April 17, 1995
Translator and poet Mandelbaum offers his rendition of Ovid's classic work of mythology and change.
November 1, 1993
Mandelbaum, whose translation of The Aeneid won the National Book Award, has rendered Ovid's compilation of classical myths into verse. And the poem is as flowing and metamorphic as the gods and heroes who fill its pages. For example, Book IV tells the story of Bacchus, who was spurned by the daughters of Minyus. They sit weaving and telling stories of the gods, the better to ignore a Bacchic orgy: ``Some sisters said such things could never be, / while others were convinced that anything / was in the power of true deities-- / but surely Bacchus was not one of these.'' When their incredible stories are done, they themselves metamorphose into bats. Mandelbaum's blank verse, which sometimes breaks into rhyme for emphasis or ironic effect as above, is stately without being either precious or dull. It recalls the wit of neoclassical English poetry, as when Envy looks upon the glory of Athens: ``it is hard for Envy not to weep, / since there is nothing there that calls for tears.'' Other passages show a romantic realism; borne off by Jove in the shape of a bull, Europa ``turns to glance / back at the shore, so distant now. Her robes / are fluttering--they swell in the sea breeze.'' The obsession with metamorphosis so evident in Ovid reflects the Greek cosmos, in which chaos and order forever struggle and ``discordant concord is the path life needs.''
May 2, 1994
Composed between 2 and 8 A.D., Ovid's (43 B.C.-?A.D. 17) epic poem purports to tell the story of the universe. Competing over the centuries with such formidable adversaries as the Bible, the Upanishads , Darwin, and modern physics, The Metamorphoses remains one of the world's most engaging cosmologies. The primary strength of Slavitt's ( The Fables of Avianus ) translation is its conversational diction, which accurately conveys the style of storytelling pervading the original. His departs from most existing translations by resisting slavish preoccupation with detail, allowing him to anticipate and engage a restless and modern reader. For example, in Book Seven, Slavitt interrupts the narrative to comment on Ovid's often long-winded style, and replaces ``forty lines of travel'' (Medea's) with 40 verse lines of his own criticism of the text. Another characteristic touch is the presence of innumerable loan words, mostly from French. Unfortunately, Slavitt's poetic line has the mildly irritating tendency to throw the reader off the back of its lumbering cadence. As poetry, the translation neither invigorates nor inspires, and much of it seems to have been written with a shrug, as if to Slavitt verse held a secondary position to subject matter. Otherwise, his Ovid displays poise and a refreshingly varied texture. His translation is constructed like a Shakespearian play: it satisfies those who want only to enjoy the vaudevillian spectacle of Jupiter and Juno's marriage, and relive the adventures of the Argonauts or the Trojan War. Yet it will also charm those stimulated by subtle references to postmodern ideas, by a liberal, multilingual vocabulary, and by the occasional lame joke.