Widely praised for his recent translations of Boethius and
Ariosto, David R. Slavitt returns to Ovid, once again bringing to
the contemporary ear the spirited, idiomatic, audacious charms of
this master poet.
The love described here is the anguished, ruinous kind, for
which Ovid was among the first to find expression. In the "Amores,"
he testifies to the male experience, and in the companion
"Heroides" through a series of dramatic monologues addressed to
absent lovers he imagines how love goes for women. You think she is
ardent with you? So was she ardent with him, cries Oenone to Paris.
Sappho, revisiting the forest where she lay with Phaon, sighs, The
place / without your presence is just another place. / You were
what made it magic. The "Remedia Amoris" sees love as a sickness,
and offers curative advice: The beginning is your best chance to
resist; Try to avoid onions, / imported or domestic. And arugula is
bad. / Whatever may incline your body to Venus / keep away from.
The voices of men and women produce a volley of extravagant laments
over love s inconstancy and confusions, as though elegance and
vigor of expression might compensate for heartache.
Though these love poems come to us across millennia, Slavitt s
translations, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda,
ensure that their sentiments have not faded with the passage of
time. They delight us with their wit, even as we weep a little in
recognition.
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