Amores. Metamorphoses. Tristia

24 hrs. 15 min.

Poetry

Language Russian

Author Publius Ovidius Naso

Narrator Vyacheslav Gerasimov

Description

OVID, Publius Ovidius Naso (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC — AD 17) — Roman poet. In the late 8th year AD, Augustus exiled him to the city of Tomis (the port of Constanța in modern Romania), where he later died. Not being in opposition to Augustus’s political regime, Ovid rejected some forms of his ideological policy (respectively, rhetoric, idealization of the past). By cultivating individualist—mainly erotic—poetry, he did not meet the requirements of official propaganda. For the first period of Ovid’s work (until AD 1–2), love themes are characteristic. In “Love Elegies” (“Amores”) he develops the tradition of Tibullus and Propertius; the poet’s and his beloved’s masks are not biographically reliable, and the motives of erotic elegy provide material for refined rhetorical development of the love theme. The work “Heroides” contains messages that mythological heroines write to their lovers or husbands; passion, longing, jealousy, and despair of abandoned women are depicted with psychological subtlety. Having established patterns of behavior among lovers, in the well-known poems “The Art of Love” (“Ars amatoria”) and “Remedies for Love” (“Remedia amoris”) Ovid gives instruction on matters of love, introduces scenes from Roman life, and depicts the customs of the “golden youth.” In the second period (AD 2–8) of his creative work, Ovid turns to major works in the spirit of Hellenistic “learned” poetry. The poem “Metamorphoses” (Russian translation 1874–76, 1887) is conceived as an epic and contains about 250 mythological and folklore tales about the transformations of people into animals, plants, constellations, and even stones. Having already lost its religious content, the myths become for Ovid a mirror of human life, and love and love suffering become one of its most important driving forces. On this basis, he attempts to create a “continuous song”—a narrative of human fates, their delusions, misfortunes, and deaths, sometimes leading to a merging with nature. Thus, through the transformation of one form of existence of matter into another, the equilibrium disrupted in the world is restored. The unfinished poem “Fasti” (“Fasti”; calendar-month almanac) tells, in chronological order (by months and days), about the origins of festivals, historical events, and the origins of cults and rites. The foundation of the narrative consists of old Roman legends. In the third period (AD 8–17) Ovid wrote elegies and letters connected with exile—“Tristia” (“Tristia”) and “Epistles from Pontus” (“Epistulae ex Ponto”); their content includes complaints and memories of the past, descriptions of harsh nature, longing for Rome, and requests for clemency. In this way, in exile, Ovid creates a new genre of Roman poetry—a subjective elegy not tied to the love theme.