/lit/ - Literature

John Ciardi has a great verse translation - try that. You'll like it.

As for other translations, this is an old /lit/ classic image.

Ovid ovid ovid

>>1695409
Shakespeare's version of Ovid is the one on the far left. It's worth a read even if you've read The Metamorphoses in a different translation.

Here's a /lit/ classic image comparing translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Choose whichever translation appeals to you. You'll get something different out of each one.

>>1580560
forgot the pic

Fuck yeah Ovid!

Here's a comparison of translations

According to this image which floated around on early /lit/, Pound thinks Golding's Ovid is the best work of English poetry ever.

That disqualifies him as a poet, an author, and a human being.

(That's not to say Golding's Ovid translation isn't good.)

Ovid, buddy. You're going to love the Metamorphoses.

Ovid's Metamorphoses is all you really need. It was written in Latin by a Roman but deals entirely with the Greek mythos. Most of the stories you are familiar with that aren't from the Iliad or the Odyssey will come from this book.

Pick your favorite translation from the list.

Ovid. He was Roman but his Metamorphoses is one of the most cited sources of Greek myth.

>>1003543
This this this this.

Here's Ovid in many English meters. Where is your tier system now?

Ovid's Metamorphoses

ITT: Actual classics

I want to get into the Greek plays but don't know where to start. Anyone have advice and preferred translations?

If you have some spare time can you post the first paragraph or so, up until the sea is created, so we can compare to this list? There was a cool thread once that had about 20 different translations but I didn't save anything but the pic.

ITT: Ovid's Metamorphoses

The pic is the invocation of the Muse (Proem, as some editions call it) and a stanza or so of the Creation section in four different translations.

The most interesting translation is Arthur Golding's from 1567. This is the edition of Metamorphoses that Shakespeare himself read. Some lines in his plays and poetry echo Golding's Ovid nearly word for word. Ezra Pound thought it the best example of narrative, and generally most beautiful book, in English.

Two direct translations, both in verse, are from Rolfe Humphries and another from Charles Martin. Martin's is mostly in blank verse, which he found to be a good analogue to Ovid's dactylic hexameter.

The last translation is from Ted Hughes' adapation, Tales of Ovid. It's the book that got me interested in poetry and made me fall in love with myth. Hughes is a master of language, action, and imagery. His Metamorphoses is not translated line for line but the feeling and story hits as hard as anything Ovid wrote.

If you have a copy of the Metamorphoses in another translation not represented here, please add the text in this thread. Let's see how translators handle one of the greatest storytellers in the history of written language.