what it refuses to say." Useful, interesting opinions, of the sort typically encountered while reading an author's note. But these comments (and others like them) are inserted directly into the text. So yes, I could see how purists would not like that. Although, I have to admit that I loved it. The tone was very conversational, making the translation easy to understand. And now I feel like I have a good grasp of many of the Greek/Roman myths. In my opinion, this is a very approachable translation of one of those books you've always meant to read.

So many translations suffer one of two fates: either the translator has a wonderful grasp of the foreign language in question but is not a very talented poet in his own, or he is a wonderful poet but a terrible linguist. David R. Slavitt is both an extremely prolific and talented poet, novelist, and essayist in his own native English, and an excellent linguist. This translation of a classic that is so often translated may seem unnecessary. Why have one more translation of Ovid's "Metmorphoses"? Read this version and you'll see why.

Whenever you see David Slavitt's name on a translation, look elsewhere. He's a third-rate poet who has made a career of destroying the great works of other poets. This translation is a good example of that. At various points he goes off on tangents, commenting--shallowly, I might add--on the contents of the poem he is supposed to be translating. You read things such as "What is Ovid doing here with this boring passage?" But it won't be a footnote, it will be inserted into the body of the poem. For this one, read Mandelbaum's translation. Stay away from Slavitt.

Slavitt's translation is very free and very accessible. Smooth easy read for the high schoolers with which I am working. Book was in great condition.

This offers a very concise translation of greco-roman myths. The stories are all there, as is the overall mood of the pieces.

This is good introduction to the Classics.

As a general reader, I neither wanted nor needed a slavishly accurate translation of the original Latin text. What I wanted was a captivating, enthralling, rollicking version of Ovid's poem that would be enjoyable enough to keep me reading through to the end. Slavitt's version delivered, and then some! It passed my "Will this be a fun read?" test: I opened four different translations of "Metamorphoses" to the same point, read a few lines, and asked myself, "Which of these would I want to read for 300 or more pages? Which version is most full of magic and humor and enchantment? Which is the least stodgy, leaden, and plodding?" The winner was Slavitt (Humphries came in a distant second). I repeated the test three or four more times, and my answer was always the same: the Slavitt version is the liveliest, funniest, and least pedantic.

If you are interested in Slavitt, read this translation. If you are interested in Ovid, do not.