Description
"The Metamorphoses of Ovid offers to the modern world such a key tothe literary and religious culture of the ancients that it becomes an importantevent when at last a good poet comes up with a translation into English verse."-- John Crowe Ransom ..". a charming andexpert English version, which is right in tone for the Metamorphoses."? --Francis Fergusson "This new Ovid, freshand faithful, is right for our time and should help to restore a greatreputation." -- Mark Van Doren The firstand still the best modern verse translation of the Metamorphoses, Humphries' versionof Ovid's masterpiece captures its wit, merriment, andsophistication. Everyone will enjoy this first modern translationby an American poet of Ovid's great work, the major treasury of classical mythology, which has perennially stimulated the minds of men. In this lively rendering thereare no stock props of the pastoral and no literary landscaping, but real food on thetable and sometimes real blood on the ground. Not only is Ovid'sMetamorphoses a collection of all the myths of the time of the Roman poet as he knewthem, but the book presents at the same time a series of love poems -- about theloves of men, women, and the gods. There are also poems of hate, to give the propershading to the narrative. And pervading all is the writer's love for this earth, itspeople, its phenomena. Using ten-beat, unrhymed lines in histranslation, Rolfe Humphries shows a definite kinship for Ovid's swift andcolloquial language and Humphries' whole poetic manner is in tune with the wit andsophistication of the Roman poet.
