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Main description: Widely praised for his translations of Boethius and Ariosto, esteemed translator David R. Slavitt here returns to Ovid, once again bringing to the contemporary ear the spirited, idiomatic, audacious charms of this master poet. The love here described is of the anguished, ruinous kind, like a sickness, and Ovid prescribes cures. Biographical note: SlavittDavid R.: David R. Slavitt is a poet and the translator of more than ninety works of fiction, poetry, and drama.DirdaMichael: Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning literary journalist and the author of the memoir An Open Book and of four collections of essays: Readings, Bound to Please, Book by Book, and Classics for Pleasure. Main description: Widely praised for his recent translations of Boethius and Ariosto, David R. Slavitt returns to Ovid, once again bringing to the contemporary ear the spirited, idiomatic, audacious charms of this master poet. The love described here is the anguished, ruinous kind, for which Ovid was among the first to find expression. In the Amores, he testifies to the male experience, and in the companion Heroides—through a series of dramatic monologues addressed to absent lovers—he imagines how love goes for women. 0You think she is ardent with you? So was she ardent with him,0 cries Oenone to Paris. Sappho, revisiting the forest where she lay with Phaon, sighs, 0The place / without your presence is just another place. / You were what made it magic.0 The Remedia Amoris sees love as a sickness, and offers curative advice: 0The beginning is your best chance to resist0; 0Try to avoid onions, / imported or domestic. And arugula is bad. / Whatever may incline your body to Venus / keep away from.0 The voices of men and women produce a volley of extravagant laments over love’s inconstancy and confusions, as though elegance and vigor of expression might compensate for heartache.Though these love poems come to us across millennia, Slavitt’s translations, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda, ensure that their sentiments have not faded with the passage of time. They delight us with their wit, even as we weep a little in recognition.
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