The Metamorphoses of Ovid

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.

Ovid's Metamorphoses marked a great divide for me: between my perception of the classics as once-great dead things...and their presence, in the right hands, as still-living works of art. For me, the word 'classic' meant Penguin: dry, dull, soporific. And the six previous translations of O's epic that I tried all defeated me in thirty pages or less. But then one day I happened on Slavitt. And the opening creation story had me at Hello. As did the episodic structure. The transitions, I now saw, were all part of the magic. Now, few need to be reminded that O is taking liberties when he has a Roman god cry out, 'Well, helloooo there, cutie!' Few, that is, except for academics. O was bold and cheeky and brilliant, a poetic wizard who took his pleasure where he found it with the Latin language. Good for him--and great for us, who can always go back later to a more literal version. Between the two, it seems to be, we'll come close to the soul of O's epic.

You like the "Classics" and can not read Latin, then this is a great translation of some of the real good myths. Just remember this is not Hollywood "Clash of the Titans," but the real deal with all the heavy material of the time.

Anyone looking for an "honest" translation of Ovid had better look elsewhere. Reading Slavitt's translation of "The Metamorphses" is like listening to Cecil Taylor's rendition of "Things Ain't What They Used to Be" and wondering whatever happened to such things as chords and meter. Slavitt shows us how much fun Ovid can be -- more like a fireworks display than something you are made to read in a class. It's vivacious, fast-moving, never entirely serious, a word-junkie's dream, and a masterful achievement. Recommended to anyone but a purist.

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.

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.

There are some interesting digressions by Mr. Slavitt here - moving away from translation and into commentary on Ovid's work - but all in all there's a sense of understanding of mythos that I don't get from other translators and translations.

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.