Les Métamorphoses

by Ovid, Ovide, Georges Lafaye (Editor)

Les Métamorphoses d'Ovide (43 av. J.- C.-17 ap.) sont pour la poésie latine une sorte de livre des records, de longueur (11995 vers évoquant ou narrant 250 métamorphoses en quelque 150 épisodes), mais aussi de variété des genres, des styles et des procédés narratifs. Couvrant toute l'histoire du monde, du chaos originel au temps d'Auguste où écrit le poète, sorte d'œuvre-univers dont la structure labyrinthique fait un véritable et fascinant palais des mirages, « Légende dorée » ou « Vatican du paganisme », « Mille et une nuits de l'Antiquité » elles s'ouvrent sur un récit de la Genèse et s'achèvent, après un long et passionnant prêche philosophique prononcé par Pythagore (569-475 av. J.- C.), sur la promesse de divinisation de l'empereur régnant et d'immortalité du poète, après avoir offert au lecteur, sans jamais l'ennuyer, une profusion de récits épiques et de contes burlesques, édifiants, émouvants ou galants dont la postérité n'a cessé de recycler les inépuisables joyaux.
Olivier Sers a traduit Ovide, entreprise sans précédent, vers pour vers, en 11995 alexandrins classiques restituant fidèlement le phrasé et la frappe poétique des hexamètres latins. Pour la première fois le lecteur moderne des Métamorphoses est placé dans la situation même du lecteur antique.

843 pages, Paperback

Published May 12, 2009

About the author

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horatius, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life. Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.
Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters. He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti. His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.

Reviews

[Sjoerd Touwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Retrospectief meer waardering gekregen voor al die Latijn en Grieks lessen

[Doris]

J'ai fini ce livre, ce poeme en vers ovidiens, poeme latin d'une antiquite plutot tardive, de la cour de l'empereur Auguste du premier siecle d'ere chretien. It is difficult to speak namely to write about it since a lot of ink and of more inspired persons than me has been poured and who tried their pen and with success in their attempt to render the Ovidian world and their experience of it in their own writing sensibility and comprehension of this gem of poetic, historic and mythic texture. It is dazzling to read this immense poem in 15 Cantos ,unfinished, which are for themes Metamorphoses from the origin of Greco-Roman world taking it to the foundation of Rome by Aeneas. Work inspired by fortunes and misfortunes of the poet himself in the court of his emperor transposed under disguises of mythic figures lascivious and grabbing habits of the Romans rich patriarchs tougether with the court. But the poem is more than this It is a pledge of Art, a pledge, a cry of liberty , of recognition, of the wound that exists in man's or woman's interior , of their secret which remains under the cover of their their metamorphoses which came as punishement or as a refuge against the violence of the body, preserving and keeping intact the victim's despair and fear.

Work of beauty and dream in front of uncomprehended universe, both natural and human, it has never ceased to be a marvel,a wonder and a source of infinite pleasure for long and long periods in literary and human history.The Middle ages took hold of these poems making them their own cry of feminine liberty ot the poet's , to change her life of brutality of unwanted marriage , taking refuge in their metamorphoses and the imaginary they provided in the lovely bird of Phoenix which under the pen of Chretien de Troyes became the feminine Fenice, lovely woman who in the pen of Chretien de Troyes became the supreme locus amoenus of the lovely garden-tomb where time is arrested for lovers to enjoy under cover of death prepared as potion of death by the nurse from Thessalie.

Also Orphey and Euridice were immortalised in an English poem of Sir Orpheo in 14 th century, continuing thus this courteous dream in the garden of love Beautiful poems still fresh in their splendour keeping preserved secrets of life , death and creation and Art and Memory and Pain of Time passage.

Epoustouflante aventure , un voyage mythique ou songeur, dream- like which has become traumatic and frightening in Gothic and symbolist literature and in our XXth and XXst centuries as voyages into the hell of traunmatic and personal experience Great literature. Kafkian experience .

Supremelz artistic and poetic work of art

[François Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficile à lire, je n'ai pas terminé.