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Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses Paperback – March 30, 1999

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Ted Hughes (Author)
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4.6 out of 5 stars 25 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (March 30, 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374525870
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374525873
  • Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #52,732 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsOne of those golden books you'll want to return to often.
By tepi on June 5, 2001
Format: Paperback
Anyone who may have seen the brilliant Anthony Hopkins' movie, TITUS, a movie based on Shakespeare's most Ovidian play, 'Titus Andronicus,' and one which actually features Ovid's book, and who may now have a yen to read or re-read Ovid, could do worse than take a look at Ted Hughes' reworkings, in modern idiom, of Ovid's fascinating tales.
Hughes, in his brief but quite informative Preface, finds in both Shakespeare and Ovid a "common taste for tortured subjectivity and catastrophic extremes of passion." He continues : "Above all, Ovid was interested in passion. Or rather, in what a passion feels like to the one possessed of it. Not just ordinary passion either, but passion 'in extremis'" (pages viii-ix).
As a passionate man himself, one can understand the appeal that Ovid has for Hughes, and may suspect that he, if anyone, was the man to give us a modernized Ovid. Personally I found myself enthralled by Ted Hughes' versions of these tales. So what, if in furtherance of his poetic aims, he has reworked the tales to some extent? Hughes is an exceptionally talented poet, and I'll leave it to those who are his equals in poetic talent to argue with his procedures. I doubt there can be many.
Hughes' incredible skill as a poet is everywhere in evidence on these pages. His handling of image and sound and rhythm and line length, his lucid diction, and his stunning ability to find precisely the right word - as in such lines as "no earth / spun in empty air on her own magnet" (pages 3-4), or "Everwhere he taught / the tree its leaf" (page 5), or "Echo collapsed in sobs, / As her voice lurched among the mountains" (page 77), or "And there she was - the Arcadian beauty, Callisto. / He stared.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsgreat translation, great selection
By M. H. Bayliss on May 29, 2000
Format: Paperback
Ovid's tales are fantastic, but few readers make it through all of his tales. Hughes picks only the most famous and makes memorable translations of them. I use this book in our high school English curriculum for mythology -- it's just enough that students learn the essential Greek myths, but not too much that it becomes overwhelming. Hughes' translations are emminently readable. Sure, he could have included more, but those he does include are fanstastic and very vivid.
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5.0 out of 5 starsGreat selections. Excellent translation
By Colin A. McKenzie on January 10, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
The 24 selections of Ovid's Metamorphoses that Ted Hughes translated is so modern and orginal, after reading Tales from Ovid by Ovid, Ted Hughes, I wish Hughes had translated the entire epic.

Hughes is a brilliant poet and the way he wield words dazzled me for hours:

Then Narcissus wept into the pool.
His tears shattered the still shrine
And his image blurred.
He cried after it: "Don't leave me.
If I cannot touch you at least let me see you.
Let me nourish my starving, luckless love-
If only by looking".

Beautiful, huh?
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5.0 out of 5 starsGet it!
By A Customer on October 24, 1998
Format: Hardcover
I was 16 when I first read this book. It is now a year later and I have read it about 5 times so far. Get it! It is the best ever. OK, I admit I studied Latin and Classics in English boarding school for 6 years so I'm slightly biased..but how can anyone not realise the significance of this book! Hughes captures Ovid's spirit well...READ IT!!!
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5.0 out of 5 starsStories Fading into Oblivion
By T. McLaughlin on July 21, 2007
Format: Paperback
I agree with most of the positive reviewers of this book, in fact, it's a wonderful book. It's 24 or 25 freely translated, modernized Greek myths in their Ovidian versions, out of 250 or so that Ovid wrote. In the introduction, Hughes said that the stories had become part of our culture's subconscious memory, and it occured to me that that may no longer be true, and that Hughes' work of preservation here and in his anthologies of poetry had a certain touching hopefulness to it. These are great stories with implications way beyond their obvious meanings. The great enemy of mankind's future, it seems to me, and as many other people have said, is Corporate Mankind: the unpoetic, the emotionally deaf, unmusical person, greedy and mendacious. Man becoming a kind of technologically sophisticated, highly organized human insect. Anyway, Hughes was one of the people who hoped this was not our fate and who tried to do something about it. This book was one of the ways, probably the most delightful, engaging of his efforts. His versions of these myths could not be improved upon.
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5.0 out of 5 starsbrilliant stuff
By Critique that on October 25, 2005
Format: Paperback
As an appropriation of an appropriation, hughes' manages to bring to life the classic tales of greek mythology and modernize ovid's original tales yet at the same time keeping up the essential message that ovid was bringing across 2000 years ago. Even if you do'nt speak English one could understand teh works of hughes' perfectly, his range of vocabulary is genius in itself. the language slips and slides around your mouth, burning like brimstone or as languid as lagoons.

try this for size:

Violence is an extrapolation

Of the cutting edge

Into the orbit of the smile

Rivers of milk mingled with rivers of nectar

and out of the black oak oozed amber honey

I must confess I have to read this for my literature course, but I am so glad that I did! I never would have picked it up otherwise, whilst seemingly sophisticated and slippery it is simultaneously so simple and easy to relate to in a way that hardly condescends or patronizes the reader's understanding.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone, even if you don't speak english, even if you don't understand some of the words, it's the way it sounds that counts.

Read it with your eyes closed, you will never want to put it down.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsTed Hughes is at his best here in these tales from Ovid

Ted Hughes is at his best here in these tales from Ovid. They are not so much translations, as free-form adaptations, where the poet has loosed himself on Ovid's fecund material. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Sean Phillips
4.0 out of 5 starsPoetic justice, at last!

I believe that a review of a classical text like Metamorphoses should focus on the translation rather than the quality/value of the original text or its author. Read more

Published 15 months ago by Peter Mendrela
5.0 out of 5 starsso good

Such a great translation. Easy to read and interesting. I could have read the entire book in one sitting if I would have had the time.

Published on March 24, 2014 by jessie Dean
1.0 out of 5 starsSore disappointement

Having read quite a few translations of Ovid, and understanding this is more of a poetic "retelling" of his stories, I was sorely disappointed by the crass rendition of Mr. Hughes. Read more

Published on November 24, 2013 by Jules L. White
5.0 out of 5 starsbrilliant

All I really need to say about Ted Hughes adaptations of Ovid's Metamorphoses is that it is brilliant. Read more

Published on June 9, 2012 by Ingela
4.0 out of 5 starsA Very Good Read

I would suggest this book to anyone who wants a good evening read. It goes quite quickly and has a good plot.

Published on March 5, 2012 by J T Cannon Jr
5.0 out of 5 starsFantastic, powerful, moving....

This has leaped into my top ten - one of my favorite books of all time. Ted Hughes' translation is alive, crackling with energy, and full of surprises. Read more

Published on February 23, 2012 by Peter B. Frengel
5.0 out of 5 starsRe: Yeah Man

To answer bayoubill's question regarding this book: "When will he translate the rest of the Metamorphoses? The Odyssey? Read more

Published on May 6, 2006 by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsYeah man

It makes love to your mind. When will he translate the rest of the Metamorphoses? The Odyssey? Go Ted, go.

Published on January 25, 2006 by bayoubill
5.0 out of 5 starsA delicious new classic

Think: ancient Greek myths mixed with the heart-racing drama of Ovid's storytelling fashioned by the sensual, gorgeous rhythms of a modern poet, and you get this book. Read more

Published on October 15, 2005 by C. Berrigan

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