FINAL FINAL poesy book club nomination

[Alexander III]

One vote per person ! And lets final get this poesy book club going!

[quasimodo1]

Apparently Ovid sweeps the field; it's enough to make me reconsider predestination.

[Alexander III]

Yep looks like it's Ovid-

What translation should we use?

Whomever nominated Ovid, can you recommend a translation?

[JBI]

I nominated, I am using the Oxford translation I'll dig up my copy tomorrow as it is buried. To be honest, I nominated it because it is one of the few books I have here in China - a Public Domain translation would be as equally acceptable.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I have the Oxford as well, I'll use that one.

[stlukesguild]

I have Mandelbaum and a complete Humphries on the way.

[YesNo]

So what happens next?

I see the following versions on the internet:

Garth, Dryden, et al: http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.html
Kline: http://etext.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/trans/Ovhome.htm

[qimissung]

Not to jump ahead too much, but since you all compiled that list of poets, what do you think about working your way down the list of them after reading Ovid's Metamorphoses?

Just an idea, anyway.

[Petrarch's Love]

I may pop in for some of the Metamorphoses discussion. I'll look for the starting post. The translations I have are the Mandelbaum, the Golding, and whoever did the Loeb facing page translations.

[JBI]

Not to jump ahead too much, but since you all compiled that list of poets, what do you think about working your way down the list of them after reading Ovid's Metamorphoses?

Just an idea, anyway.
I'd be for that.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

So, when will you all be reading Metamorphoses? I would like to participate, but I'm in a Moby Dick and Uncle Tom's Cabin class until the 23rd, and probably won't be able to participate until then.

I also have the Humphries translation.

[Alexander III]

would everyone be fine is we began our poesy book club on monday?

[Kafka's Crow]

On Monday? It should be fine. I only have to finish Swann's Way (re-reading) and the first volume of The Letters of Samuel Beckett (1929-1940) before Monday then!

I rely heavely on Audiobooks so will be using Barry Kraft's reading of Frank Justin Muller translation (this one):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Metamorphoses-Ovid/dp/1433213230/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1307033443&sr=8-2

[qimissung]

So I'm planning a trip to the bookstore this weekend; which is a good translation to get (providing they have a selection)?

And Monday would be a good day to start for me. Gracias ,Alexander III for all the work you've done on this. What did you think of working our way down that magnificent list?

[stlukesguild]

OK... it's Monday... I have my Humphries translation of Ovid in hand... where's the party?:confused:

[LitNetIsGreat]

True, I've got a party hat and an empty room.

Would it make sense to go with some of the early pieces the flood etc?

[YesNo]

I'm on Book 2, reading Allen Mandelbaum's translation into iambic pentameter verse.

Regarding the flood, so Jove was afraid he'd blow himself up if he gave us what we deserved. :) And the other Gods needed people to worship them. Interesting.

I've never read this before, but it looks like this is where most of my understanding of those ancient Gods and Goddesses came from.

[LitNetIsGreat]

One thing I've always found interesting is that the idea of an apocolyptic flood appears in different cultures at different times. Why is this I wonder?

[Drkshadow03]

One thing I've always found interesting is that the idea of an apocolyptic flood appears in different cultures at different times. Why is this I wonder?

Because people, especially in the ancient world, tend to live by water when possible (easier than constructing methods of bringing it to you from far distances). And floods happen by water.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Because people, especially in the ancient world, tend to live by water when possible (easier than constructing methods of bringing it to you from far distances). And floods happen by water.

Yes but why apocolyptic scale floods across different cultures?

Edit: for example found here:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/210512/flood-myth

[YesNo]

Yes but why apocolyptic scale floods across different cultures?

Edit: for example found here:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/210512/flood-myth

There may have been some major, although local, floods after the last ice age, large enough to provide sources for these stories.

[JBI]

There is also some narrative transfer from an indo-European root I would assume, which covers quite an expanse.

[qimissung]

I thought it was interesting that he seemed to know so much about the planet:

"The two beneath the distant poles, complain
Of endless winter"


"The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:"


"Fierce Boreas, with his off-spring, issues forth
T' invade the frozen waggon of the North.
While frowning Auster seeks the Southern sphere;
And rots, with endless rain, th' unwholsom year. "


He seemed to know about the north and south poles, that the earth was round, and about monsoons. I'm sure someone here can tell me. Was there a body of knowledge that was lost, that we only regained, somewhat laboriously, in later years?

[LitNetIsGreat]

I was just flicking through the introduction of the Oxford melville edition yesterday and thought I'd lazily share a few underlinings:


In time and space the scope of the Metamorphoses is comprehensive, being nothing less than universal history from the Creation to the present. That at least is its ostensible scope; its real subject is the microcosm of human psychology. People and how they react under stress, were what interested Ovid.


Ovid depicts a universe in which human beings, and more often than not the gods who are supposed to be in charge, are at the mercy of blind or arbitrary or cruel, and always irresistible, forces.


Ovid's achievement n the Metamorphoses is to transmute what ought to be a profoundly depressing vision of existence into a cosmic comedy of manners.


Yet under the wild fantasy and the vast exaggerations, the black humour and the occasional cruelty, Ovid's is a serious way of looking at the world, or at least a way that can be taken seriously.


The quest for a deeper underlying meaning, if it exists, Ovid left to others. It was enough for him to illustrate and explore the reflection on the psychological plane of that universal physical turbulence.


The overriding aim of the poet is to carry the reader effortlessly from episode to episode, his appetite constantly titillated by variety of subject-matter, tone, tempo, linguistic wit, and literary treatment.


In the M... artfulness is by and large kept in its place, subordinate to the main purpose of keeping the poem on the move and so continually engaging the reader's interest.The transitions, as has been said, are essential to that purpose; they also serve to articulate the extremely elaborate structure of the poem.

Just some points.

Edit: Sorry, qimissung, I posted at the same time, I don't know good question.

[YesNo]

I thought it was interesting that he seemed to know so much about the planet:


"The temper that partakes of hot, and cold.
The fields of liquid air, inclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:"


Based on this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth Aristotle believed that the earth was a sphere in 330 BCE. Apparently it was Ovid's view as well, although it might have something to do with the translation.

EDIT:

Here is a link to the latin version, which I can't read, but some words make sense: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid/ovid.met1.shtml

I guess "orb" is used for earth, which I understand could be either a disk or a sphere.

[qimissung]

S'alright, Neely. Good stuff there. And thank you, YesNo. Also interesting.

[mortalterror]

YesNo try this http://www.nodictionaries.com/ovid/metamorphoses-1/1-4

[YesNo]

YesNo try this http://www.nodictionaries.com/ovid/metamorphoses-1/1-4

Thanks, mortalterror! That is much better than the one I found.

I also noticed just by glancing at the latin that the meter was not iambic pentameter which is what Allen Mandelbaum used in his translation, but dactylic hexameter.

I thought the following was an interesting introduction to scanning Ovid's first few lines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYD1zTfTHMY&feature=related I also learned from this that the word metamorphoses is accented on the second to the last syllable--not what I would have thought.

[stlukesguild]

Shouldn't we set up this discussion on Ovid in its own thread so that others may be able to find it and join in the discussion if they wish?

[YesNo]

Shouldn't we set up this discussion on Ovid in its own thread so that others may be able to find it and join in the discussion if they wish?

Sounds like a good idea.

I'm curious about a repetition of themes where a male God rapes a beautiful female and then her companies punish her for getting raped--I guess she did not run away fast enough--all ending with the God who originally raped her now saving her from them and making a constellation or something else out of her.

I'm only in Book 2.

[OrphanPip]

He seemed to know about the north and south poles, that the earth was round, and about monsoons. I'm sure someone here can tell me. Was there a body of knowledge that was lost, that we only regained, somewhat laboriously, in later years?

The idea of a spherical Earth was common amongst the educated classes even in Medieval Europe. It's a common misconception (probably caused by the controversy over heliocentricity) that educated Europeans believed the Earth was flat. The Church didn't really have a problem with a spherical Earth, they did suppress theories that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Ptolemaic astronomy dominated European thought until the Renaissance, and it held that the Earth was round, but that it was stationary and at the center of the universe. This would have been a dominant view during Ovid's time as well.