Metamorphosis

I've just started reading An Imaginary Life by David Malouf- a short novel, told from the perspective of the Roman poet Ovid, in exile at Tomis on the Black Sea.

I was struck by this passage I read on my way to school the other day:

...the stone sleeping in the sun has once been molten fire and became stone when the fire was able to say, in its liquid form: "I would be solid, I would be stone"; and the stone dreams now that the veins of ore in its nature might become liquid again and move , but within its shape as stone, so that slowly, through long centuries of aching for such a condition, for softness, for a pulse, it feels one day that the transformation has begun to occur; the veins loosen and flow, the clay relaxes, the stone, through long ages of imagining some further life, discovers eyes, a mouth, legs to leap with, and is toad.

Vivid descriptions of transformations are of course one of Ovid's strengths. Here are two of my favourites- the statue Galatea, crafted by Pygmalion, coming alive, and Daphne, pursued by Apollo, becoming a laurel tree:

vix prece finita torpor gravis occupat artus,
mollia cinguntur tenui praecordia libro,
in frondem crines, in ramos bracchia crescunt,
pes modo tam velox pigris radicibus haeret,
ora cacumen habet: remanet nitor unus in illa.
Hanc quoque Phoebus amat positaque in stipite dextra
sentit adhuc trepidare novo sub cortice pectus
complexusque suis ramos ut membra lacertis
oscula dat ligno; refugit tamen oscula lignum.

Scarcely had Daphne finished her prayer, when a heavy slowness seized her limbs, her soft breast is embraced by thin bark, her hair grows into leaves, her arms into branches, her feet, just now so speedy, stick fast with sluggish roots, the canopy hides her face: only her shining beauty remains unchanged. Apollo loves her still, and placing his right hand on her trunk, he feels her heart still trembling beneath the new bark, and he embraces her branches with his arms, as if they were really limbs, and kisses her woody trunk; yet even as a tree she shrinks from his kisses!

(Metamorphoses I.548-556)

ut rediit, simulacra suae petit ille puellae

incumbensque toro dedit oscula: visa tepere est;

admovet os iterum, manibus quoque pectora temptat:

temptatum mollescit ebur positoque rigore

subsidit digitis ceditque, ut Hymettia sole

cera remollescit tractataque pollice multas

flectitur in facies ipsoque fit utilis usu.

dum stupet et dubie gaudet fallique veretur,

rursus amans rursusque manu sua vota retractat.

corpus erat! saliunt temptatae pollice venae.

When Pygmalion returned, he made for the statue of his girl and, lying on the couch, began to kiss her: she seemed to be warm; again he brings his mouth near, and he also tries her breasts with his hands: the ivory softens as it is touched and having lost its hardness gives way beneath his fingers and yields, just as Hymettian wax softens in the sun and, kneaded by the thumb, is moulded into many shapes, and becomes usable by being used. While he gapes in amazement and doubtfully rejoices and fears that he is deceived, the lover strokes the answer to his prayer again and again with his hand. She was flesh! As he touches them, the veins throb beneath his thumb.

(Metamorphoses X.280-289)

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