When was tales from ovid written

When an enraged Pentheus goes to spy on their ''naked mysteries'' he is mistaken for a boar and dismembered by his mother, aunt and the other Bacchantes. This tale of the dangers of rejecting the Dionysian impulse concludes on a deeply Hughesian note:. In speaking through Ovid, Hughes settles on 24 of the or so stories of ''The Metamorphoses.

Gone are the tales of devoted married couples like Deucalion and Pyrrha, Cadmus and Harmonia, Baucis and Philemon, Ceyx and Alcyone; gone too are the stories of homosexual passion -- the fate of Cyparissus, Ganymede and Hyacinth. Hughes also steers clear of those places where Ovid is most ironic or verges on parody.

We are offered instead in the first half of ''Tales From Ovid'' stories that focus with great intensity on heterosexual desire, violence and transgression. Ovid's stories of seduction, incest, infanticide, rape, transsexuality and the instability of identity speak directly to contemporary obsessions. Proserpina is dragged off to hell by Pluto. Semele is raped by Jove. Myrrha is destroyed by her incestuous desires for her father.

And the wily Peleus succeeds in possessing Thetis:. Peleus clinched his knot, then bundled her up In his arms, and embraced her with all his might As her shapes began to fight for her. He shut his eyes and hung on, ignoring Her frenzy of transformations Till they shuddered to stillness. She knew she was beaten By that relentless grip. Ovid's Metamorphosis is a book that is challenging to classify. It was written in 8 AD, and though it is long enough to be considered an epic, it doesn't have the same sense of cohesive narrative that many epic poems possess.

Instead, the original manuscript is a collection of approximately myths, written in verse, some of which span many pages while others are much shorter in length. The poems move in chronological order from the creation of the world to the coronation of Julius Caesar, with a focus on myth. Some of these myths are taken directly from other sources, but most are adaptations and re-imaginings of characters and stories, which Ovid adapted for his own purposes. Tales from Ovid takes this behemoth work of myths and cuts it down by one-tenth, sharing Hughes' favorite sections in a new work of translation.

Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes. A powerful version of the Latin classic by England's late Poet Laureate, now in paperback. When it was published in , Tales from Ovid was immediately recognized as a classic in its own right, as the best rendering of Ovid in generations, and as a major book in Ted Hughes's oeuvre.

The Metamorphoses of Ovid stands with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton as a classic of world poetry; Hughes translated twenty-four of its stories with great power and directness. The result is the liveliest twentieth-century version of the classic, at once a delight for the Latinist and an appealing introduction to Ovid for the general reader. Get A Copy.

Paperback , pages. Published March 30th by Farrar, Straus and Giroux first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Tales from Ovid , please sign up. Lists with This Book.

Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Tales from Ovid: 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses. Jan 26, Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing Shelves: poetry , mythology , greek-and-latin-classics. Ovid's Metamorphoses can be a delight for anyone who loves classical mythology, a good complement to the versions of tales you learned from Bulfinch, Hamilton, the D'Aulaires, etc.

Besides, Ovid gives you the sex and violence too, which those nice children's illustrated versions leave out. There are many translations of Metamorphoses available, but one I definitely would recommend is Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes. As the title suggests, this is not a literal translation and does not contain every Ovid's Metamorphoses can be a delight for anyone who loves classical mythology, a good complement to the versions of tales you learned from Bulfinch, Hamilton, the D'Aulaires, etc.

As the title suggests, this is not a literal translation and does not contain every one of Ovid's stories. On the other hand, Hughes is a real poet, with a special gift for dark, mythic language, and—although he does not tell all of the tales—the tales he tells come to life.

I love poetry as well as mythology, and I think poetry should be translated by poets. Although they may sometimes betray the literal sense of a passage, they are more faithful to its sound and spirit.

Because of this, if you wish to possess a complete version, I would recommend the elegant Gregory or the arch, ironic Slavitt, or—if you have in interest in something older, say from the Renaissance or Neo-Classical periods--you might give the vigorous Golding or the stately Garth a try. But if all you want is a vivid collection of mythological tales which catalogs the changes wrought by the gods, written in memorable, laconic verse, I would go with Hughes.

Hughes is particular good at conveying both the marvelousness and the callousness of such transformations—two important qualities they tell me of the originals.

From time to time, I do miss Horace Gregory's elegance, but Ted Hughes' force and concentration is enough to make up for it. He also has a gift for surprisingly contemporary diction. Here follow four versions of the the fall of Phaeton, blasted by Jove's thunderbolt from the runaway chariot of Phoebus his father, god of the sun: Ted Hughes: Phaethon, hair ablaze, A fiery speck, lengthening a vapour trail, Plunged toward the earth Like a star Falling and burning out on a clear night.

In a remote landscape Far from his home The hot current Of the broad Eridanus Quenched his ember-- And washed him ashore. The Italian nymphs Buried his remains, that were glowing again And flickering little flames Of the three-forked fire from God.

Over his grave, on a rock they wrote this: "Here lies Phoebus' boy who died In the sun's chariot, His strength too human, and too hot His courage and his pride. Far from his home he fell, across the globe Where River Eridanus cooled his face. Joseph Addison Garth, editor : The breathless Pheeton, with flaming hair, Shot from the chariot, like a falling star, That in a summer's ev'ning from the top Of Heav'n drops down, or seems at least to drop; 'Till on the Po his blasted corps was hurl'd, Far from his country, in the western world.

The Latian nymphs came round him, and, amaz'd, On the dead youth, transfix'd with thunder, gaz'd, And, whilst yet smoaking from the bolt he lay, His shatter'd body to a tomb convey, And o'er the tomb an epitaph devise: "Here he, who drove the sun's bright chariot, lies; His father's fiery steeds he cou'd not guide, But in the glorious enterprize he dy'd.

Whome almost in another world and from his countrie quite The River Padus did receyve, and quencht his burning head. The water Nymphes of Italie did take his carkasse dead And buried it yet smoking still, with Joves three forked flame, And wrate this Epitaph in the stone that lay upon the same. View all 12 comments. Aug 22, Roger Brunyate rated it it was amazing Shelves: illustrated-review , poetry , greece-rome.

The Poetry of Passion The brief but brilliant introduction by former English Poet Laureate Ted Hughes to his Tales from Ovid says that the poems tell "what is feels like to live in the psychological gulf that opens at the end of an era. But no, he was referring to the original date of Ovid's Metamorphoses themselves, 8 CE, when "the obsolete paraphernalia of the old official religion were lyi The Poetry of Passion The brief but brilliant introduction by former English Poet Laureate Ted Hughes to his Tales from Ovid says that the poems tell "what is feels like to live in the psychological gulf that opens at the end of an era.

But no, he was referring to the original date of Ovid's Metamorphoses themselves, 8 CE, when "the obsolete paraphernalia of the old official religion were lying in heaps, like old masks in the lumber room of a theatre, and the new ones had not yet arrived.

Instead, at least in the two dozen stories that Hughes selected, we have a prevalent spirit of violence, instability, old rules being broken, human beings changing into beasts. The hunter Actaeon, for example, who chances upon Diana bathing naked, is transformed into a stag and devoured by his own hounds.

Callisto, seduced by Jupiter, is changed by the jealous Juno into a bear. Arachne, who dared to challenge Minerva in tapestry weaving, becomes a spider. Titian: Diana and Actaeon Tales from Ovid is right; this is far from a complete translation. Over two hundred stories are mentioned in the fifteen books of the Metamorphoses, about half that number treated at length, and Hughes gives only a quarter of those. Many of the tales I know best through art, opera, or other literature are left out.

True, it is not all violence; there are a few more gentle tales such as Echo and Narcissus or Peleus and Thetis.

The Rape of Prosperpina, though beginning in violence, at least ends in the compromise that brings us the annual blessing of Spring. And the story of Pygmalion, whose statue of the ideal woman at last comes to life as Galatea, even has a happy ending.

But although Hughes is marvelous at depicting the more violent emotions, a dozen or more stories in this vein eventually take their toll; this is not the selection I would have advised had I been his editor. Sometimes, Hughes follows the original pretty closely; sometimes he illuminates ancient ideas with the language of the nuclear age; often, he introduces passages that are entirely his own. As an example, let's look at a few lines from the opening account of the creation of the world and the early history of mankind.

Here is the beginning of the passage in the original Latin: de duro est ultima ferro. Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook: Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took. Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new… ] Finally, here is the same passage from Hughes: Last comes the Age of Iron And the day of Evil dawns. Modesty, Loyalty, Truth, Go up like a mist—a morning sigh off a graveyard. Snares, tricks, plots come hurrying Out of their dens in the atom.

Violence is an extrapolation Of the cutting edge Into the orbit of the smile. Now comes the love of gain—a new god Made out of the shadow Of all the others.

A god who peers Grinning from the roots of the eye teeth. In place of Ovid's heroic hexameters or the regular meter of earlier translators, Hughes paints freely upon the page, sometimes continuing in quasi-regular stanzas for a page or more, sometimes with wide variations of line length.

Note how effective is the separation of "Modesty, Loyalty, Truth" to give each word a single line. And his language: "out of their dens in the atom… into the orbit of a smile. But he does it often in lines that Ovid did not even write; there are ten lines here—ten brilliant lines—that have no equivalent in the original at all; note how he gets back to some sense of regularity when he returns to direct translation.

Hughes, however, expands Ovid's three lines to eighteen, a headlong tumble of invention that surely channels the Browning of The Pied Piper of Hamelin : The god has come. The claustrophobic landscape Bumps like a drum With the stamping dance of the revellers.

The city pours Its entire population into the frenzy. Children and their teachers, labourers, bankers. Mothers and grandmothers, merchants, agents, Prostitutes, politicians, police, Scavengers and accountants, lawyers and burglars, Builders, laybouts, tradesmen, con-men, Scoundrels, tax-collectors, academicians, Physicians, morticians, musicians, magicians, The idle rich and the laughing mob, Stretched mouths in glazed faces, All as if naked, anonymous, freed Into the ecstasy, The dementia and the delirium Of the new god.

But there were some that were real discoveries. None less than the tale of Myrrha, who, in an inversion of the usual incest stories, is consumed by the carnal desire to have sex with her father. Eventually, she gets her nurse to sneak her into his bed every night for a week, while her mother is away. On the last night, her father Cinyras takes a light to see who is this mysterious girl who has been offered to him. Myrrha flees from his wrath and wanders for nine months, at the end of which she is turned into a tree, the myrrh bush, in the very act of giving birth to Adonis.

It is masterly how he handles the suspense, first of all warning the reader not to go any further, then building up the psychological anguish in Myrrha's mind. It combines the technique of a horror movie with the sexual pathology of the Salome of Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss. Hughes has no need to add or embellish; he merely has to translate. Mankind sprawled In sleep without a care. But Myrrha writhed in her sheets. To cool the fiery gnawings throughout her body She drew great gasping breaths.

They made the flames worse. Half of her prayed wildly— In despair under the crushing Impossibility—and half of her coolly Plotted how to put it to the test. She was both aghast at her own passion And reckless to satisfy it. Like a great tree that sways, All but cut through by the axe, Uncertain which way to fall, Waiting for the axe's deciding blow, Myrrha, Bewildered by the opposite onslaughts Of her lust and her conscience, Swayed, and waited to fall.

Either way, she saw only death. Her lust, consummated, had to be death; Denied, had to be death. She tries to resolve it by hanging herself, but is rescued by her nurse, who winkles the secret out of her and realizes that the only way to save her is to help her bring her wish about. This is perhaps an extreme example, but it bears out another point that Hughes makes in his Introduction: "All Ovid wants is the story of hopelessly besotted and doomed love in the most intense form imaginable.

Read it indeed—but I would suggest small doses! View all 52 comments. Shelves: classics , favorites , poetry. I've not read any other translations of Ovid and I don't know Latin, so I have little choice but to take these selections from the Metamorphoses at face value. That value is very high: Hughes writes gripping, driving poetry that impatiently whips you along the narrative, with hardly a chance to catch your breathe sometimes.

Faster paced than many a novel, there is no chance of being lulled to sleep by endless iambs here. Startling, powerful, often brutal metaphors pay no heed to shouts of "Anachr I've not read any other translations of Ovid and I don't know Latin, so I have little choice but to take these selections from the Metamorphoses at face value.

Startling, powerful, often brutal metaphors pay no heed to shouts of "Anachronism! There is hardly a dull moment in the entire volume. Anybody who thought narrative poetry was dead needs to think again: Hughes brought nature observation back to the fore-front of modern poetry with The Hawk in the Rain and subsequent volumes; here he rescues narrative verse from the Romantics and gives it to anybody who loves a good story.

Further - if you had no interest in the Classics before, you will after reading this. I have to look back to Crow to find the previous volume of Hughes' poetical works that I responded to so uniformly positively.