Customer Reviews

Metamorphoses (Penguin Classics ed.)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The five stars are for Ovid. This note discusses the Indiana University Press edition of Rolfe Humphries' translation of the _Metamorphoses_.

Humphries provides a clear, workmanlike translation.

So far as I can tell, of all the editorial reviews and customer reviews currently (9/11/04) displayed on the page for Rolfe Humphries' translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, only the customer review posted by "elemental master" clearly refers to the Humphries translation.

The _editorial_ reviews describe a Cambridge University Press _Latin_ edition containing only Book Thirteen. Humphries' translation includes all fifteen books, of course. Several customer reviews evaluate books containing translations by Dryden, Innes, and Melville. Often, it is not possible to determine which translation a reviewer is considering. The work offered for sale on the page for Rolfe Humphries' translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ contains only Humphries' translation.

In short, shoppers should be aware that the reviews displayed on the page for Rolfe Humphries' translation of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ actually discuss wildly disparate works; most of them have little or nothing to do with the book being offered for sale.

This book is wonderful. The Rolfe Humphries is THE translation. This printing is also very nice. The paper, the type, everything makes it a good book. When you turn the page, it turns nicely and lies flat; how refreshing.

The stories of the Metamorphoses are, of course, wonderful. It's the book itself that I want to talk about.

The beautiful Waterhouse painting on the cover spans the front and part of the back covers. The line numbers at the top of each text page are those of the Latin text in the Loeb edition; how many translators would go to that kind of trouble for you? Rolfe Humphries' introduction is light, funny, and enjoyable. His love of his work shines through. The last line of his intro is, "So - here he is [Ovid], and I hope you like him."

The table of contents is annotated, making it easy to find any major story you are looking for. I also love the designs at the beginning of each book/chapter: such details enhance my enjoyment of reading this edition.

If you have never read Ovid's Metamorphoses, don't be intimidated. It is a collection of mythology stories, and you will find much that is probably familiar to you (Echo and Narcissus, Jason, Pygmalion, and more). If you are at all serious about literature, this is a basic building block in your knowledge. And even if you're not, it's just a damn good book.

The translation itself is so fluent and enjoyable. Just listen to the introduction:

My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods, who made the changes,
Will help me - or so I hope - with a poem
That runs from the world's beginning to our own days.

This is exciting, eloquent stuff! Please do yourself a favor and make sure you read this at some point during your lifetime.

This edition is published by Oxford University Press and is translated from the Latin into English prosody by A. D. Melville, who was "a scholar of King's College, Cambridge [!!], where he gained a double First in Classics...."

To my mind, this is the best of the English translations available at this site. The format is poetic...as it should be, I believe...which means that the reader will have to adjust (change) his usual perceptive modes...go slower... follow the thought from line to line...as if tracking some wondrous mythic figure through a forest of sparkling silvery leaves...and flickering flashes of sunlight... There is an excellent "Introduction" as well as a truly insightful "Translator's Note"...one can tell the quality of the mind which worked on this translation from a quote from the "Introduction": "This it may be suggested is the point of a passage of the *Metamorphoses* that has puzzled some critics and bored others ...the great speech of Pythagoras. What is formally a long digression is accommodated to the argument of the poem with great skill bridging the long interval between Numa and Augustus and achieving a climax on a theme that informs and dominates the whole book: apotheosis, divinization, the supreme change to which human beings can aspire. The speech turns on the premiss[sic] that in all the constantly changing universe one thing remains unchanged, *anima*, the soul [Melville's translation of the lines follows...] our souls/ Are still the same for ever, but adopt/ In their migrations ever-varying forms.../ We too ourselves, who of this world are part,/ Not only flesh and blood, but pilgrim souls.../ (Book XV)

This following quote from the "Translator's Note" shows Melville's acute sensitivity to the poetic and expressive possibilities of both English and Latin: "English has one great advantage over Latin--its vocabulary is so much larger. A translator may often have three or four words where Ovid has only one; and these three or four will all be subtly [see the fine quality of insight and understanding...and care?]different. Conversely he can often express in one apt word [T. S. Eliot would have appreciated that fine understanding...]a meaning for which Ovid needs several. * * * Latin has two great advantages over English--its incomparable sonority [acute sensitivity to language and word sounds, also...]and the freedom of its word-order. While both languages share many of the artifices of literary composition, the music of Latin in the hands of a master is suprreme. In English the order of words in a sentence is fixed within narrow limits, but the variety of position which Latin allows makes possible effects which English often cannot achieve. Nevertheless the translator must be alert to those effects and do his best to reproduce them." [such fine understanding and sensitivity also show up in the poetic translation...]

I have also looked at the Penguin Classics prose translation by Mary M. Innes, and while it is indeed a workmanlike translation, I much prefer Melville's translated poetics. A few lines might show the difference...here is Apollo lamenting over the body of his dead beloved Hyakinthos... first Innes...then Melville: "You are slipping away from me, Hyacinthus, robbed of the flower of your youth," said Phoebus. "Here before my eyes I see the wound that killed you and reproaches me. You are the cause of my grief, as of my guilt, for your death must be ascribed to my hand. I am responsible for killing you. Yet how was I at fault, unless taking part in a game can be called a fault, unless I can be blamed for loving you?" [trans. Mary Innes; Penguin Classics]

"My Hyacinth," Apollo cried, "laid low/ And cheated of youth's prime! I see your wound,/ My condemnation -- you...my grief and guilt!/ I, I have caused your death; on my own hand,/ My own, your doom is written. Yet what wrong/ Is mine, unless to join the game with you/ Were wrong, or I were wrong to love you well?"/ [trans. A.D. Melville; Oxford World Classics]

If you're wondering which translation to buy here's my opinion: get either the A.D. Melville (which has great notes about the text) or the Mendelbaum.

Avoid Horace Gregory like the plague.

Maidens become trees. Young hunks turn into flowers. Men become women; women become invincible warriors. And every time you blink, another poor wretch becomes a bird or turns to stone. In Ovid's Metamorphosis, nothing stays the same for long. A rich compendium of Greco-Roman mythology and history all ingeniously linked together by the theme of transformation, the Metamorphosis is a surprisingly sophisticated, erotic, and gory classic of ancient literature.

Rapes, murders, wars, and all manner of perversion abound. Death is lingered over with almost forensic precision. The slaughter of arrogant Niobe's fourteen children, for example, is recounted in an exhaustive detail that would do any contemporary slasher flick justice, as one by one they're picked off in various grisly ways. This is classical gore--Ovid sounding like the Clive Barker of ancient Rome as in this excerpt from the massacre of the centaurs:

[Exadius] found a weapon, a stag's antlers
Hung on a pine tree...
And Gryneus' eyes were pierced by those twin prongs,
Eyeballs gouged out; one of them stuck to the horn,
The other rolled down his beard till a blood clot caught it.

This is the sort of wonderfully nauseating detail that is repeated countless times in a masterpiece that often reads like the National Enquirer. It's hard not to believe that Ovid, like Shakespeare, was aiming his work for the mass audience of his time, which just goes to show you that the product of one age's pop culture is another's venerated classic. One only has to read Ovid's over-the-top account of the love-sick Cyclops to realize that black comedy ala the B-movies of Herschel Gordon Lewis had already been mastered some two thousand years ago.

There are a bewildering proliferation of translations of Ovid's Metamorphosis to choose from. In selecting Humphries, I chose the text that struck me as the least encumbered by the translator's attempt to distinguish himself from his rivals. Many translators feel the pressing need to do something new, and to `recast' the Metamorphosis into what they consider a facsimile of contemporary poetry. The result is all-too-often a needless accretion of unnecessary words and poetic tropes that do nothing whatsoever to enhance the text, and much towards rendering it more difficult for novelty's sake alone, and to call attention to the translator--two things a translation should avoid at all costs.

Rolf Humphries renders the Metamorphosis into a clear, straightforward English verse whose easy-going casualness facilitates readability and comprehension, as well as reflecting the apparently colloquially style of Ovid's original. And Humphries accomplishes all this without sacrificing any of the poetry--his translation is often quite beautiful, not only in its clarity and apparent simplicity, but in its adept use of language that breathes life back into this ancient work. By stepping back and lending his breath to the ancient poet, Humphries allows Ovid himself to sing again.

One of the truly seminal works of world literature, not to mention an invaluable storehouse of myths and legends, Ovid's Metamorphosis is not only must reading for any lover of great literature, but also a heck of a lot of fun.

As another one of Focus Classical Library's books, this book is a mythology sourcebook for the serious. In this book, the lines are numbered and many engravings are included to illustrate various myths. I personally do not recommend the Oxford and Penguin editions of this book, as they are not as close to the original Latin, and the rhetorical quality is also not as good.

Like other Focus Classical Library books, this edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses is translated very literally, which creates the need for occasional brief footnotes to explain the text. The myths are also very easy to find in this book because of a table of contents before all of the 15 books and also conspicuous headings above every myth.

However, I find reading the translation to be demanding because of wordy sentences and complicated sentence structures. For this reason, I would very highly recommend Allen Mandelbaum's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which has a highly accurate but more readable modern verse translation of the text. However, I find the Focus Classical Library edition's footnotes, outline, headings, and index to be indispensable, so I ended by both this book and Mandelbaum's.

Overall, this is a richly annotated text that lacks an easily readable text. For readers who want a book that gives a less demanding presentation of the Metamorphoses, I would recommend Mandelbaum. However, for serious mythology learners who want an accurate, original rendition of the poem, I would recommend getting both this book and Mandelbaum's translation. However, be warned that even though Mandelbaum has a very high-quality translation, the book does not have any footnotes or table of contents whatsoever. To sum it up - highly valuzble notes, outlines, very organized, but the translation is not as easy to understand as Mandelbaum's.

This translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by A.D. Melville has some good points as well as some bad points. The stories are well told. They are put into English that is easy to understand; yet Melville maintains much of the original prose. The biggest downfall would be the arrangement of the stories is slightly random and hard to follow when one attempts to read straight through the work. However, each story in itself is well written and portrays the idea of its appropriate myth. The notes at the back of the text help the reader to understand ideas that might not be obvious to a reader in this 20th century, where many of us have little background in mythology. There is also a glossary that the reader may use to find specific stories about certain characters. In my mythology class, I found this method especially useful in projects in which require finding many stories about a certain god, for instance. Perhaps the most important aspect of Ovid's renditions of the myths is that they contain many details about surroundings or the visual contexts of the myths, which help a reader to relate more easily. This may not be found in other texts dealing with the same myths. Many texts focus more on the story itself and the events occurring. If one is a visual learner, perhaps this book would be most helpful in understanding and interpreting many of the important myths. All in all, this is a pretty good book, yet there may be one that better serves to tie the myths together in an easy to follow way.

This book is great! I got it in London after reading the Aeneid and Odyssey for Classics A-level [in U.K.]. But, fot those who can't take in so much...try a "condensed" version which is excellent in its own right - "Tales from Ovid" by Poet Laureate Ted Hughes. I have that as well.

Ovid's Metamorphoses is a rich and involved text dealing with classical mythology. Any student of poetry, past or present, can attest to the wonderful skill and excellent usage of diction that can be found in this book. If you like classical mythology this book shouldn't be absent from your library. The book attempts to deal with the coveted god's of ancient Roman mythology, their stories, and some other classical characters. As a student of Latin myself, I have studied this work many times. Yet, each time I pick up the book to read it, regardless of how many times I've read a passage before, I find that my senses are never dulled to it. The work is purely amazing, it should be given special honor just for its poetic style and sophistication. However, it is so beautifully done that anyone reading it for pleasure will find it enjoyable and enriching. Here are the opening lines as they appear in Rolfe Humphries' translation: My intention is to tell of bodies changed To different forms; the gods, who made the changes, Will help me-or I hope so-with a poem That runs from the world's beginning to our own days.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a Latin student, likes poetry, or just likes to read for pleasure.

Humphries translation of the Latin classic of Greek and Roman mythology is still contemporary, fresh, vibrant, and colorful more than a half-century after first publication. For readers unfamiliar with Ovid, the great Latin poet and lover of Transformations (i.e., Metamorphoses), we are simultaneously acquainted with the great classical myths, given their contemporary meaning and perennial revelance, through a masterful translation that is as modern as the stories are classical. For example, from Book III, "Echo and Narcissus," we read:

Now Narcissus
Was sixteen years of age, and could be taken for
Either boy or man; and boys and girls
Both sought his love, but in that slender stripling
Was pride so fierce no boy, no girl, could touch him.

To understand the pantheon of the classical gods, each was a projection of one (or maybe two) human attributes is a quasi-human, quasi-divine form. Rather than trying to make a single god into a possessive, jealous, xenophobic, and emotionally-unstable, homophobic male patriarchical "prick," the pantheon of Roman and Greek gods were merely the "objectification" of the worst and noblest human emotions, intelligence, vulnerabilities, and jealousies -- just as we find in ourselves, without crusty theology to cloud the oracles of human vice and virtue (versus human depravity, sin, and redemption). This is a book one can enjoy in "sprints," or luxuriate with on a weekend afternoon, and further, enjoy reading to your Beloved. We do. With Humphries exquisite translation, hearing the poetry read makes it even livelier to the ear and heart.