Ovid's Erotic Poems

"Amores" and "Ars Amatoria"

Ovid, Len Krisak

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780812209921
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Colecciones literarias antiguas y clásicas

The most sophisticated and daring poetic ironist of the early Roman Empire, Publius Ovidius Naso, is perhaps best known for his oft-imitated Metamorphoses. But the Roman poet also wrote lively and lewd verse on the subjects of love, sex, marriage, and adultery—a playful parody of the earnest erotic poetry traditions established by his literary ancestors. The Amores, Ovid's first completed book of poetry, explores the conventional mode of erotic elegy with some subversive and silly twists: the poetic narrator sets up a lyrical altar to an unattainable woman only to knock it down by poking fun at her imperfections. Ars Amatoria takes the form of didactic verse in which a purportedly mature and experienced narrator instructs men and women alike on how to best play their hands at the long con of love. Ovid's Erotic Poems offers a modern English translation of the Amores and Ars Amatoria that retains the irreverent wit and verve of the original. Award-winning poet Len Krisak captures the music of Ovid's richly textured Latin meters through rhyming couplets that render the verse as playful and agile as it was meant to be. Sophisticated, satirical, and wildly self-referential, Ovid's Erotic Poems is not just a wickedly funny send-up of romantic and sexual mores but also a sharp critique of literary technique and poetic convention.

Amores

Epigram of the Poet Himself

Five little books of Naso’s once, now we are three—

The way the author wished his work to be.

So even if you don’t enjoy as you read on,

That reading should hurt less—with two books gone.

BOOK I

I.1

Prepared for war, I set the weapon of my pen
To paper, matching meter, arms, and men
In six feet equal to the task. Then Cupid snatched
A foot away, laughing at lines mis-matched.
I asked him who had made him Master of My Song:	5
“Wild little boy, we poets all belong
To the Muses. You don’t see Venus bear the shield
Minerva wears, or blonde Minerva wield
The lover’s torch. And who would want the woods to yield
To Ceres, or Diana rule the field?	10
Is long-haired Phoebus meant to march on pike parade
While Mars shows how the Aonian lyre’s played?
Your power, boy, runs every single thing in sight,
So why this all-devouring appetite
For more? Or must your writ run clear to Helicon	15
And up each string Apollo plays upon?
My first, fierce line: how well that virgin verse once served me—
Until the simpering second one unnerved me!
But I don’t have the matter for those lighter stresses—
No girl—or boy—with long and comely tresses.”	20
Then I was done, and Cupid fetched an arrow fletched
For me (since on its shaft my name was etched).
He bent that reflex bow of his against one knee,
Saying what burden he had meant for me:
“Receive this barb, my bard.” Well, Cupid is the best	25
Of archers, so that bolt burns in my breast,
While six feet rise and five pronounce my clear decline
In elegiacs. Farewell, epic line.
And bind your golden locks with myrtle from the sea,
Eleven-footed Muse of Elegy.	30

I.2

Because it’s stone, I ask who’s ...