This afternoon. I paired an audible read of Ian Johnston’s translation of Ovid’ Metamorphoses:
With a read along using this close but different translation: Metamorphoses Book 1, Metamorphoses Book 2.
Only midway through Book 2, the website has all 15 books from this classic tale.
I’m two hours in, with 14 1/2 more to go … and I cannot wait to get back into it. Had it not been for my need to tidy up and find something suitable to eat, I would have never hit pause.
Favourites thus far:
- Jove turning the radiant Io into a beautiful cow, to hide her from Juno, and Io’s transformation back to human form.
2. Poor Callisto. Her assault in the forest. Her banishment by Diana. Her involuntary shape shifting into a bear. And finally how she and her hunter son became constellations in the night sky.
It’s my kind of weekend quiet: Reclining comfortably as my mind follows characters, mythology and scenes from an ‘other’ time, one that continues to treat and tease the imagination.
Both the audible and text are translations, of course. But both pay homage to a Roman poet who made public his Metamorphoses some 2,022 years ago.
And in my selfish world, he did it JUST for me.
Gratias tibi ago Publius Ovidius Naso.
Happy Sunday.