Special Episode - Ovid's Metamorphoses with Professor Stephanie McCarter

It is not often that we get to say that there is a new translation of a classical text that has taken the world by storm. But that was exactly what happened when Professor Stephanie McCarter released her 2022 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We were honoured that Professor McCarter agreed to talk to us about the mysterious Ovid and her process of translation.

Stephanie McCarter is currently a Professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She published a monograph entitled Horace between Freedom and Slavery: The First Book of Epistles in 2015 and a translation of Horace’s Epodes, Odes and Carmen Saeculare in 2020.

We would like to warn our listeners that this episode will touch on instances of violence and sexual assault. This is not one to listen to with the kids in the car.

Special Episode – Ovid's Metamorphoses with Professor Stephanie McCarter

Who was Ovid?

Ovid is one of our favourite Latin poets over at the Partial Historians. This is partially due to his work, which can be touching but also highly comedic. However, it is also because Ovid himself is hard to figure out.

He lived and worked during the reign of Augustus but claimed to have been exiled in approximately 8 CE. Academics are still trying to figure out what Ovid did that was so terrible… or whether he was making it up entirely!

Whatever he was up to, Ovid’s back catalogue is pretty impressive. He composed the Amores, the Heroides, the Fasti, the Ars amatoria, and his masterpiece, the Metamorphoses.

Translating Ovid for the 21st Century

Translation is an immensely difficult and often underappreciated task. We don’t mean getting out your dictionary and figuring out a passage here and there. We delve into the technique of translating an entire work, trying to make it accessible and enjoyable for a new generation, whilst staying true to the voice of the original author. Whew! What an undertaking.

Professor McCarter’s translation of the Metamorphoses is the first English translation of the work by a woman in many decades and it seems to have struck a nerve. There are many episodes of sexual violence in this work that have been softened or glossed over in previous translations. McCarter’s work aims to be more accurate and direct in the language, not shying away from the troubling aspects of these myths. This has allowed themes to emerge more clearly from text.

It was a delight to talk to someone as passionate and dedicated to their work as Professor McCarter. Her work highlights the way that translations often reflect the values of their creator and their context, hence the need for fresh interpretations.

Things to look out for:

• The powerful art of Elizabeth Columba
• An amazing New Yorker article on McCarter’s work
• The uterus and double helix cleverly woven into the mind-blowing cover art for McCarter’s book by Aiko Tezuka
• Professor McCarter makes reference to concordances as part of her process. These are essentially word indexes – very handy tools for translators!
• Exciting news about McCarter’s next projects!

Sound Credits

Our music is by Bettina Joy de Guzman.

Automated Transcript

Generated by Otter AI.

Dr Rad  00:15

Welcome to the partial historians,

Dr G  00:18

we explore all the details of ancient Rome.

Dr Rad  00:23

Everything from political scandals, the love affairs, the battles waged, and when citizens turn against each other. I'm Dr. Rad. And

Dr G  00:33

I'm Dr. G. We consider Rome as the Roman saw it by reading different authors from the ancient past and comparing their stories.

Dr Rad  00:44

Join us as we trace the journey of Rome from the founding of this city. Hello, and welcome to a special episode of the partial historians. I am one of your hosts, Dr. Rad,

Dr G  01:06

and I'm Dr. G.

Dr Rad  01:09

Now, Dr. G, you know that I break out in a cold sweat at the thought of translating anything. It's

Dr G  01:16

true. I think I do as well at this point, I feel Yeah. So I'm

Dr Rad  01:20

super excited to have an expert in translation on our show. Today, we are going to be chatting to Stephanie McCarter, who is currently a Professor of Classics at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She published a monograph entitled horrors between freedom and slavery, the first book of epistles in 2015, and a translation of Horace's oppose, owed and calm and secular era in 2020. However, she has recently been spending more time with a man named of it, her 2022 translation of his Metamorphoses has received much acclaim, and this is what we will be focusing on today. However, before we start, we would like to warn our listeners that this episode will touch on instances of violence and sexual assault. Welcome, Stephanie

Stephanie McCarter  02:25

Thank you so much. This is this is a great treat. I'm super excited to be on this particular podcast because I spend so much time in Australia, my husband's and Aussie. So I sometimes try to my kids are all these. So this is exciting. It

Dr Rad  02:42

is very exciting for us to have you on the show and to talk about this particular translation. But before we get into the actual translating stuff, just so I can, you know, ease myself into it, not have too many nightmares. Let's start with a brief biography of of it, who is this guy? Well,

Stephanie McCarter  03:01

he is who he we think if he was who he would like us to believe he is. So most of what we know from him comes from his own poetry, we know very little about him outside of that. And you know, part of constructing his biography means picking and choosing the bits you want to believe, right. But we in terms of who he is, we know he was the last of the major Agustin poets, who were living in writing during the rise and reign of Augustus, along with Virgil and then Horace I tend to think of Virgil, Horace and Ovid is the big three. We need to be really careful with what he tells us because most of it comes from one poem, trusty 410, which he writes when he's in exile, and he's clearly trying to frame himself in a particular kind of quasi heroic light. So it's hard to know what's poetic fiction and what is fact. He was born in Salmo Italy in 43 BCE, but a year after the assassination of Julius Caesar almost to the day, March 20. Caesar, of course, famously killed on the Ides of March. And so he was about 12 or so when I guess this came to power. So when he really came of age during guesses rise, and then he died about a year after Augustus. So his life really straddles this period of Rome's own metamorphosis, right from a Republic into an empire. And so I think that might be one reason he's interested in the idea of transformation because one of the things he brings out in the metamorphosis is how states transform. So I think some of this is tied into his own experience in Rome. Um, his family was equestrian so that he was not from a super elite family, but certainly wealthy enough to send him to be educated in Rome along with his brother, who died when he was young. He clearly He received a stellar oratorical education which he put to great use in the poem. But he ultimately decided not to embark on a career as a politician or an order, and he decided that poetry was where he wanted to proceed instead, we know that he married according to what he told us three times, the last marriage lasted for many years, he had a daughter and he was a grandpa to which we don't really think of all of it as you know, a grandpa. But he tells us that he was. And perhaps the biggest event in his life was his exile. This is the one that we are spilling a lot of ink over. He was exiled probably the same year that Metamorphoses was published the year eight, he tells us that he was exiled because of a carmen et error, or a poem and a mistake. Most people would agree the poem was the Ars amatoria. Cause you could very easily if you wanted to argue that that's a manual for picking up married women and adultery was a crime under Augustus. But he wasn't exiled until eight years later. So the mistake is probably what really got him exiled. Nobody knows what that was. We know he saw something. I don't speculate because I think that's playing of its game. He wants us to speculate and he's never gonna tell us and He wants us to keep talking about this for 2000 years. And he wrote many poems in exile wanting to be recalled to Rome wasn't and so died, still in exile in Thomas on the Black Sea. So that's a very quick overview of his of his life.

Dr Rad  06:40

I would just like to highlight for our listeners that it is Augustus Yes. Augustus who is responsible for keeping this poetic genius and

Stephanie McCarter  06:52

some people think it has It has been speculated that maybe he's making the entire thing up. Oh, scandal. I actually I'm quite drawn to I don't think that's necessarily true, but I like the idea that maybe he's just, yeah, this is a persona. I don't we don't really think he was a pickup artist, do we? Even though he purports to be in the mores and ours on materia so it's the kind of funny thought that maybe we've been speculating for about something that he just just saw.

Dr Rad  07:21

The biggest prank? Yeah, I do. I do enjoy visiting him as like a creepy grandpa type of guy, the one that tells all the inappropriate jokes, and it's like, hugely embarrassing.

Dr G  07:33

Absolutely, that would be for sure. Don't invite him to family lunch, just in case. So the metamorphoses is a hugely influential text through time, and partly because it's so mythologically based tales of the gods tales of mortals. These are the stories that really draw people in to the ancient world in many cases for the first time. But it's more than that. And I'm interested in your view about what is the metamorphoses about and you kind of touched on that idea of the transformation of Rome itself? And I'm wondering if there's other ways into the text that are like that, or build from there as well?

Stephanie McCarter  08:12

This is such a difficult question to even start to ponder, because I begin to think, what is it not about? Right? It's, you know, it is about everything from the creation of the universe to have its own day, this is what he tells us the various transformations that have happened throughout all time, right? And so transformation brings us does is it simple, you know, it's sort of most straightforward theme. He tells us in the opening line, he's going to talk about shapes changed, right? New Task formats, that's metamorphosis. But it's about so much more like what changes forms, right? That's the big question. It's time. So it's about time and its movement, power changes, forms, frequently in this poem, and also, so much of it just focused around the body, right? This the probably the most important word, and the opening poem is corpora, which is bodies, its shapes transformed into new bodies. And so you think that's weird, because it should be body's changed into new shapes? And so, you know, he invites you to ponder, you know, what is a body? What does that mean? So this is why you can kind of think of the universe is a body, the state is a body. And then, of course, we as humans having bodies that are really subject to change and transformation. So it's about you know, what does it mean to have a human body? What does it mean to exist in a world that it changes the language of the body? And, and then it also invites us to think about identity. So it's about that what is the relationship between a body and the identity that inhabits it? Right when the shape is changed into a new body? What happens to the being that inhabited the body to begin with? Is it lost? Okay? So yeah, it's about so many different things. It's about gender, right? There's and and the way that that might relate to a body, you have so many characters in this epic who transform in terms of gender, and you have a big focus on female characters as well. And so how does an epic itself transform? When you shift the focus on to women? Right, this is I think, something that Ovid is really interested in, you know, so many of the epics that we think of the need the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Odyssey opens with the word man, right? It is a male focused genre for sure. And so just by changing that, that focus, he transforms the genre in so many interesting ways. So I could go on forever about what the metamorphosis piece has been about. But I think maybe what it's fundamentally about is how the force of change and transformation then connects us in so many ways, right? How all these things are connected, and you can't stop change. And that's actually a pretty good thing.

Dr G  11:05

It does mean that there's a sense that the text resonates continuously through time, because change is the one thing that we always are feeling and understanding. And even though we might resist change, there's a real compulsion to try and understand it better. And I think of it has done something supremely clever by tapping into this as that thematic focus.

Stephanie McCarter  11:27

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, it means he can he can be changed to write his texts can be changed and transformed through translation through art through adaptation in ways that will make him stay relevant always. It

Dr Rad  11:44

is kind of ironic, isn't it? That change is a constant in all of our lives. How important would you say this text was in his own time? And then in subsequent centuries?

Stephanie McCarter  11:58

Oh, goodness, I mean, from the very beginning, it was, it was important. I mean, he you can't have any of the epics that follow in the wake of it without this text. You know, one of my favourite epics is Statius is the by it, I absolutely love it. But it wouldn't exist without all of it, and Virgil. And so he's sort of folding both of those epics into the by it, you see its influence in art pretty immediately because of I mean, the frescoes you see in Pompeii that are clearly based on all of its metamorphosis, not just in Pompeii, you see this across the ancient world. And then of course, in our own time, and we, you know, in the English speaking world, he has resonated across the centuries. I mean, you have Shakespeare's most famous play arguably is Romeo and Juliet, you wouldn't have that without of its pyramids and Thursby you wouldn't have huge chunks of Midsummer Night's Dream without pyramids and Thursby as well. You know, I'm thinking of in terms of art, famously, art of it has inspired more art than any text apart from the Bible, and continues to one of my favourite painters working right now is a woman named Elizabeth colomba, who very often works with Ovidian material. She has a fabulous painting of Daphne that's responding powerfully to Bernini's Daphne and Apollo sculpture. So I mean, in some ways, because of it is so malleable, we can use him as something of a mirror in which we can see our own literary and artistic tastes change and react to what went before. So we've been using him for so long, I'm thinking also of, you know, his influence on you know, operat his influence on the stage in general, his influence on so many rewritings of myth that are coming out right now, I mean, you wouldn't have Madeline Miller's Circe, without all of its Circe, for example, you know, Mary Zimmerman's play the metamorphoses I'm reading right now another new play at Polaroid stories by Naomi Iizuka. I'm sure, I may not be pronouncing her name correctly, but you know, there's so many wonderful theatrical productions of all of it. Yeah, he's everywhere. He's absolutely everywhere.

Dr Rad  14:24

It sounds good that we're talking about it, then if it's such a crucial text from the ancient world, I think this is

Dr G  14:29

the sort of thing as well, well, this is like a small anecdote, but I was out yesterday with some friends from a broader circle of people. And they were kind of like, well, what are you doing tomorrow? And I was like, oh, you know, I'm going to interview this wonderful academic about Ovid's Metamorphoses. And they're like, what's that? And I was like, You will be surprised about how much you have already engaged with his text through one of the variations and adaptations that have happened over time. And I was like, I went straight to Shakespeare and I was like, Look, and then we move out from I'm there. And I want to, first of all just stand in all of you for a moment, because translation is a gargantuan task. And I think the further we go through time, the more history we have of translation and engagement with ancient texts as well. So every scholar of each new generation who engages in translation kind of has this whole history of what has come before, in order to encounter all of that before they get to their own translation, and how they're going to position things. And not even all academics get the chance to really engage in in depth translation work. So I'm wondering if you can walk us a little bit through your process as a translator? Oh,

Stephanie McCarter  15:41

goodness, this is, it's a little tricky to explain. I love my new shop. I love working in minutiae. I've always liked that. And I always was drawn to poetry. And so even from the time I was in high school, I loved poetry as a sort of secret poetry nerd. And I had to leave a lot of the English poetry I really liked behind when I chose classics over English literature. And so I guess about in the summer of 2016, I just sat down and started translating, but I had no process, I had no idea what I was doing. Really, what it took for me was to figure out that I wanted to write formal poetry in translation. And that became a real guide and friend, to me, because like a lot of classes, I was not terribly good at literary translation, we tend to be trained to do a hyper literal kind of translation, that doesn't sound so great to somebody who's reading the text for its literary quality. So it just, it took me a long time to work out any kind of process at all. With this particular translation I translated it's in iambic pentameter, I made it my full time job, I actually lived in Australia for most of the time, I was translating the initial draft of this, we were in Brisbane for the year. And, you know, woke up every day nine to five translating into iambic pentameter, so much that I started thinking. And then I, it took me several years to get the draft complete. A lot of that was due to COVID. And having two small kids. And then I one thing I always do, once I have a translation, as I always teach it, because I want to see how it goes with my students and how they react to it, where things are not working for them. And so I taught it. In a class, I was teaching on women's adaptation of Ovid, and they gave me great feedback. And then I spent months revising, and revising and revising and revising. But yeah, it's very mature. It's a meticulous process. So I'm sitting down with, I don't feel like translation for me is like a process of being inspired or anything like that. I'm using commentaries, I was having a conversation with somebody the other day about how I love concordances. I don't know if you know what concordance is, are, but they're the most boring possible, but so good. It's wonderful. Like, it's like every time, you know, an ancient author. So I was talking about my Horace concordance, and how much I loved it. But you know, you can Look up every time he uses the word good. Yeah. It'll tell you everywhere. So when it's really old fashioned kind of tools, like commentaries, dictionaries, concordances, spreading them all around and turning yourself into a bit of a, you know, maniac for buy, but I

Dr G  18:41

kind of love this. There's like the word nerd comes out, like, yeah, Look at this, and then it appeared here, and then it didn't appear for another 50 years, like what's going on? It must be special.

Stephanie McCarter  18:53

What? That's true. And so then how do you translate that word? That is a weird word that Ovid only uses? Once right? Then you have to reach for a weird word in English that that works there. So you know, just getting yourself into that space where you're kind of inhabiting lots of different roles at once it strangely so you're a scholar, right? You're using really scholarly tools where you've, you know, you're using your tools for literary criticism, so you're having to interpret the poem, always. And then you're also having to be an artist where you are trying to transform that into workable English literature. So it's a strange thing to try to do. But it's, I mean, it's I it's, it's a pleasurable thing. So I won't stop translating anytime they kind

Dr G  19:43

of love this as well, the idea of translation as another metamorphosis as well. I'm just going to put that out there. So are there particular translations that you that you that resonated for you when you were approaching your own translation?

Stephanie McCarter  19:56

Well, I think that I knew several of the translations pretty well. I mean, I've taught avid so many times over the years. And yeah, so I wouldn't say that I was committed to any translation I knew them. And because I had taught out of them so much I knew where the limitations of each one was, in the classes that I was teaching him in. It was mainly, I teach a course on women and gender in the ancient world. And then I teach another course on sexuality in the ancient world, so two separate courses. And then I also teach of it in like a Latin seminar where we are dissecting the Latin together very slowly. And so in the Women and Gender and Sexuality courses, I wasn't able to find translations that dealt with the aspects of sexual violence and what was going on in terms of gender in the body. I needed translations that brought those issues to the fore, and I just wasn't finding them. And then on the other hand, in my Latin seminars, I just wasn't finding translations that did poetically, what I needed them to do in order to teach the students who were dissecting the Latin and finding ways for them to see that reflected in the translations we were also looking at. So that meant that my goals became twofold. I really wanted to use a poetic translation. So this is, you know, formal poetry. It's iambic pentameter. I wanted it to be really success, like accessible rather, I, I tend to like poetry that is really accessible. And so my favourite poet is Philip Larkin. And he's, so straightaway, he's so accessible. And so much of the power of his poetry comes from its seeming simplicity of language. But then when you dig in, and you see how he's handling, metre, and alliteration, and all of these wonderful things, you can see it's artistry. And so it is, I think it's, it works, because it is so seemingly simple, but really artistically refined. And so I wanted to try to make something highly readable. But when you dug in, you can actually see the cool poetic stuff that Ovid is also doing. So you know, it's not hard to read, I don't think my translation I wanted to make something that you could read rather quickly, but then you can go in and it's okay, there's all this alliteration. Here's this enjambment. She's working with this Juras in the meeting, the line kind of like all of it is doing here's the reversal of this metrical foot that mimics what Ovid is doing. So that was one goal. So it's poetic readable. On the other hand, I want it to be really straightforward with with the sexual violence, and we've nothing ambiguous because it's not ambiguous in the Latin. And so I think a lot of that was me, being motivated through the feminist lens through which I had taught all of it for so long, and not wanting to know why I don't think that a lot of the previous translators were actively wanting to euphemized it, they just didn't have that goal. Right. It wasn't a goal that they had set out for themselves. And so they ended up you for maizing it for whatever reasons.

Dr Rad  23:09

Yeah, this is probably a great opportunity for us to delve in a little deeper and allow you to give us an example or two of how your new translation does allow for a more nuanced understanding of the meaning suggested by the Latin. So can you tell us a little bit about like one or two instances where you were, you know, meeting those goals about dealing with the sexual violence, you know, in a way that was probably needed in this sort of day and age, I suppose. Sure.

Stephanie McCarter  23:37

I mean, there are various ways in which this comes comes out, I think in the translation. First of all, I should say that it's an important thing Ovid wants us to wrestle with, right? I mean, he's really interested in the way power exerts itself on the body and causes it to transform. And I think he recognises that for for a lot of people. Rape is a transformative force that exerts itself on the body, and so it's part of the theme, and so you can't hide it. You shouldn't hide it, you shouldn't euphemized it, a lot of this is just in the link in the language he uses for rape. So, the basic word the Ovid uses to indicate rape is the Latin word for force, which is vis, V I S. and um this is a legal charge you could bring against somebody, and he uses two formulations of this one is to experience force that is, we would say, to be raped. The other word he uses is to inflict force, so when in theory, and that would be to rape they so there's no word in Latin that we can translate literally as to rape. I mean, this means only that and the way that the English word does, but his words are very clear he is clear Latin legal terms that would matter. add on to our word, or to rape and to be raped. So here's an example of that. This comes in Book Three. This is the mother of Narcissus. Her name is Liriope. She's a nymph. And obviously, he uses this formulation he at the river god Cessiphus inflicts force on her. So this is what we're, we're talking about, he raped her. I wanted to keep language of force in there because for me, it's really important to connect these things with other moments when Ovid discusses vis are force because it's not just rape, it's it's throughout the epic and it's just rape is one type of force that the Ovid designates with this term. They're all transformative. Right? So my translation says, kiss thesis once had trapped her there eIope in his curved stream and raped her forcibly is current snaring her. So I tried to use language so he raped her forcibly that's how I translated like he inflicted force. But also words that would suggest that this wasn't an embrace, right? He snake he ensnared her, he trapped her the word one word the Ovid uses in the Latin there is he wears it here implicavit, which means like, he entangled her right and, and then we have Yeah, vim tulit. So it is a very clear indication that he raped her. Some translations do this fine. David Rayburn, for example. He writes that the Cessiphus the river god caught her in the folds of His sinless stream, and then proceeded to rape. So it's clear right? Then you get other translators who are less less clear. So for example, we have Mandelbaum who says that within his waves he snared the Azure nymphs and had his way his way you're getting into very you can mystic territory with Yeah, then you get the one that is the most common way to translate a Ovidian rape and Humphries demonstrates this. This is Ralph embraces 1955. TRANSLATION were total denial of the river, the Liriope, whom the river guide Cessiphus embraced and ravished right in his and his watery dwelling, and you just get so many translations like that. So it's not about trapping, it's about embracing, and then ravishing, no longer means to re write when you can Look at the covers of a million romance book, not romance books, and they're gonna have the word ravish. in them. There's one I always show my students it's called ravish me completely or something like that you the in that way anymore. So to me, it just it becomes a comfortable way that translators can translate the language of rape without actually having to say, right, yeah,

Dr Rad  28:08

it's funny you say that because as soon as you said ravish, immediately, my mind went to a romance novel cover.

Stephanie McCarter  28:15

Absolutely. One thing I do all the time when I'm translating, I mean, all the time, several times a day is when I want to figure out what the nuances are of the words that I'm choosing. I'll go to Google Images and I'll type them in just to see what pops up. So if I want to avoid like language, that's too feminised thing or something for a character who's not in it's not in the Latin feminising language, I'll go type it in just to make sure. And so that brings me to a second way that I have tried to do things differently in my translation. And that is to avoid like gendering language when it's not present in the, in the Latin. So let me see if I can find an example of this. There's a couple of ways this happened. One is in the figure of Callisto, who you may know is a is a virginal Huntress who models herself on Diana and Diana is famously gender non conforming, right. And so Callisto also is gender non conforming in so many different ways. Not only is she taking part in masculine pursuits like hunting, she's also refusing to get married and have children she wants to say, a virgin forever so often describes her as as having messy hair. The Latin word is words are neglect toasts copy loose, so her neglected hair is really what this means. And the word copy loose with the word capillary from this, it has no gender connotation. She's just got neglected hair. So I translated this as messy hair. And I did a Google image search and I got lots of masculine presenting people and feminine in presenting people and I was like, okay, that works. When you Look at other translators, we have things like here's David Rayburn that she has loose, flowing tresses, right?

Dr G  30:12

Yes, men never dresses do they

Stephanie McCarter  30:16

never do. So if you go into Google Images and you type in loose flowing dresses, you're gonna get so many super feminine presenting hairstyles, right? So I was just being very careful with things like that. The way translate the body. What is this character wearing? If it's a female character R is her clothing. gender specific. Usually it's not so trying to avoid that it's very important for a character like Callisto. Right? Who doesn't embrace her femininity at all. She has no femininity to embrace. The other thing is little additions sometimes that translators will make. This is one I've talked about quite a lot. So Daphne's very similar to Callisto. She's a virginal Huntress. She wants to spend her time in the woods, and she actively rejects things that are associated with femininity, and Apollo attempts to rape her. Prior to this. He's looking at her body. And when he's looking at her, Ovid doesn't give her body any adjectives that would be feminising at all. He's just looking at her, her eyes and tells us that they gleaned it. They're kind of bright like stars. He mentions her lips, fingers, hands, arms, shoulders, so I didn't give them any adjectives. So I translated that as he sees her eyes gleaming like stars, her lips but those it's not enough to kiss to see. he marvelled at her fingers, her hands, her arms, her shoulders nearly bear the parts he cannot see he thinks are better. Other translators will add little things to end to feminise her. So for example, Ella Mandelbaum says that she has fingers hands and wrists that are unsurpassed. So he throws in an extra body part and gives it an adjective. David Weyburn says that he has that she has teasingly tempting lips, delicate fingers, shapely arms. And so it's just little things like that. That really does, they do make a huge difference. So it was not just the scenes involving the language of sexual violence, but also the way the bodies are described and the way that gender and sexualities are presented. I've

Dr Rad  32:36

just seen or the amount of effort that goes into this translation Sorry, I'm just like gobsmacked, I always suspected that this is what it was like. Hearing you talk about it, I won't even tell you how

Stephanie McCarter  32:46

many times translators mentioned breasts that are not there.

Dr G  32:51

I guess the temptation is real for some but so I think this is all really, really interesting, because it's allowing a way into the Latin through translation that maybe has not been available up until now. And part of this way of thinking about gender, I think, is also like, what sort of consciousness and experiences and ideas are translators bringing to the work that they do. And to segue slightly, you're the first woman to translate Ovid metamorphoses into English first in many, many years, there was Mary ins translation, which goes back to 1955. And more broadly speaking, how do you think your own perception and that you bring as a human being to translation? How do you think that has factored into the way you've approached this?

Stephanie McCarter  33:47

I think so much of this is to do with the fact that I teach young people who won't let me get away with anything else. I really think that that is what so much of it has boiled down to. There are, there are, there are women who translate who translate ancient texts all the time and replicate exactly some of these same things. So I don't and this is something Emily Wilson has talked about, as well. I think that one of the interviews she gave, I was just reading where she talks about, you know, she didn't arrive at her interpretations of these texts via the superpower of being a girl right?

Dr G  34:28

What No.

Stephanie McCarter  34:30

Women can women can replicate these these things as well. However, I think that for me, my own experiences, inhabiting my body and my identity as a woman, I think they have played in to my experience of the world that has led me to, to, to try to read and translate all that with a particular set of goals. Right. And so I just laid out clearly from the very beginning what my goals were. But so much of these goals have been formed by teaching young women, men, and I see what they go through in this world. And, and so there has been a real feeling of responsibility toward them. And so not just toward myself, but toward the young women who have had to live in a world that sees their bodies in certain ways that insists on seeing their bodies in certain ways that frames their experiences of coercion in certain ways. And, you know, I've been teaching women and men for, you know, it's awanee, for almost 16 years now, before that for a long time. And my motivations, were pretty much for my students and wanting to give them a text, no matter their gender, that would help them think more clearly about, you know, what is the relationship between their identities and their bodies? Like? What did you know? How can they see reflections in this text of what they're going through in this world, and I just felt they needed the tools to do that. And a really good, accurate translation that tried to capture those nuances was something I felt I could give to the young people who are going to be reading this epic, I hope for a long time to come.

Dr Rad  36:24

I think that's a really interesting thing. I think one of the things I like so much about your translation and reading about your translation is that you're not trying to hide your goals, as you say, you know, they're very much at the forefront. And I think I mean, personally, I believe that it's really hard for historians, Classicist translators to be completely objective when they're doing anything. And so I think being transparent about what it is you're trying to do with your work is important, because if you're not, it might lead people to maybe think that, you know, that you're maybe straying into the territory of say, inaccuracy, or something like that. But when you're when you're clear about, Look, this is what I'm trying to do. You know, I mean, they're you given some really great examples of where people you feel are being inaccurate to the Latin. But if you think about their context, it's probably their context that is leading them to make those choices, isn't it? Absolutely.

Stephanie McCarter  37:17

I mean, this is why I have felt fairly confident in calling it a feminist translation. Because I think that feminism has actually given me a modes and strategies through which to produce a more accurate translation. And I think that that inverts people's expectations in some way, we tend to think that a feminist translator is going to alter the text. But I think and again, this is something that Emily Wilson has also talked about, that a translator who is more kind of ideologically motivated, might better be better empowered to scrutinise their own biases in a way that a translator who automatically assumes that they, that they have no biases won't. Right. And, and I think that the to think of translation as ever being something we can do, completely, objectively is, is the kind of dangerous thing to do, right? We always need to recognise that any kind of interpretive framework is going to be shaped by culture, or whatever, we're gonna be able to exist outside of our culture and what we've, what we've learned, I think that what we should do is become not only good critics of ancient literary texts, but also good critics of our own culture, so that we can be aware of how we're being shaped by it. Oh,

Dr Rad  38:44

and you're juggling so many things when you're doing your translation that you're not necessarily doing when you're say, writing a history, which is not only being conscious of your own potential biases, but also the fact that you're juggling, as you said earlier, that artistic angle as well, you know, trying to translate that and it's a totally different language, you know, it's, yeah, it's just so many things you have to keep in so many balls in the air. That's

Stephanie McCarter  39:10

where the pleasure comes from. For me, it is the artistic process of translation, you know, so much. So much of my motive for doing this is, you know, to think about the themes of the gender and sexual violence and all of this, but on a day to day basis, I was wrestling with iambic pentamer.

Dr G  39:28

Like how am I gonna make this line work?

Stephanie McCarter  39:33

Why does it have to use this strange parenthesis here that sentence apart? You know, it's like you're

Dr G  39:38

ruining it for me over it's stuff that I think there's sort of like the technical elements of like playing with language because obviously, the way that Latin flows in its cadence is completely different from the way English operates. So the task is, is math to sort of go from the epic metre that of it is using one language to the kind of metre that works in English that is well established that people think of as naturally poetic and also mimicking natural a speech to a certain extent. Thinking about the modern reader of it, because I remember approaching of it for the first time in translation, and not being particularly enamoured of the text. And and I think so translation has a huge, influential role in the way that people get into texts like this. And for me, personally, the little historian inside me, I love the fastI because so it's packed with so much detail for the sorts of things I'm interested in, which means I haven't spent as much time with the metamorphoses. So what can modern readers gain from engaging with Ovid's Metamorphoses? Well, I think

Stephanie McCarter  40:49

for for any of his text, but especially the metamorphoses, I mean, the primary thing is going to be pleasure, right? He's a masterful storyteller. And probably, to my mind, some of his stories are the most delightful stories from the Roman world and the Greek world, you will read. And he's clever, right? His wordplay is something that drove me completely bonkers trying to reproduce, that's again, part of the pleasure. So so much of it is just going to be the sheer pleasure. We love stories, we love old stories we love. We love seeing that the playfulness with which all of it tells them and in those strange, inventive ways with which he connects them. So just the sheer joy of reading that. But I think probably more than in any other ancient work, we can think with all of it. I think he, he also, he challenges us continually across the ages, because they're always going to appeal no matter what the age is, that's reading them to the sense of abilities of that age, because he is so malleable. And so I think for some of my students, it's so shocking, that they will read this ancient text and you know, he has transgender characters, right? He has characters who are non binary, I mean, so explicitly, so if an incident can see that we haven't just invented certain concerns, right, that these have been here, we've been thinking about these things for so long. And so I think for a reader coming to this text, just you'll be blown away by the fact that we have the word we are still in our most current discourse, part of a conversation that's been going on for 1000s of years. And I think you can really see that with all of it pretty much more than with anybody, because I mean, in some ways, Ovid is so interested in exploring the experiences of characters who aren't going to be the centre, right in other stories. So the other epics that we have in the ancient world, as I was saying, they have, you know, a male protagonist at the very centre, they have a clear goal. Oh, it isn't interested in any of that. There's no protagonist in this story. There's no clear goal. And the most interesting characters are women. And so he's going to constantly be saying, well, what if we don't turn the lens on and do this, but we turn the lens on the people, the women around him, right, and we see the story through their eyes. So we see this in the Heroides, right, which is a series of letters that are written by mythological women who are often very victimised by these male heroes. And so from the very beginning of his poetic output, he's interested in in thinking, Well, what if we told this story through this side character's point of view. And so I think he's very good. As a storyteller of reminding us that there are more than one ways to tell every story, there's so many ways you can tell the same story and every single character involved in any event is going to have their own version. So he helps us to resist the idea of the singular authoritative tale. And so that's so fun to think with he, he leaves open so many alternatives. And so I think this is one great reason we returned to him again and again, because we are doing the very sorts of rethinking reframing that he himself has modelled for us. You know, so one carrot. One reason I love Elizabeth Columba'swork so much. She's the painter that I mentioned before, is that she is taking off his stories, and in completely reframing them, I think, in a way that he would love right? So he gives us a death or he No, He gives us a Daphne who has been shot by Cupid's arrow. Well, Elizabeth colomba has her standing there with Cupid's arrow. And so anybody who's listening to this, just go do a Google Image Search for Elizabeth colomba has Daphne. And so I think that he has he models how to be playful with stories and how to, you know, to see ourselves as as part of an ongoing dialogue in ways that no other ancient author to my mind quite does.

Dr Rad  45:12

You've definitely inspired me to spend the rest of the day perusing his work. Okay. So let me I have to finish off with another little peek behind the curtain in terms of this new translation. Because one of the things that struck me straight away when I first saw it was the cover art and the way that the text was formatted and that sort of thing. It just made me curious about how much input you actually had as to translate it into the publication and the formatting that went into this work and how you think the layout might affect the way that people engage with it. Sure,

Stephanie McCarter  45:47

I want to talk can I talk about the cover for a moment because I love I love I love the cover so much. I wish I were the person who would come up with the cover, but I am not. However, when I thought I was gleeful. What I told them was I didn't want an image of a woman being victimised on the cover. That was really important to me. Because again, it's how do we frame these stories becomes so important and so I wanted a way to frame it around women's agency rather than women's victimisation. So the one directive I gave to the art team at Penguin was I'm more interested in Philomela's Tapestry than her rape. And then they came back with this wonderful cover by it feature it features a tapestry by a Japanese artist, her name is Aiko, Tezuka. And she uses tapestry as a way to explore metamorphosis. So she'll often take old tapestries and weave them and re weave them, which is just wonderful for all of its perfect, perfect, and he uses tapestry so much is a metaphor. So his even from the very first lines of the epic, he asks the gods to spin out a song for him. And so it's a process of spinning, and he's going to weave it together. And then you have so many wonderful female artists in the epic. You have Philomela, who uses tapestry as a way to narrate her rape when she's lost her tongue because her rapist cuts it out. You have arachnid who weaves a tapestry in competition with Minerva, you have the mini ads, who are these wonderful set of sisters who tells stories while they're weaving. So it really I think it pits women's are in particular front and centre. And it's such an important theme. Because the colours are red and white. Those are the dominant colours on the cover. And those colours are so important throughout the metamorphoses,  Philomela's Tapestry is red markings on a white background. And so that colour combination was important to me. As well, it doesn't Be sure its central myth, just as of its doesn't In fact, the middle is kind of wiped out by the and weaving of the tapestry that's happening. So it kind of shows you there is no central myth here that we're going to be dealing with. And also it features some wonderful modern images. There's like a DNA double helix. There's also a uterus, I don't know if you notice that

Dr Rad  48:20

there's a huge I do not see that.

Stephanie McCarter  48:24

So I like this idea of the undoing of the body that the cover kind of evokes. So I just I love the cover. So much. I can't even tell you how much. I just am so happy.

Dr Rad  48:35

It's gorgeous. It is gorgeous. Yeah, the formatting inside, it's

Stephanie McCarter  48:40

probably a bit different from us other translators of the Metamorphoses because it kind of sets each tale apart, like it separates them and gives each like its own big title, those big titles are invented by me. Those are not in the Latin text. And that's a little bit different. And on the one hand, it kind of breaks up the narrative in a way that maybe other translations don't. And, and I can see how some people might be frustrated with that I had no input into that. On the other hand, there's something really good about it and that I think it highlights stories that could easily get lost. I was talking with somebody I can't remember who who mentioned to me that they had never noticed that after Niobe's children are all killed. We are told that pilafs mourns for her. And pilafs is famously the victim of the gods as well he or sorry of his own father, he was kidnapped by his own father and has the average shoulder and he was said to the gods, and when the gods figured out what his father was up to, they put him back together. And so he, I don't know he's just it's an interesting moment where this character can find sympathy for now be he's the son of an impious father and she's an hurt impiety led to her own kids getting to destroyed, but he can find space in himself to sympathise with her. And in my version that set apart like it gets its own title Pelops mourns for Niobe. And this person mentioned to me they'd never even noticed it before until they read my translation. So maybe it does that formatting can highlight stories that can easily be lost otherwise. Well, in

Dr Rad  50:21

terms of what you said about your goal being accessibility, readability and also thinking about the fact that as you say, you use this text as a teacher, and therefore you kind of approach it, I think through a teacher's lens. I think it does assist people who are using it in an educational sense and might be wanting to dip in and out of it. So yeah, I must admit, I personally liked that aspect of it. Yeah. I'm

Stephanie McCarter  50:44

good. And some of my titles that I give the different episodes are very different from the way other people have entitled those episodes. So I think that the episode with Callisto I just simply call that story. Jove rapes Callisto. And other I know, at least one other translator calls it like Jove in Arcadia.

Dr G  51:08

Okay. Yeah.

Stephanie McCarter  51:12

So I was very influenced by feminist criticism of newspaper headlines that want people to say upfront exactly what has happened. And I have gotten a little bit of pushback by people saying, when you say rape, it implies the author is making a judgement. And I'm thinking to myself, well, he is clearly telling a story about rapes, if they were stories about murders, could I not use the word murder? Because that would imply a judgement? Yes,

Dr G  51:38

definitely. Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it. And I think I found the Section Breaks really useful, actually. Because it does allow a sort of a bracketing off. And it can also, I think, be an overwhelming kind of text to approach. This is true for any epic, but when you see the translation that laid out on the page, and it's like, I think to myself, what's my commitment to getting through the text, you know, like, how long before I get a real break. And sometimes when you're thinking about something like the Aeneid, or we're thinking about the Odyssey, you're like, I got a whole book of poetry to get through before I get a break. And it's like, if I if I don't sit down and make a commitment, we are in trouble. Whereas this allows for a more sort of a dipping in moment, a dipping out moment. And so yesterday, I was sitting down, I was like, You know what I'm interested in how Medea's story is being told here. And so I could go to that section and go through that part. It's in specifics, and that would be obviously good for me to contextualise later by going out and looking at the whole book and doing that. So we had approach but he didn't have to read the whole book in order to get there, which I think was really handy.

Stephanie McCarter  52:48

That's good to know. I mean, sometimes you need to catch your breath to I mean, it gives you horrific things happen here, right? It gives you a moment to death.

Dr Rad  52:59

And let's face it, researches and historians, they don't always have the time to read an entire text just for the one reference that they really need. And so I'm really I'm really pulling back the veil here on what we do. Yeah, I mean, if you're given a deadline for an article or book or something like that, you know, you only have so much time and when you're looking at an epic text, you're like, oh my god, I just want this flooding reference. I hate this whole thing.

Stephanie McCarter  53:27

You know, having taught Ovid many times I can say I had never read the entire epic through before, of course I had and someone who sits down is even taller, but in poetry. So this is another reason to become a translator. It's going to compel you to read carefully, all the things translating Catullus right now and I realised as I'm going through like they were poems I know so well. I basically have them memorised. And there are some poems. I didn't even know this. So it's nice to be compelled to read more. Absolutely.

Dr Rad  53:57

That's that's exactly what we all do. Let's be real.

Dr G  54:02

So heading towards the wrapping up phase of this interview. I'm interested in rewarding or interesting reactions to your translation that have touched you.

Stephanie McCarter  54:14

I think the most touching one was the book was reviewed in the in the New Yorker by DANIEL MENDELSOHN, which was wonderful, shocking. I'm still in disbelief that it was reviewed there. This was a letter that came in to the New Yorker after Daniel Mendelssohn reviewed it and this anonymous letter writer writes, I appreciate it no Mendelssohn's consideration of Stephanie McCarter's new translation of all of its metamorphosis, which presents the sexual violence that appears in the poem clearly. I reread the metamorphosis earlier this year 19 years after I was raped during the summer of my high school graduation. After a decade of therapy, I was struck by avid sensitivity to the complex social and familial dynamics that follow in the wake of sexual violence. As in his poetry, victims aren't simply transformed into other bodies they are abandoned, exiled and sometimes punished. She goes on to talk about Medusa. Medusa story is especially illustrative after Neptune rapes her in the nervous temple, the goddess turns her hair into snakes and banishes her to the farthest corner of the world to live with the monstrous Gorgon sisters, all who Look upon her who witnessed her in shame turned to stone. I know this phenomenon well. I have felt isolated in my biological and chosen families and have lost friends and romantic relationships because I stopped pretending. Even briefly that nothing had happened to me. People often turn away from what they prefer not to see McCarter's translation with its attentiveness to these elements of its poem is a gift to those who are ready to reflect on their experiences as victims of and bystanders to rape. I hope that it helps people learn to talk about this trauma and softens hard hearts. So that having that letter published by The New Yorker and being able to read that was something I mean, I wept afterwards. That's good to say on tearing

Dr G  56:02

up just hearing that letter. That's

Dr Rad  56:06

really powerful. Yeah. So that was,

Stephanie McCarter  56:08

for me the most. Still the the I can read that and know that all the effort I put in was, without a doubt, or every

Dr Rad  56:20

bit of it. Well, I think it just goes to show that you have certainly reached those goals that you set for yourself at the beginning of the translation. And it's so touching for all of us who are involved in studying the ancient world to think about the power that an ancient texts can still have in somebody's life these days. Absolutely.

Stephanie McCarter  56:40

And I think a good translation does show you that, you know, all of it isn't. He's not revelling in these characters, victimhood, right. And he's, he's, he's very interested in, in analysing what they've gone through and their trauma and to, to see that happen across millennia, is, I think, quite powerful. And it's been very powerful for my students. And it's been very powerful for me personally, as well, to know that there is this connection there across time.

Dr Rad  57:08

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I've had a growing appreciation, I think, the translation and I hope that this particular episode, really highlights for our listeners in an age of increasing discussion of AI and Google Translate and those sorts of features. I think it just goes to show that these sorts of things really can't replicate what you do with a translator of any text. But I think, particularly these sorts of ancient texts, you have to become, as you say, so familiar with the metre, the person, you have to think about their context, your context, you have to think about how the audience is going to respond. There's just so much, and so much careful choice that goes into a translation. I mean, as I say, I'm always in awe of translators, because language never came easily to me. And once I, once I started looking into it, the more I learned about it, the more I was just utterly gobsmacked it, I think it's something that we sometimes take for granted that we can just have translations of things into the language that we want. But it's really not an easy task by any means.

Stephanie McCarter  58:09

Absolutely, which is why it's been so great for me to see more classical translators getting some recognition and attention. So there I am with you, for many years, I didn't I didn't think about them, I took them for granted until I became one. And now Now I, I really hope that the field will start to recognise translation a lot more, I'm hoping that, you know, I'm hoping that we're really embracing it. And not just, you know, popularly but also, you know, through things like tenure and promotion, which translation has not always counted towards. And

Dr G  58:43

I think this is incredible that this field that sits right at the heart of a lot of the ideas of the university as well in its sort of historical formation, that translation, still, in this modern era is not necessarily considered the kind of work output that is relevant for the discipline. And it's like, and it's so essential, so absolutely essential. Absolutely.

Stephanie McCarter  59:07

I think I think for so long, a lot of that is because we embrace the languages so much that if you know, to be a real classicist, you had to set up Greek and Latin, right? And rather than there being a group of Classicist who could produce translations so that these can be broadly accessible, right? Classes, classics has not always been a field that embraced accessibility. It embraced exclusivity. And I think that's played so much into the way that we think have thought historically about translation. And it's not unique to classics, but I think it's been especially prominent in the field of classics. Oh, Look,

Dr Rad  59:47

at USP, you're preaching to the converted, but the more I learned about translation, the more I was like, why would one person ever take this on? It's like, it's massive. You clearly need more than one brain working on this or you need here. Huge amounts of funding because the time that effort that goes into it is insane. I mean, this is the thing, when Dr. G and I are working on things sure, like if you know, if we sit down and really put our minds to it, we can do a translation. But is it going to be any good? Is it going to really capture what that person is released

Dr G  1:00:18

one episode every six months, maybe?

Dr Rad  1:00:22

Yeah, it's just, it's just like, oh my god, like, why would we even bother if we don't have expertise? Like we rely on people out there to produce really great translations, you know, who have given their heart and soul to it as you have, and who loves delving into the minutia. Because otherwise, as you say, it's just a literal translation of the Latin. And so yeah, I've often thought this is clearly something that calls for a group effort, rather than one person slaving away, you know, translating the text every, like 20 years when something's changed in the context, and we need to do translation.

Stephanie McCarter  1:00:58

But then there's so many texts that have no good translations like, yeah, at all. And I have been told I was told when I embarked on translation for the first time by a colleague not in classics, but in a different field. But in an r1 Institute. We in the US, ICANN R1 institution, so it's primarily research based university. So we wouldn't give you gratitude not tenure. For

Dr G  1:01:25

and I'll never forget this. So telling.

Stephanie McCarter  1:01:27

Telling, yes, absolutely. But I am lucky that I'm at a and I get I don't think that this phenomenon exists so much in Australia, but at a liberal arts college. And so we are dedicated teaching undergraduate students and have a very broad view of what contribution to the field looks like. And the stars on campus are the creative writers. So we have a great creative writing programme. We have the Swanee review, which is the oldest continuously published literary quarterly in the United States. The Sewanee writers come Conference, which is a few weeks every summer where I sort of hide in my office because all of these wonderful writers I'm intimidated by come to town. Oh, no,

Dr G  1:02:12

you'll have to be in there next. Come on.

Stephanie McCarter  1:02:16

This is this is what I realised that novelists weren't actually gods that they were real people. Just be walking around and I'd see some amazing novelists. So we have you know, our have been I've benefited enormously from the context of my institution, they've been very supportive. That

Dr Rad  1:02:33

is good to hear. And Look, we'd love to wrap up with a final question. Are you working on something new at the moment? Or are you taking a well deserved break by the sounds?

1:02:45

There's no well deserved break. So I have a few things. So I have a book book that's coming out in September, called women in power. It's also published by Penguin. And it is a it's kind of an anthology, not a source book, but an anthology about ancient women, both mythological and real. And so we have a variety of existing translations, and then some new translations, but the women that you can expect to read about are people like Dido and Hypsipyle, and Omphale, and Semiramis. So legendary women, I translated Aristophanes assembly women in full for that, which is a lot of fun. And we have historical women. So we have Boudicca, we have Alexandra Salome, we have Amanirenas, Queen of Kush, we have a wide array of real women and historical or and literary women. And then so that's coming out in September, I'm also translating khatola. So that will be at some stage.

Dr Rad  1:03:46

That'll be interesting, because he's language is certainly a feature.

Stephanie McCarter  1:03:51

Gonna be fun. And then I just signed a contract to translate the Ars amatoria, yes.

Dr G  1:03:57

Oh, this is gonna be very exciting.

1:04:01

I'm gonna be returning both to Ovid and to Australia, because I will be coming to spend another year to there in 2025 2026 to translate the Ars amatoria.

Dr G  1:04:11

I feel like we're gonna have to take a flight to Brisbane.

Dr Rad  1:04:14

I was gonna say I think if you're up for it, we'll have to do an in person episode on your latest work if you're up for it. That

Stephanie McCarter  1:04:21

sounds wonderful. You know, you could always twist my arm and get me to come down to Sydney. You're in Sydney says

Dr Rad  1:04:27

oh, sorry. Sure. Cool down here. Not today, but in general.

Dr G  1:04:33

Don't right now. This summer has been just moist and awful.

Dr Rad  1:04:39

Yeah, throughout the entire interview, I've been like dabbing my my heart and my athletic going. Oh my god. Oh, well, Professor Stephanie micarta. Thank you so much for your amazing translation and for speaking to us about it today. listeners. I'm sure you're all dying to run out and pick up a copy of the gorgeously A decorated of his Metamorphoses for yourself. Thank you for listening to this special episode of the partial historians. You can find our sources, sound credits and an automated transcript in our show notes at WWW dot partial historians.com. Our music is by Bettina Joy De Guzman, you too can support our show and help us to produce more fascinating content about the ancient world by becoming a Patreon. In return, you receive exclusive early access to our special episodes, just like this one. You can also pre order our new book right now. Your cheeky guide to the Roman Empire will be out later this year. However, if you lost all your money betting on a chariot race, please just tell someone about the show or give us a five star review. Until next time, yeah yours in ancient room

For our full show notes and edited transcripts, head on over to https://partialhistorians.com/

Support the show

Patreon

Ko-Fi

Read our books

Rex: The Seven Kings of Rome

Your Cheeky Guide to the Roman Empire

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.