Ovid (43 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) was a postclassical poet of the Roman Empire. He is renowned for his ability to meld the reality of the waking world with dream-like elements in his prose and poetry. Depending on the source, scholars refer to Ovid as being either the last of the poets of the golden age, or the first of the poets of the silver age. He was banished to the city of Tomis in 11 C.E. for unknown reasons.
In a letter written during his exile, he described the agony that refused to leave him, even while asleep, and the suppressed wishes that made themselves known in his nightmares. In his great work Metamorphoses, he devotes a section to the description of the “Dream of Erysichthon.” Erysichthon is cursed, doomed to starve no matter what he eats or how much. In the end, it causes him to devour the entire world, and this is followed by the rendering of his own flesh. Ovid compares Erysichthon to Fames, who is a living corpse surviving on a minimal diet. The incorporation of these nightmarish elements in Ovid’s morose poetry exemplifies the irony that characterizes these events.
(Publius Ovidius Naso). Born 43 B.C.; died circa A.D. 18. Roman poet.
Writing individualistic, primarily erotic, poetry, Ovid in his early narrative poems Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) and Remedia Amoris (Remedies of Love) instructs the reader in amorous relations and describes scenes from Roman life. His poem Metamorphoses (Russian translation, 1874–76) marked a transition to large-scale works in the spirit of Hellenistic “learned” poetry. Conceived as an epic, it contains about 250 mythological and folkloric tales about the transformation of people into animals, plants, constellations, and even into stones. His last works were the Tristia (Sorrows) and the Epistulae ex Ponto (Pontic Epistles).
At the end of A.D. 8, Ovid was exiled by Augustus to Tomis (now the port of Constanţa in Rumania), where he died. During his exile, he created a new genre of Roman poetry—the subjective elegy, devoid of any amatory theme. Ovid was highly esteemed by A. S. Pushkin, whose interest in the exiled poet was expressed in the verses “In the Land Where He Was Crowned by Julia” and “To Ovid” and in the narrative poem The Gypsies.
K. P. POLONSKAIA