Metamorphica
Page 17
NARCISSUS
Ovid changed the Narcissus story—before him, Narcissus and Echo were unconnected. In his version there’s a little etiology, and a nice image of vanity, but the interest of the story seems somehow occluded. I think of this story as a sort of complex organic molecule—the laws of physics are always trying to find a more compact configuration at a lower energy state—in my version Narcissus is warned of mirrors, but the mirror is Echo.
MEDEA II
This story is an indirect descendant of Kafka’s “The Truth about Sancho Panza,” and perhaps Wilde’s “The Fisherman and His Soul.”
JASON
A man comes home to find his dead father sitting on his doorstep, a young man again but instantly recognizable. Perhaps this is an image from an ancient tradition.
THETIS
In the original, Peleus catches Thetis with a net, though subduing a shape-changer seems very difficult, not to say a lost cause.
HELEN
The Greeks wanted to believe that the Homeric heroes were virtuous. It was therefore inadmissable that Helen gaily went off with Paris to Troy—it was suggested a phantom went in her place, an idea I take up, but without any commitment to her probity. In some accounts Helen was the daughter of Nemesis and Zeus.
ELYSIUM
Negative after-lives are easy to imagine, but happy ones are harder to pin down. Here, Menelaus’ paradise is an unbounded collecting expedition, which might have appealed to Charles Darwin, at least as a young man, or Stephen Maturin.
MIDAS
In the original there’s an ironic twist and a moral lesson to be careful what you wish for and some nicely horrific imagery when Midas accidentally turns his wife into a gold statue. I changed it so that it’s about the death of passion with middle age and an etiological story about the invention of money, which seems like a necessary myth for our time and perhaps all future ones.
PENTHEUS
In the original, Dionysos’ maenads, Pentheus’ mother among them, tore Pentheus apart.
Dionysos is a god of transformation. In The Bacchae, Pentheus is perhaps not entirely mature, but what if he had been disciplined and dutiful, not the kind of man to have his head turned by a drunken orgy—how would Dionysos get to him?
DAPHNE
In the original, Daphne was turned into a laurel tree to save her from Apollo’s advances. In this version, Apollo has his way with her at no greater cost than understanding her vanity.
ACTAEON
In the original, Artemis sweeps water at Actaeon, turning him into a stag who is then killed by his own dogs. Ovid gives a full catalog of the many dogs’ names, which is interesting mostly in that dogs got the same kinds of names then as they do now. One of the functions of art is to fill time—this was part of poetry’s job in the early days of imperial Rome, but now people are more likely to binge-watch shows on-line.
PERSEPHONE
I once heard a friend tell her daughter, “One day you’ll hear my voice coming out of your mouth and then I’ll have won.”
This story is perhaps more about Inanna than Persephone and Demeter.
THESEUS
Gilgamesh is present in this story.
TIRESIAS
Tiresias lived for seven mortal spans, and was the only fully lucid shade in the underworld.
ATALANTA
In the original, Atalanta is the equal of the best warriors of her time. She’s running a footrace with a suitor when, despite a lifetime of war-like seriousness, she’s distracted by an apple made of gold, loses the race and must therefore marry. To lose everything for a bauble seems inconsistent with her character.
I envisioned Atalanta as about six foot five, very butch and more inclined toward the divine side of her nature, which means she’s more or less abstained from the mess of mortal life, until she makes a little mistake, and lets Death in, and he and Aphrodite conspire to undo her. Even then, she’d have prevailed, had she not been distracted by Aphrodite’s mons veneris—what else could the golden apple be?
AUGUSTUS
One explanation for Rome’s success is that instead of enslaving or robbing the people of conquered cities, it made them Roman citizens.
Like most conquerors, Augustus compared himself to Alexander the Great.
His reason for exiling Ovid is unclear—Ovid said it was for “a mistake and a song.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Bronwen Abbattista, Bill Clegg, Cordelia Derhammer-Hill, Vasiliki Dimoula, Jonathan Galassi, Linley Hall, Cole Harkness, John Knight, Simon Levy, Isidora Milin, Phong Nguyen, Elena O’Curry, Nalini Rao, Shawna Yang Ryan, the Santa Maddalena Foundation, Emmeline Sun, Spring Warren and Rebecca Vaux.
Thanks also to Publius Ovidius Naso. Homer seems like a figure out of the dream-time, but Ovid is recognizably a man. I’m grateful for his poetry and regret his trouble.
ALSO BY ZACHARY MASON
Void Star
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zachary Mason is a computer scientist and the New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Books of the Odyssey and Void Star. He lives in California. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Note on the Star Map
Map
PART I: APHRODITE
1. Ovid
2. Galateas
3. Polyphemus
PART II: ATHENA
4. Athena II
5. Panopticon
6. Scylla
7. Nocturne
8. Ajax
9. Cumulus
10. Arachne
11. Calypso
PART III: ZEUS
12. Nemesis
13. Athena I
14. Europa
15. Ideograph
16. Symbolic
17. Semele
18. Phaedra
19. Icarus
20. Minos
21. Daedalus
22. Philemon and Baucis
PART IV: NEMESIS
23. Narcissus
24. Sphinx
25. Argonautica
26. Nemean
27. Medea I
28. Medea II
29. Jason
30. Thetis
31. Achilles
32. Helen
33. Elysium
34. Clytemnestra
PART V: DIONYSOS
35. Midas
36. Pentheus
PART VI: APOLLO
37. Daphne
38. Actaeon
PART VII: DEATH
39. Limits
40. Persephone
41. Orpheus
42. Orpheus Dreams
43. Orpheus at the End
44. Theseus
45. Asclepios
46. Alcestis
47. Tiresias
PART VIII: APHRODITE, CONTINUED
48. Atalanta
49. Myrrha
50. Adonis
51. Aeneid
52. Augustus
53. Epistolary
Notes
Acknowledgments
Also by Zachary Mason
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Zachary Mason
All rights reserved
First edition, 2018
Maps by Bronwen Abbatista
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mason, Zachary, 1974– author.
Title: Metamorphica / Zachary Mason.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017052979 | ISBN 9780374208646 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Ovid, 43 B.C.–17 A.D.
or 18 A.D.—Adaptations.
Classification: LCC PS3613.A8185 M483 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017052979
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1 Nobody was Odysseus’ nom de guerre.
2 The mathematicians of antiquity were familiar with irrational numbers—π, for instance—whose digits wind on forever without pattern or repetition.
3 In Greek, “grief of nations” can be rendered as Achilles.
4 Agamemnon was forced to give up his slave-girl to placate Apollo. He claimed Achilles’ slave-girl Briseis in her stead, at which Achilles withdrew from the war.
5 Oaths made on the river Styx were unbreakable.
6 As a young man Aeneas ventured into Hell and met the shades of his ancestors and descendants.