Ted Hughes 1930 -1998. Tales from Ovid, 24 Passages from the Metamorphoses, published by Faber and Faber Ltd 1997. Copyright Ted Hughes
Praise for Tales from Ovid:
‘A breathtaking book…To compare his versions with the Latin is to be awestruck again and again by the range and ingenuity of his poetic intelligence…He rescues the old gods and goddesses from the classical dictionaries and gives them back their terror. There should be a copy of his book in every school’. John Carey Sunday Times
I want to share my favourite passage from Midas, one of the tales in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written in 8 AD. Translated by Ted Hughes, it was published in his book Tales from Ovid, which went on to win the 1997 Whitbread Book of the Year.
In his introduction Hughes says;
‘In its length and metre, the Metamorphoses resembles an epic. But the opening lines describe the very different kind of poem that Ovid set out to write: an account of how from the beginning of the world right down to his own time bodies had been magically changed, by the power of the gods, into other bodies. This licensed him to take a wide sweep through the teeming underworld or overworld of Romanised Greek myth and legend. The right man had met the right material at the right moment’.
Midas
Peasants crowded to gawp at Silenus –
The end product of a life
They could not imagine.
They chained him with flowers and dragged him,
In a harness of flowers, to their king, Midas,
As if he were some
Harmless, helpless, half-tapir or other
Charming monster.
When Midas recognised him,
And honoured him, fat and old and drunk as he was,
As the companion of Bacchus,
And restored him to the god,
Bacchus was so grateful
He offered Midas any wish –
Whatever the King wanted, it would be granted.
Midas was overjoyed
To hear this first approach, so promising,
Of his peculiar horrible doom.
He did not have to rack his brains.
A certain fantasy
Hovered in his head perpetually,
Wisfully fondled all his thoughts by day,
Manipulated all his dreams by night
Now it saw its chance and seized his tongue.
It shoved aside
The billion – infinite – opportunities
For Midas
To secure a happiness, guaranteed,
Within the human range
Of what is possible to a god.
It grasped, with a king’s inane greed,
The fate I shall describe.
Midas said ‘Here is my wish.
Let whatever I touch become gold.
Yes, gold, the finest, the purest, the brightest’.
Bacchus gazed at the King and sighed gently.
He felt pity –
Yet his curiosity was intrigued
To see how such stupidity would be punished.
So he granted the wish then stood back to watch.
The Phrygian King returned through the garden
Eager to test the power – yet apprehensive
That he had merely dreamed and now was awake,
Where alchemy never works. He broke a twig
From a low branch of oak. The leaves
Turned to heavy gold as he stared at them
And his mouth went dry.
He felt his brain move strangely, like a muscle.
He picked up a stone and weighed it in his hand
As it doubled its weight, then doubled it again,
And became bright yellow.
He brushed his hand over a clump of grass,
The blades stayed bent – soft ribbons
Of gold foil. A ripe ear of corn
Was crisp and dry and light as he plucked it
But a heavy slug of gold, intricately braided
As he rolled it between his palms.
It was then that a cold thought seemed to whisper.
He had wanted to chew the milky grains –
But none broke chaffily free from their pockets.
The ear was gold – its grain inedible,
Inaccessibly solid with the core.
He frowned. With the frown on his face
He reached for a hanging apple.
With a slight twist he took the sudden weight
No longer so happily. This was a fruit
He made no attenpt to bite, as he pondered its colour.
Almost inadvertently he stroked
The door pillars, as he entered the palace,
Pausing to watch the brilliant yellow
Suffuse the dark stone.
He washed his hands under flowing water, at a
Fountain.
Already a hope.
Told him that the gift might wash away,
As waking up will wash out a nightmare.
But the water that touched him
Coiled into the pool below as plumes
Of golden smoke, settling heavily
In a silt of gold atoms.
Suddenly his vision
Of transmuting his whole kingdom to gold
Made him sweat –
It chilled him as he sat
At the table
And reached for a roasted bird. The carcase
Toppled from his horrified fingers
Into his dish with a clunk,
As if he had picked up a table ornament.
He reached for bread
But could not break
The plaque of gold that resembled a solid puddle
Smelted from ore.
Almost in terror now
He reached for the goblet of wine –
Taking his time, he poured in water,
Swirled the mix in what had been translucent
Rhinoceros horn
But was already common and commoner metal.
He set his lips to the cold rim
And others, dumbfounded
By what they had already seen, were aghast
When they saw the wet gold shine on his lips,
And as he lowered the cup
Saw him mouthing gold, spitting gold mush –
That had solidified like gold cinders.
He got up, reeling
From his golden chair, as if poisoned.
He fell on his bed, face down, eyes closed
From the golden heavy fold of his pillow
He prayed
To the god who had given him the gift
To take it back. ‘I have been a fool.
Forgive me Bacchus. Forgive the greed
That made me so stupid.
Forgive me for a dream
That had not touched the world
Where gold is truly gold and nothing but.
Save me from my own shallowness,
Where I shall drown in gold
And be buried in gold.
Nothing can live, I see, in a world of gold’.
Bacchus too, had had enough.
His kindliness, came uppermost easily.
‘I return you’, said the god,
‘To your happier human limitations
But now you must wash away
The last stain of the curse
You begged for and preferred to every blessing.
A river goes by Sardis.
Follow it upstream.
Find the source
Which gushes from a cliff and plunges
Into a rocky pool. Plunge with it
Go completely under. Let that river
Carry your folly away and leave you clean’.
Midas obeyed and the river’s innocent water
Took whatever was left of the granted wish.
Even today the soil of its flood plain
Can be combed into a sparse glitter
And big popcorns of gold, in its gravels,
Fever the fossicker.
Midas never got over the shock.
The sight of gold was like the thought of a bee
To one just badly stung –
It made his hair prickle, his nerves tingle.
He retired to the mountain woods
And a life of deliberate poverty. There
He worshipped Pan, who lives in the mountain caves.
King Midas was chastened
But not really changed. He was no wiser.
His stupidity
Was merely lying low. Waiting, as usual,
For another chance to ruin his life.
everythinglatin.co.uk 
Leave a comment