The More Things Change...

Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Stephanie McCarter

Well, I’ve done it again. I’ve gone and read another book that I have no idea how to write about, and I didn’t plan ahead or take any notes while I was reading.

Q: Why do I do this to myself?!
A: Because I’m reading for PLEASURE.

Right? This time, Metamorphoses by Ovid. I know I really must stop opening my reviews with a little paragraph about how I don’t know where to start, but I really don’t. It doesn’t even fit nicely into any category—an epic that defies epic conventions. I think I’ll cut this part out once I’ve figured out how to actually start. But maybe not because it makes me feel better—like a little security blanket, just in case you hate what comes next. Picture this part cut out.

I’ve always been a mythology girlie. From the days when my dad would read to me out of D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths (amazing), I was captivated. The idea that each domain—hunting, music, love, marriage, war, strategy, moon, sun, tides, health, death, and so on—has it’s own guardian and master compelled me. That these gods might walk among us, pretending to be old women or swans? Tingly.

But of course, Greek (and Roman, since we’re talking Ovid) mythology is not just about the gods, its about the mortals that the gods care about, in one way or another, for better or for worse. It is about the humans, as all mythologies really are. I will never forget my utter terror at the story of Medusa, also told to me by my father, probably out of D’Aulaires as well. I had nightmares for months, couldn’t go to the bathroom alone, was terrified she might pop up behind me in the mirror.

Understandably, the idea that a human being could be instantaneously turned to stone—at the mere sight of a face, snake wreathed though it was—deeply disturbed ~7 year old me. No action required, just open eyes. Even after I had been assured repeatedly (by my dad, at the prompting of my slightly irked mom) that this tale was not true, could not ever be true, my fear was still quite literal. I wasn’t thinking metaphorically, I was afraid that I would unwittingly become a statue.

I long ago ceased to be afraid and fell in love with the image of Medusa—I have paperweights, miniature statues, iron-on patches, framed art on the walls, and multiple pieces of jewelry. However, the root of that forgotten fear is a root that remains frightening. I’m still afraid of change in no small part because I know I am powerless to it. And that is what Metamorphoses is about.

It starts in the beginning—“before” the creation of the cosmos, with the first metamorphosis of chaos into order. Ovid recounts the creation of humankind and tells of his four ages—gold, silver, bronze, and iron—drawing on Hesiod (which I remember from a Greek mythology class I took in college—told you, mythology girlie). These races are wiped out by the flood and a new humanity begins. Then we get into the age of heroes, Perseus, Theseus, Hercules, then the Trojan War (Achilles, Ajax, Ulysses), the fall of Troy, Aeneas, and a whole bunch of Roman history super condensed. Then Julius Caesar becomes a god, and we find ourselves in Ovid’s present day with Augustus.

It’s a lot of ground to cover, and cover it he does. How? By leaving out all the stuff you (or at least his contemporary reader) would already know. Like all those heroes I just listed out up there—they barely factor in. He just throws in a line or two about how Hercules labored. The Trojan war is covered in the course of 1.5 books (out of 15)—with only one true battle scene to boot. And thank god(s) because the one was extremely graphic!

So how does Ovid fill up the rest of it? Sex (often forcible!), love (often unrequited!), and violence (often gory as hell!). Plus lots and lots of people turning into trees and/or birds. Sometimes rivers, or streams, or other animals too—or monsters or statues (shout out Medusa)—but mostly trees and birds. You know, the stuff that life is made of.

Especially though, Ovid fills his pages with women, which I found quite interesting in light of the current appetite for mythology retold from a female perspective. Of course Ovid was a man, but I feel that the women spoke quite clearly in Metamorphoses. Could this be owing to Stephanie McCarter’s translation? Likely in part, but even McCarter acknowledges in her introduction that Ovid is interested in the female experience—I choose to believe, because it is what I felt, that his interest comes from a place of admiration, and if not that, sympathy.

Just consider: instead of detailed accounts of Hercules’s labors, we get Alcmena in labor, giving birth to him. When vengeful Juno orders Ilithyia, the goddess of the womb, to keep her legs shut tight, Alcmena’s clever maid, Galanthis, tricks the goddesses and the hero is born. After seven days and seven nights! Those are women! Jealous, submissive, strong, cunning.

Of course, it cannot be ignored that roughly fifty rapes are depicted in the lines of the poem. It is disturbing how central to the story—of Greece, of Rome, of the world as Ovid knows and sees it—this violence and violation is. I think it’s disturbing to him as well, but in a broader context. I think that rape serves here as one of the most ready symbolic manifestations of what it means to abuse power—what it means to be abused by power.

Because, what Ovid really wants to talk about is power. What it means to have it and what it means to not—the way that it effects transformation in both cases. Those in power become possessed, crazed, cruel or foolish. Those without power become silent, still, vengeful, manic. To name only a few possibilities.

But these transformations are not constant based on circumstances. A raped or wronged woman does not always cry until she turns into a literal pool of water. Sometimes she is turned into a monster who turns people to stone. Sometimes she murders the husband who sacrificed her daughter. Sometimes she turns around and makes men into literal pigs. Sometimes retributive action on the part of a woman wronged is painted as noble, and sometimes it is not.

I’m focusing in on the women because it’s hard not to, but this inconstancy is true for the gods, and men, and other creatures in this world as well. Sometimes a god who rapes a woman (it is so often a god, so often Jove), is not punished, and sometimes he is. Sometimes a man who lays eyes on a virgin in the woods is turned into stag and eaten by his own hounds, and sometimes he is filled with lust and rapes the virgin.

All this to say—the power and the powerlessness do not remain constant. Ovid does not make unyielding moral judgements, he does not have a thesis on right and wrong. His thesis, and the one thing he says with absolute certainty, is that change is the only constant. In discussions of power and powerlessness, change is the trump card. We are all powerless. Change will come, and the experience of it, whatever form it takes, will transform us. Hopefully not into trees or birds.

---

As mentioned above, I read the new(ish) translation by Stephanie McCarter (a woman!). It is written in blank verse iambic pentameter, but quite plain language, making it at once poetical and easy to read and understand. Her notes, which I was often flipping back and forth to, were interesting and informative without being overdone. I was often flipping, not constantly.

It would be a lie to say that reading Ovid doesn’t feel like a somewhat academic endeavor, but it is also true that I was genuinely drawn into the writing, even, and perhaps especially when Ovid was jumping around a lot from myth to myth without a clear narrative through-line. He is a poet, and it is a poem, after all!

The most fun (and often most heart-wrenching) is to read the stories you think you know, but haven’t ever read in full. Phaethon and Apollo, Niobe (a personal fave), Daedalus and Icarus, Orpheus and Eurydice. UGH. There’s just so much power in the words, even after all these years and after all this change. Which actually brings me around to the real point—the one I’ve failed to mention until now—that I even almost forgot about until now! Art is the only salvation. And if that’s not a neat little bow at the end of a long rambling review, I don’t know what is.

---

Thank you for my dad for giving me this book—you valiantly continue the work you started long ago, of opening up the world to my little brain.

Kisses until next time!

---