Metamorphoses, by Ovid

Angry, vengeful gods. Hapless, tortured humans. Hundreds of stories ranging over thousands of years, from a giant flood which destroyed the world to Caesar’s diefiacation. Ovid’s Metamorphoses certainly covers a lot of territory and a tremenous amount of drama, but is it good narrative?

Recall that Richard Cohen, author of Writer's Mind © 1995, defines a good narrative as containing five elements:

1. We care about the character.
   
2. Something happens to him or her.
   
3. The thing that happens is significant; it makes a different in the character’s life.
   
4. The thing that happens is not a single event but a sequence.
   
5. The sequence is narrated; it is recreated by a writer.

These narrative components should seem expected and there should be surprises. Well, with stories of angry gods turning people into animals or trees, the stories are always surprising! And, because the gods are causing all this, anything is possible, so nothing could be considered unexpected or misplaced. What’s left is whether we care about the characters, whether something significant happens to them that makes a difference in their life, and whether the events take place as a sequence.

Ultimately, the stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses are about humans living in a hositle, changing, uncertain, unpredictible, confusing world. Certainly we care about what happens to the characters in Ovid’s work, because we care about what happens to us and why. Ovid is deft at describing the reasons behind the gods’ actions, the emotions and interactions that drive them to their acts and he narrates this as a sequence: a human acts, a god gets angry and plans to harm the human, another god or human may intervene to a limited extent, and then the human walks into the trap, helpless, tortured, and forever changed.

Over and over, Ovid expertely narrates stories of why things happen to humans. Some of his stories explain are less familiar to us today, such as the Greek metaphorical origin of islands and animals. Some are very familiar, such as Icarus who flew too close to the sun or Jason who hunted the golden fleece. Throughout, Ovid describes events very vividly and, even, emotionally. In Book 8, he describes first the horrible death Meleager is made to suffer by his goddess mother:

And Meleager,
Far-off, knew nothing of this, but felt his vitals
Burning with fever, tried to conquer the pain,
As a man should, by fortitude, and felt the pain the deepest
In that his death seemed, like a coward's, bloodless,
Caused by no wound…. The fire burns hotter,
The pains more fierce, and then they die and dwindle,
And fire and pain go out, and the spirit with them,
Out to thin air, as the white ashes settle
Over the orange embers.

Immediately following, Ovid offers a very descriptive and intense passage of grief and mourning. Citizens of the city Calydon and family members mourn the death of their hero Meleager, even scooping up the ashes of his body and pressing them to their bodies. Finally, the goddess is satisfied and gives two of Meleager’s sisters release by turning them into birds (one of the many metamorphoses of this work):

         Calydon,
High Calydon, lies low. Young men and old ones,
Leaders and people, mourn, and women tear
Their hair and beat their breasts, and the old father
Groveling on the ground, pours the dust over
His hoary hair, and blames himself for living
So much too long. And Meleager's mother
Deals her last act of vengeance, driving the knife
Through her own heart. No poet has the power
To tell the story truly, those poor sisters
Praying, for what? beating and bruising their breasts,
Beyond all thought of decency, and while the body,
Remains, fondling the body, kissing the body,
Kissing the funeral pyre, and when the body
Is ashes, scooping up the ashes, pressing
The ashes close to their hearts, throwing themselves
Face-down on the mound of the grave, drenching the
gravestone
With tears that flood the letters of his name,
Until Diana, satisfied, made feathers
Spring from their bodies and spread long wings over
Their arms, and gave them horny beaks, and loosed them
Into the air…

In these moving passages, Ovid captures the intensity of mourning, the ravages of death, and the vengeful nature of gods. Ovid writes as carefully throughout, making his narrative a vivid presence in the reader’s mind. His stories are interesting for the starkness of their presentation, the eventful and purposeful narration, and the significance the stories have for all of us living in a changing, dangerous world.