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Derek Mahon: Ovid in Love

(Page numbers given refer to Collected Poems: Derek Mahon [CP]: The  Gallery Press, 1999)

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

Ovid in Love

Antarctica, Dublin: The Gallery Press, 1986

79-80

 

Length / Form Ovid’s elegiac couplets become octosyllabic rhyming couplets.

Allusion to Classical figure Jason, Corinna, Triton, Nereus’ nymphs

Allusion to Classical place  Pelion

Relationship to Classical text   Both are loose reworkings of the source text, the second being substantially abbreviated and with the more obscure mythological references removed. Mahon seems more keen to preserve levity of tone and the mocking, colloquial, urbane qualities of the original.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Translations of Ovid’s Amores I, v and II, xi

Further Comment In the first poem Ovid’s Corinna, there described in the third person, becomes an anonymous ‘You’.

 

Derek Mahon