/lit/ - Literature

>>22590995
Ovid because it has 4.08 grade compared to Kafka which has 3.85

>>22590995
Ovid

>kafka has 10x more readers
brainlets

>>22590995
Kafka, dude. The guy turns into a freaking bug hahah and he only cares about being late to work! Duuude you should read it it’s so funny

>>22591047
Kafka's Metamorphosis is like 90 pages and can be read in an hour and a half. Ovid's Metamorphoses is like 800 pages. Of course Kafka has 10x the amount of readers

>>22590995
Only one is titled Metamorphosis

>>22590995
Depends
If you want something you can finish in one sitting, take Kafka
If you want something you could spend years poring over and meticulously digesting, go with Ovid

>>22592040
based

>>22591180
this post made me lol :)
And because of that I'm gonna read it.
But personally I prefer Ovid's Metamorphoses
because it's filled with rape and I'm always horny.
Especially when a woman with godlike beauty gets raped
by a lowly beast I love that, reminds me of Melody Marks
getting fucked by an old Japanese.

>>22591180

>>22590995
Ovid likely. I own both though.

>>22592040
Die Verwandlung you mean?

>>22593435

>>22590995
the one by Playboi Carti

>>22593596
μεταμορφώσεις you mean?

>>22591002
kafkian post

>>22590995
Ovid. Simply because influence.

>>22590995
Apuleius

>>22592040
The "Metamorphosis" title comes from a french translator, in reality the literal translation of "Die Verwandlung" is "The transformation"

>>22594207
Kafkaesque, even!

>>22594401
So neither of them are metamorphosis? :(

>>22591002
based observer

This happened to me 2 weeks ago, no bs
>Walk into bookshop
>Can't find Metamorphoses
>Ask the shop-person if they have it
>He squints
>Metamorphoses... Kafka?
>Ovid
>He looks flustered
>Ovid of course s-sorry I'm new
>Hurried typing
>Y-yes we do have it over there
I didn't really believe in Greek elitism but every time I've gone to purchase anything Greek they've treated me like a higher form of being. It's so bizarre, anyone else get this too?

ENTER

>>22597705
I work in a bookshop, it’s embarrassing when people ask you for books you aren’t familiar with. There’s a degree of assumed knowledge imposed upon you, and rightfully so, but it can make you feel a bit of a retard if you get caught out. Funnily enough, it usually happens when people ask for contemporary crime or romance slop I’ve never heard of.

Plus, if it anything like my shop, the guy working there will get asked about Kafka almost every day.

>>22597723
That's fair, but even yesterday I was asking about Hesiod and the guy damn near started calling me sir. I dunno maybe it's just me but the dynamic feels different post mention.

>>22597723
Why embarrassing? There are dozens of millions of books, how can you be expected to know them all?
I always assume bookshop staff aren't familiar when I ask for help. Part of this is from experience and part because I know I have niche interests. Once I meet someone who knows what I'm interested in and who works at a store that actually carries it I try to form some sort of brief friendly bond, even of just a customer-employee one.

>>22597775

Because most people aren’t like you. Most people walk in the shop and assume the staff are literary encyclopaedias. I’ve had people come in and say “I can’t remember the title of the book or the authors name, but the plot is like X, I was wondering if you stock it?’ And when you tell them you have no idea what it is they’re looking for based on such minimal information as a half remembered plot summary, they look at you like you’re inept at your job. The general public are retarded.

>>22597817
kek, reminds me of bartending. people rambling up to the bar and asking for a drink either by a poorly remembered description or by the name of a specialty cocktail they had once in a bar somewhere then get indignant when I don't know what a 'rusty knuckle' is. my favorite was
>hey can you make this drink I had one time, it had tequila and lime and had salt on the edge of the glass
>margarita
>no thats not it
this was in a mexican bar

>>22597705
Ovid was roman though.

>>22597866
It wasn't relevant but I bought it with a few greeks. Although I could argue it's a romanisation of greek myths... I won't. Because I can't be bothered

>>22590995
I never read Ovid's Metamorphoses, but can anyone explain to me why it is so revered and what makes it worth reading? Isn't it just a compilation of myths you can already read elsewhere in their original, more fleshed out form? Like for instance, what is the point of reading Ovid's retelling of Jason and Medea if I could just read the Argonautica instead, which predates Ovid by 800 years?

>>22597710
nooooooo

>>22597931
>can anyone explain to me why it is so revered and what makes it worth reading?
It's because Ovid was an excellent poet in his own right. People get so lost in the weeds when they're told to start with the greeks that they bore down to absolute barebones basics without interacting with the actual substance of greek/roman culture and its impact on later generations.

When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, he wasn't simply inspired by the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, he was inspired by Ovid. Read fucking Ovid.

>>22590995
I don't get the deal with Kafka. It's just a book about depression and inaction forcing others to finally fend for themselves and stop being pieces of shit. Like okay, but that's not a new idea to me. Nice one.

>>22597931
>Isn't it just a compilation of myths you can already read elsewhere in their original, more fleshed out form?
No, there are several of which Ovid is the only or primary source
>I never read Ovid's Metamorphoses
why don't you read it and then post?

>>22590995
My diary desu (Im trans)

>>22591187
Ovids is a decent 400 pager stop revelling in being a retard and fucking read the thing its the crown jewel of Rome

I think even Kafka would admit Ovid's better.

>>22591002
fbpt

>>22590995
Ovid is timeless and foundational, Kafka was a petulant teenager promoted by co-ethnics.

>>22591002
Kafka has more than ten times as many reviews though, so the margin of error is significantly lower.

>>22600417
>margin of error
It's a review aggregate, not a fucking science experiment. How can a personal subjective review be in error?

>>22601236
If a book only gets one review and that review is 5-stars, it is a 5-star book. The more people that rate a book, the higher the likelihood is that its rating will drop as people who don't already know they'll like it read it.

>>22599556
>the aeneid
>divine comedy
>decameron
all are superior

>>22597710
Why she do it?

>>22602543
Why not

>>22591002
based goodreads enthusiast

>>22602410
Not Roman

>>22597710
This is the only Metamorphosis I've read.

>>22590995
The version of The Metamorphosis that I own had some song/poem in the book being sung by muses or some shit framed /written like a rap or hip hop song and it was so fucking jarring that I dropped the motherfucker without finishing it.

Whoever the bitch was who compiled that version I hope she gets terminal fucking brain cancer. Never been more put off by a translation in my entire fucking LIFE holy shit.

>>22590995
Metamorphoses is better because it has multiple

>>22603991
Metamorphoses I mean

>>22603991
Why did you buy some weird modern translation of Ovid in the first place? You'd have to go out of your way to pick a translation like that, because all the established translations from the various paperback publishers like Penguin, Oxford, Signet etc are cheaper and more readily available.

>>22604326
Dunno man, just picked it up off of a Barnes and Noble bookshelf ages ago. Didn't think about it all that much at the time.

>>22603991
Kek. What translation was it?

>>22604682
It's this one

>>22603991
give me the souce i need the laugh

>>22604785
I think I actually threw it away, sorry.

>>22604719
Bernard Knox attached his name to such a bad translation? I love that dude's insight and forewords in the Fagles Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. What the fuck, that's surprising and disappointing. Or maybe you are exaggerating just how bad that translation actually is and it just sounded like a rap song in your head, but wasn't actually meant to sound like that by the translator.

>>22604799
Man, I don't remember the exact part of the book where they did it, and I'm too fucking lazy to reread through the fucking thing to find the exact part where they did it... Believe whatever you want. I know what I saw.

>>22604719
>A New Translation

>>22590995
I’ve read Kafka’s metamorphosis and it remember making me cry lol. I’ve bought the Ovid’s metamorphosis but i have yet to read it. Is it any good?

>>22604799
I bet it was just written in couplets and his first thought went to niggers for some reason

>>22605850
No, it used language like "yo, here we go" and shit like that. I'm not even fucking kidding.

>>22605856
Please, grit your teeth and dig it out for us.

>>22605856
Pretty sure you dreamed this and it's not real.

>>22594156
wrong language retard

>>22604719
>>22605908
>>22606437
>it's real

>>22606740
Ladies and gentlemen: the absolute state of western translations in 2020+3

>>22606740
INCLUDE ME IN THE SCREENCAP

>>22606740
>Nothin's gonna save you 'cuz your songs are lame
>And the way you sing 'em is really a shame

>>22603991
>>22606740
Holy shit, I understand why you dropped it now.

>>22591047
>15x more readers
>15x more reviews
>6x more editions
>200x publishing date
Ovid bros...

>>22606740
THANK YOU based anon. I KNEW I wasn't fucking wrong about this. Read and weep motherfuckers.

>>22606740
I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS I HATE NIGGERS

>>22606740
>Charles Martin (born 1942, New York City) is a poet, critic and translator
>Ovid; Martin, Charles; Knox, Bernard (INT). Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.
What the fuck. This is not a woman or a millennial. This wasn't translated in the 2010s or 2020s. It's a man who was in his 60s when he translated this book and by all accounts he was a well respected translator and scholar. The translation of choice used by a publisher who has a great reputation for a lot of classic texts. It could have been you or me who picked up this translation.

>>22606740
What the fuck is this

>>22597705
>Greek

>>22597931
Ovid's versions are the definitive versions that defined the modern perception of many of those myths.
But basically the main reason you read is to read Ovid, not the myths.

>>22597931
Ovid is good in his own right as anons have already said, but there is also benefits to reading a myth condensed down into 10-20 pages instead of book length. Ovid hits on a lot of myths

>>22607083
I suppose anons memory was faulty.

>>22608169
I could of sworn it was translated by a gash. Maybe the introduction/foreword was written by a gash? I haven't read it for years now.

>>22606740
I would drop it too, kek

>>22606740
best thread up right now

>>22606740
Yup, here it is too, now that I know which section to look in. Book V: Contests of Arms and Song, Minerva Visits the Muses

>>22597710
Anon...

>>22593435
A cockroach is an insect that is flat in shape with large legs, and Gregor is anything but flat: he is convex on both sides, belly and back, and his legs are small. He approaches a cockroach in only one respect: his coloration is brown. That is all. Apart from this he has a tremendous convex belly divided into segments and a hard rounded back suggestive of wing cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded and then may carry the beetle for miles and miles in a blundering flight. Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.) Further, he has strong mandibles. He uses these organs to turn the key in a lock while standing erect on his hind legs, on his third pair of legs (a strong little pair), and this gives us the length of his body, which is about three feet long. In the course of the story he gets gradually accustomed to using his new appendages—his feet, his feelers. This brown, convex, dog-sized beetle is very broad.

In the original German text the old charwoman calls him Mistkäfer, a "dung beetle." It is obvious that the good woman is adding the epithet only to be friendly. He is not, technically, a dung beetle. He is merely a big beetle. (I must add that neither Gregor nor Kafka saw that beetle any too clearly.)

>>22611011
I love this nigga like you wouldn’t believe (Nabo not Kafka)

>>22597931
Because the actual narrative events are just one single component in among many contained inside a work literature? Good fucking lord you people are retards. Might as well ask why should you read any book that isn't the epic of Gilgamesh.

>>22607083
A combination of modern academia's disdain for the west and the typical "how do you do, fellow kids" of any liberal who didn't grow conservative with time and age.

>>22590995
you are BEGGING for someone to say 177013, are you not?

>>22591002
it has also only 69k ratings as opposed to 969k ratings. It's much harder for the score to remain high while the count of ratings rise therefore Kafka wins
>t. observer

>>22612165
I was not, in fact >>22597705 was posted to reddit, and nearly every comment was mentioning that.