The Metamorphoses of Ovid
Translated by Allen Mandelbaum
Harcourt Brace, 559 pages, $40
The Fables of Avianus
Translated by David R. Slavitt
Johns Hopkins, 55 pages, $19.95
The myths retold by Ovid and the Aesopian fables reworked by Babrius, Phaedrus and Avianus have been as important to our civilization as the greatest works of ancient tragedy and philosophy. In the wilderness of North America, Aeschylus and Plato had comparatively few readers; however, early Americans did like to read stories of the ancient world, especially if they could be used to convey a moral message. Next to the Bible, Plutarch’s “Lives” is said to have been the book most settlers took with them on their trek westward. When Sam Houston went to live with the Cherokee, he was reading Homer’s “Iliad” and was convinced that his Indian friends were the reincarnation of the heroes of the Trojan War.
Ovid made his way to the new world at an early date. The first important English book written in North America was the version of the “Metamorphoses” composed by George Sandys while he was treasurer of the Virginia colony (1621-25). For over a thousand years, the “Metamorphoses” was the classical past, and it may have had more influence on European (and American) art and literature than any other work.
The title refers to the transformation that concludes each of the tales that comprise this vast handbook of ancient mythology. But the “Metamorphoses” is not really a handbook, any more than Dante’s “Commedia” is a collection of stories about heaven and hell. In themselves the tales are beautifully told, and they are stitched together with such art as to have the force of epic poetry.
Painters, too, have lifted from Ovid, and one of Breughel’s masterpieces depicts Ovid’s story of the flight of Daedalus and Icarus. Here it is in Allen Mandelbaum’s clear and accurate translation:
“A fisherman, who with his pliant rod/ was angling there below, caught sight of them:/ and then a shepherd leaning on his staff,/ and, too, a peasant leaning on his plow/ saw them and were dismayed: they thought that these/ must surely be some gods, sky-voyaging.”
Mandelbaum has struck a nice balance between the literal and lifeless prose-renderings used as trots and the flightier attempts to create an original work of English poetry. The original is, however, more graphic. The Latin poet does not waste space on the pedestrian word “fisherman” and concentrates on the image of “someone catching fish with quivering (not just “pliant”) rod.” Also, Mandelbaum’s “dismayed” sets the wrong tone. Ovid’s “obstipuit” suggests open-mouthed astonishment-gawking-more than faintness of heart. Quibbles aside, this is an accurate rendering of Ovid into correct blank verse, and Mandelbaum’s version should be appreciated by Western Civ professors looking for a “teachable”-that is, a faithful and entertaining-translation.
But how well does Mandelbaum’s new version stand up against the competition? Arthur Golding’s rollicking translation into ballad meters has the virtues of the Elizabethan period; and if Golding was a lesser Elizabethan, that puts him at a higher rank than most poets of this century. Dryden, who translated some parts of the work, found Sandys too Latinate, but there are times when we can hear in Sandys’ version the strong music of 17th Century English poetry.
Here is Tereus falling in love at first sight: “This sight in Tereus such a burning breeds/ As when we fire a heap of hoary reeds;/ Or catching flames to sun-dry’d stubble thrust.”
After this, Mandelbaum seems insipid: “That sight was quite enough; the flame of love/ had taken Tereus, as if one had set/ afire ripe grain, dry leaves, or a haystack.”
The same lines were given in quiet melody in Horace Gregory’s somewhat free 1950s version: “With one look at her/ Tereus was in flames-the kind of fire/ that sweeps through corn, dry leaves, or autumn hay/ heaped in a barn.”
There is, in fact, a “Metamorphoses” for nearly every taste. After Golding and Sandys, there was the early Augustan version done piecemeal by Dryden, Addison, Pope and others. Since World War II, verse translations have appeared from the hands of A.E. Watts (tedious and clumsy), Rolfe Humphries (workmanlike but uninspired), Charles Boer (an avant-garde modernization), A.D. Melville (accurate but quaint and stilted) and Gregory (genuine, if languid poetry).
Mandelbaum’s poetry is better than most, but it is not so good as Gregory’s-and not in the same league with Sandys or Golding. Part of the problem is tone. Ovid was pointed, elegant and a little bit arch on questions of sex. The effect is sometimes like that of Don Juan in Sunday school, but Mandelbaum approaches the text with reverence.
In reading this translation I was reminded of a student-a West Pointer-who returned the copy of the “Metamorphoses” I had lent him, complaining: “This man sneers at everything, even the Emperor Augustus.” Like my student, Mandelbaum appreciates the poet’s serious mission, but he misses the mockery and the brilliance.
Finally, there is Mandelbaum’s mechanical versification. The masters of iambic verse all knew how to vary the pauses, alter the weight of their lines and rearrange the beats. There were many purposes to all the fine tuning: to avoid monotony, to highlight the run-over of sense and make it seem natural and to tailor the line to the content. In these matters, Mandelbaum is a beginner.
If Mandelbaum’s virtues are diligence, accuracy and seriousness, his opposite number as a translator must be David Slavitt. Both have produced a considerable body of translation-Mandelbaum has done Virgil’s “Aeneid” and Dante’s “Commedia,” while Slavitt has set his sights lower on Virgil’s “Eclogues” and “Georgics” and Ovid’s whining exile poetry.
Accuracy and seriousness are among the least of Slavitt’s concerns. He is, in all his work, a post-modern hipster doing be-bop versions of the classics.
The effect on professional classicists is something akin to seeing “Julius Caesar” in drag, but Slavitt has never pretended to be translating the classics. He is, instead, responding to them as a late-20th Century poet, and his versions should be judged more as original works than as scholarly translations.
In Avianus, a late-Latin writer who versified the fables of Babrius, Slavitt was looking for a writer weak enough to impose upon-he calls him, with only a hint of unfairness, “the P.D.Q. Bach of Latin poetry.” The fables are themselves interesting enough, and in Slavitt’s parodies they have an odd way of reflecting upon contemporary reality. Here is Slavitt introducing the celebrated ant who worked while the grasshopper sang:
“. . .taking a page/ from his book, learn how to do likewise, think ahead, and understand how life/ is neither a game, lark, nor bowl of cherries, but a brigand who lurks with his long knife,/ ready to pounce on any who let down their guard even for a moment.”
Slavitt’s version of Avianus has the pleasure of an inside joke, and anyone who has enjoyed his earlier efforts will like what he has done with these fables. They are great fun to read.
Rumor has it that Slavitt is doing his own version of the “Metamorphoses.” I hope this is the case, because Mandelbaum and Slavitt, and their quite different responses to ancient poetry, illustrate the variety and richness of a tradition still clinging tenaciously to life.
