Ovid’s historical impact has been vast. In her new book “Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds,” Marina Warner explores the theme of transformation in Yeats and Nabokov, and traces Ovid’s influence on the likes of Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare. His stories find vivid expression in the works of artists like Raphael, Rembrandt, Chagall and Picasso. For “Metamorphing,” a new exhibit at London’s Science Museum co-curated by Warner, artist Paula Rego created a new work called “Metamorphosis,” inspired by Kafka’s story about a bureaucrat who turns into a cockroach. The show, which runs through January, also includes drawings of mutant insects found near nuclear power plants.
The late British poet Ted Hughes sparked this latest Ovid revival with his 1997 “Tales From Ovid,” a loose and very dark translation of the original. Curious writers and artists began scouring dusty library shelves for Ovid’s 15 volumes of Latin verse, and soon fell under their sway. Jeffrey Eugenides’s “Middlesex,” in which a young girl is transformed into a man, refers to the myth of Tiresias, who in Ovid’s account underwent the opposite change. Another recent book, “Ovid Metamorphosed,” testifies to the poet’s cross-cultural appeal: it contains short stories based on his Latin myths by writers from the United States, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada, India and France.
September 11 made Ovid seem more relevant than ever. When Mary Zimmerman’s play “Metamorphoses” opened on Broadway less than a month after the World Trade Center attacks, audiences were deeply moved by its depiction of love, death and human resilience. The play became a hit, earning Zimmerman a Tony award. Hughes suggested in his introduction to “Tales From Ovid” that the poet–who finished “Metamorphoses” in A.D. 7, as the Roman Empire began to transform–was perfectly placed to comprehend “the psychological gulf that opens at the end of an era.” Warner agrees that his tales of change are more likely to resonate during times of uncertainty. Ovid captured the intrinsic pleasure of escaping from the boundaries of life and the laws of nature–escapes that can seem more necessary than ever today.
