Review: Tales from Ovid translated by Ted Hughes (1997)

I read the Penguin Classics edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses (2007) before reading this edition by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. My review of the Penguin Classics edition can be found here: Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (feliciareviewsbooks.blogspot.com). The Penguin Classics edition is much longer, much more detailed, and increasingly complex, partly due to the fact that more stories were included and the language (translated by Mary M. Innes) is closer to Old English than is this edition translated by Ted Hughes. That being said, Hughes' translation is phenomenal in that his selections seem deliberate and his use of words is laconic in a very keen childlike way; the stories almost read like short fables, even for all the horror they hold. Both are recommendable depending on how much time the reader has, and how advanced the reader might be. Though Hughes' Tales might also allow for a broadened and finer focus of the essence of some of the most cautionary tales within Ovid's original Latin text.

A blossoming of thought occurred to me after finishing Tales from Ovid, a different kind of dialogue from what I originally encountered internally after reading the Innes translation: what happens when Gods and Goddesses, men and women, become so corrupted by their vanity that they forget from whence they came? Their interior histories, the makeup of their bodies, their flesh, the unseen nature of their forms? What happens when these Gods and Goddesses, men and women, become superficial, running after their own hide, their own skin? Ovid's tales tell us that they are punished by some kind of cosmic karma; a reversion back to those creatures and beings whose sacredness has been forgot: a stag, myrrh, mountainous ranges, the river's flow. They cease, by the power of something bigger, to embody their initial manifestation (whether flesh or ethereal supernaturality) almost as a reminder that to take this for granted in favor of greedy glory degrades them to their concealed, unconscious fear. For me, these punishments are gracious... though I understand why these punishments would terrorize their subjects for centuries.

The greedy glory of the characters is the modelling of themselves in comparison to only and always only themselves, itself for itself alone, as if rendering all Others as less than their own assumed greatness. For what is really brutal about becoming a bear, a body of water, a murmuring brook, a bountiful plant, a spider and its web? The answer is nothing, except what one makes of them, except what meaning is placed on those Earthly objects of growth, decay, life, and death.

Then again, there are those blessed by their suffering, as in the case of Pygmalion, whose imaginative hands registered a possibility of being moved by another guiding force unlike its own. By the creation done in that partnership, a wish of true love was granted after a soul's prayer.

Some of the most memorable stories from this collection are Echo and Narcissus, Myrra, Pygmalion, Arachne, Midas, Salmacis and Hermaphoditus, Pyramus and Thisbe. Some end woefully, some end surprisingly peaceful and even happy. What connects them all is the notion, the warning, the cosmos' request that one never forget their origin, their humility, their gratitude for creation in all its forms... every single one finally bound to the Earth in a terribly vicious and/or delightfully sensual river of eternal labor, whether physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, religious, social, cultural... all tied taut to its fiery core.