George Orwell on Writing

Find Your True Nature

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, who chose it to protect his family from his social and political writing. He is most famous for the last two novels he wrote, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

As a child he knew he wanted to be a writer but he got sidetracked with several jobs early in life.

I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

Why I Write

That's a view all writers need to embrace—anyone creative for that matter. Once you know what your true nature is you won't be happy if you don't pursue it. Of course pursuing it is no guarantee of happiness, but not pursuing it is a sure road to misery.

Why Do You Write?

Most of his advice for writers comes from two essays, Why I Write and Politics and the English Language. Don't let that last one fool you. Regardless of what type of writing you do you will be a much better writer by following its advice.

Orwell spent many years writing expository journalism and reviews of books and plays, but we know him best because of his strong political writing. His socialist views were partly formed from his time spent pretending to be a tramp in the working class sections of various European cities leading up to World War II.

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

Why I Write

He explained how these experiences shaped him as a writer:

I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in—at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own—but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write.

Why I Write

He outlines the different motives all writers share:

Four Great Motives for Writing
These four motives are active in every writer, in different proportions, and vary at different times throughout life. It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time.

1. Sheer Egoism
2. Aesthetic Enthusiasm
3. Historical Impulse
4. Political Purpose

In Why I Write he defines each of these motives; follow the link for his in-depth explanation.

I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

Why I Write

Don't Hold Back

You have to say what needs to be said, and say it in your unique voice. Know that the events of your time shape you as a writer. If you feel outraged by events happening around you, let your readers know.

In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties.

Why I Write

You know how your mind begins to fog over when you're reading some business or political fluffery? In his essay, Politics and the English Language, he gives examples of this vague, wandering style of writing and shows how to sharpen it and make it more readable. (I may have some of these exerpts out of order, but this flows nicely to get the gist.)

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly... 

This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose... 

The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. 

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. 

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.

I was especially glad to read this:

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable."

Fascism has always been a slippery word for me; I have never been able to hold a definition of it in my mind long enough for any given sentence to have meaning. "Democracy" is another word that has multiple ambiguous definitions. I struggled with Whitman's Leaves of Grass because I could never get my head around what he meant by "democratic art."

Even though he calls the following "rules for political writing," I can see how most of my own writing would be better by doing this:

Six Rules for Political Writing
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Write what you want to write, what you need to write, not what you think you should or what you think your friends or family or church want you to write. Be bold. Be daring. Take risks.

To yield subjectively, not merely to a party machine, but even to a group ideology, is to destroy yourself as a writer.

Writers and Leviathan

Don't Give Up

I know you've heard that said at least a couple times in your life.

George Orwell didn't write his two most famous novels until the end of his life.

Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.

Why I Write

After writing Animal Farm and before writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, he wrote:

I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Why I Write

I like to keep this final quote in mind when I think of him writing Nineteen Eighty-Four, only a few years before he died, suffering severely from tuberculosis:

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

Why I Write

And here is an inspirational poster with that last quote on it.

Walt Whitman on Writing

I've heard the titles and parts of some of Walt Whitman's poems over the years without connecting them to him. "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," "O Captain! My Captain!" I've enjoyed this past month as I've gotten to know his work better.

Leaves of Grass, First Impressions

I hadn't read Leaves of Grass before this month. Two things I knew about it were that Bill Clinton gave a copy of it to Monica Lewinsky, and the chemist Gale Boetticher gave a copy of it to his mentor, Walter White, in the series Breaking Bad. What book of poetry could cross that gap?

I approached it with an open mind and immediately became confused. It was written in the mid to late 1800s and I could understand the patriotic themes, but shuffled between that theme and long rambling lists were bits of erotica and amazing perception. What rabbit hole was this? In the heat of passion the last thing I'd want to hear is the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Maybe times have changed but the patriotic themes were an anaphrodisiac to me. It seemed like porn for Tea-Partiers.

His Life's Work

But this was his most famous work and I didn't want to judge it too quickly. As I read his prose writings I learned that Leaves of Grass was actually put together carefully over the course of thirty years. He published the first edition in 1855 when he was 36 years old and he kept adding to it, printing new editions until shortly before his death. He considered Leaves of Grass his life's work and had a clear purpose in writing it:

“The theory of my Leaves of Grass as a composition of verses has been from first to last, (if I am to give impromptu a hint of the spinal marrow of the business, and sign it with my name,) to thoroughly possess the mind, memory, cognizance of the author himself, with everything beforehand—a full armory of concrete actualities, observations, humanity, past poems, ballads, facts, technique, war and peace, politics, North and South, East and West, nothing too large or too small, the sciences as far as possible—and above all America and the present—after and out of which the subject of the poem, long or short, has been invariably turned over to his Emotionality, even Personality, to be shaped thence; and emerges strictly therefrom, with all its merits and demerits on its head. Every page of my poetic or attempt at poetic utterance therefore smacks of the living physical identity, date, environment, individuality, probably beyond anything known, and in style often offensive to the conventions.”

Walt Whitman's Last, Complete Prose Works

Whitman saw firsthand how close we came to the dissolution of the United States, so the theme of democracy became central to his writing. He saw things as democratic or non-democratic. He even imagined that Shakespeare—who wrote from a strong pro-aristocratic perspective—may have been alluding to democracy in his plays. He saw it everywhere.

Strong Drink, Small Sips

I think Leaves of Grass was hard for me to take in at first because I was trying to read it too fast.  It contains some of the most vivid imagery I have read. He removed everything he felt didn't belong, so even all the long lists of occupations and place names are there to reinforce his underlying purpose. 

“...after many MS. doings and undoings—(I had great trouble in leaving out the stock "poetical" touches, but succeeded at last.)”

Through Eight Years, Specimen Days

I enjoy it much more when I read a few poems at a time.

On Writing

He always carried paper with him to write on, a notebook or the blank end papers torn from books. On his daily walks he would often stop and record his impressions.

“I find the woods in mid-May and early June my best places for composition. Seated on logs or stumps there, or resting on rails, nearly all the following memoranda have been jotted down. Wherever I go, indeed, winter or summer, city or country, alone at home or traveling, I must take notes...”

New Themes Entered Upon, Specimen Days

One thing I've learned from reading Whitman is to be observant and capture your impressions as quickly as possible: 

"The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment—to put things down without deliberation—without worrying about their style—without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote—wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught."

Commentary

Another important thing to keep in mind when writing your story is to make sure your characters are grounded in their time as well as place.

“No great poem or other literary or artistic work of any scope, old or new, can be essentially consider'd without weighing first the age, politics (or want of politics) and aim, visible forms, unseen soul, and current times, out of the midst of which it rises and is formulated...”

An Old Man's Rejoinder, Complete Prose Works

Pissing on Poe

Whitman was well acquainted with the works of his contemporaries, and even knew some of them personally. He wrote an essay, "Edgar Poe's Significance," in which he struggled to say something nice. After illuminating why he didn't like Poe's style he reluctantly concedes:

“For a long while, and until lately, I had a distaste for Poe's writings. I wanted, and still want for poetry, the clear sun shining, and fresh air blowing—the strength and power of health, not of delirium, even amid the stormiest passions—with always the background of the eternal moralities. Non-complying with these requirements, Poe's genius has yet conquer'd a special recognition for itself, and I too have come to fully admit it, and appreciate it and him.”

Edgar Poe's Significance, Complete Prose Works

Poetry is a Mutual Endeavor

After trying to read a scholarly work on poetry titled, The Theory of Poetry, he gave up in frustration and wrote some of his own ideas on the subject.

“At its best, poetic lore is like what may be heard of conversation in the dusk, from speakers far or hid, of which we get only a few broken murmurs. What is not gather'd is far more—perhaps the main thing.”

After Trying a Certain Book, Complete Prose Works

A poem is a shared experience between the poet and the reader. The poet shouldn't spell everything out. There needs to be enough room for the readers' experiences to complete the understanding, making the interpretation personal.

“I only seek to put you in rapport. Your own brain, heart, evolution, must not only understand the matter, but largely supply it.”

Ibid.

He expands this idea in referring to the works of Shakespeare:

“In the whole matter I should specially dwell on, and make much of, that inexplicable element of every highest poetic nature which causes it to cover up and involve its real purpose and meanings in folded removes and far recesses. Of this trait—hiding the nest where common seekers may never find it—the Shaksperean works afford the most numerous and mark'd illustrations known to me. I would even call that trait the leading one through the whole of those works.”

Walt Whitman,  Complete Prose Works

True American Literature

At the end of his life he wondered if there would ever arise a true American Literature. "We want mighty authors" who not only respectfully build on the literary heritage of our past, but

“clearly understand and justify, and be devoted to and exploit our own day, its diffused light, freedom, responsibilities, with all it necessitates...”

American National Literature, Complete Prose Works

What do you think? In the 122 years since Whitman's death, who would you identify as our "mighty authors?"

And finally, here is a poster of Walt Whitman with an inspirational quote on writing.

Showing Up

The muse will be here shortly, she's running late.

I've been working on a novel for the past year. As always, some words have been a gift, the rest I've had to work for. When I hear of authors who churn out book after book I can't help looking back at my snail pace and wonder how I could be so deluded to think I was a writer. Wasn't there some threshold to admittance? In the back of my mind there is some measure of daily word count, some formula of X pages per month. What if they find out I've been practicing literature without a license?

Then I just have to take a deep breath and try to relax. I know I am slower. I work at my own pace, I'm diligent. I don't have a deadline; if I did that would make it easier. There's no one making me write this except myself. I know it will be finished when the story has been told.

As I've been keyboarding the novel from my handwritten notebooks I found a few places where I knew I was alone, no muse was coming to save my day, and I just had to dive in and write anyway. I hope this helps you find some motivation to keep writing with or without the muse.

August 4, 2013
I'm dragging this morning. My mind feels mushy. All that clarity from yesterday is gone. I like what I wrote, it finally feels the right direction. I've been sitting here mulling things over in my head so I just need to mull them over on paper. I have a lot of deadlines starting to add up... . Leave that alone. Those are problems outside of this story. Keep this time in the morning for writing, not thinking about all the other things you should be doing.

August 10, 2013
My pen is in my hand. My thoughts are out there somewhere. I wasn't writing. Just sitting here, looking blankly ahead, trying to grasp the random thoughts as they zip by.
Finally I realized I was just procrastinating, so I put my pen to the paper and here these words are. These thoughts were not in my mind a moment ago, but they're here now. It's like magic.
I can see how easy it is for people to attribute this to inspiration, but really it's just showing up at the same time and place every day. I've been doing this consistently for over a month. Yesterday I forgot to set my alarm for 6:00 am but I woke up anyway. Nice how you can develop new habits.

August 31, 2013
I'm not in the mood to write this morning. But I got up at 5:30, drank my protein shake, took my Alleve, settling in. If it wasn't for this all being a habit right now I'd still be in bed. But here I am with my pen and notebook, watching a moth outside in the dark of the morning trying to get to my desk lamp, bumping against the window.
It doesn't matter if the muse shows up or not, at least I'm here.

September 10, 2013
Wow, a blank. I should just put the pen to paper and wait for something to come out. It's like drawing. Things are kind of loose, I start filling in the details, but sometimes there's an area I just can't envision clearly. So I go with it, everything else is looking okay but this one part just bothers me. When I look at the picture my eye goes straight to the part I didn't spend enough time on. That's what this feels like right now. There are things I don't know about the characters.

So I write, muse or no muse. And every day I'm that much closer.

Have you had a difficult time writing when the muse doesn't show up? What do you do to get the words out?

Vladimir Nabokov on Writing

Vladimir Nabokov is most famous for his novel Lolita and his richly-detailed writing style. Reading his work is like watching a virtuoso performer. His multi-lingual perspective was a deep reservoir of experience that inspired his writing—he spent the first twenty years of his life in Russia, the next twenty in Europe, the next twenty in America, and the end of his life in Switzerland.

On Descriptions

His descriptions have affected me most. It feels like I'm there with him, seeing the details that make the setting, that create the mood. I feel time slowed down and I get a chance to take a breath.

What do the observations tell me about the character? In the short story, Beneficence, a sculptor comes to terms with losing his lover. While waiting for a rendezvous his attention is drawn to a nearby little old woman selling postcards and knick-knacks from a stand near a guardhouse. The window of the guardhouse opens and a soldier calls the old woman over and gives her a cup of coffee.

 “Then she began drinking. I have never seen a person drink with such utter, profound, concentrated relish. She forgot her stand, the postcards, the chill wind, her American client, she just sipped, sucked, disappeared totally into her coffee—exactly as I forgot about my vigil and saw only the velours jacket, the bliss-dimmed eyes, the stubby hands clutching the mug in their woolen mittens. She drank for a long time, drank in slow swallows, reverently licking off the fringe of skin, heating her palms on the warm tin. And a dark, sweet warmth poured into my soul. My soul, too, was drinking and heating itself, and the brown little woman tasted of coffee with milk.”

After finishing the coffee  she returns the cup with a couple postcards. The main character then observes:

“Here I became aware of the world’s tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I had sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt, in the metallic yet tender drone of the wind, in the autumn clouds bloated with rain. I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss, beneficent trepidation, a gift bestowed on us and unappreciated.”

By slowing down and showing us the details we see the things that led to his conclusions.

Nabokov rarely sums things up so nicely. Nor does his work always leave you feeling warm and fuzzy. Often his work is dark, but I always feel his honesty in observation. He doesn't judge or hold back. I can't help but think of him saying, "This is what I saw, and this is how it made me feel."

On Characters

You can't talk about Nabokov without talking about despicable characters. I'm 54 years old and I had not read Lolita until this past month. It has always been on the periphery of my awareness. I knew it was a famous book but the subject matter was so off-putting. There was a part of my mind that attributed the subject matter—pedophilia—to the author himself. I'm embarassed to admit that, being a writer myself. I suspect it's just human nature because that question came up often in his interviews. In the book of his collected interviews, Strong Opinions, he said:

“I am very careful to keep my characters beyond the limits of my own identity. Only the background of the novel can be said to contain some biographical touches.”

Nabokov is by far one of the greatest developers of character. He talked about Humbert Humbert from Lolita, when asked if he was inspired by someone in real life:

“He’s a man I devised, a man with an obsession, and I think many of my characters have sudden obsessions, different kinds of obsessions; but he never existed. He did exist after I had written the book.”

On Inspiration

At an early stage of a novel's development Nabokov would collect bits of information, names of things, descriptions—before he even knew what it was all for. Like a bird collecting bits of string and fluff. Then suddenly there is an awareness—"This is what I'm going to write." After that the novel starts to breed itself.

“Since this entire structure, dimly illumined in one’s mind, can be compared to a painting, and since you do not have to work gradually from left to right for its proper perception, I may direct my flashlight at any part or particle of the picture when setting it down in writing. I do not begin my novel at the beginning. I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper.”

For him, this process was made easier by writing everything on index cards, rearranging them, numbering them only later when everything was complete. About three 5x7-inch index cards made up one typewritten page.

He said creative writers must study the works of rivals, and they

“must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world. In order to do this adequately, avoiding duplication of labor, the artist should know the given world...Art is never simple...art at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex.”

The Reader's Reaction

When I read Lolita I experienced a visceral reaction I have felt only rarely while reading. Perhaps I've been reading the wrong books. I've felt it while reading Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood, Steinbeck. Why do I feel it when reading Nabokov?

“...you read an artist’s book not with your heart (the heart is a remarkably stupid reader), and not with your brain alone, but with your brain and spine. 'Ladies and gentlemen, the tingle in the spine really tells you what the author felt and wished you to feel.'"

Reading Nabokov gives me that tingle in my spine.

And finally, here is a poster of Nabokov with some inspiring thoughts for writers:

Take a Trip

A couple weeks ago I took a trip to an area in central Utah where you can do some rockhounding. It's called Topaz Mountain and is about 25 miles west of Delta.

I had been been there years ago when my kids were young. I didn't find anything at the time, not knowing exactly what to be looking for; naively expecting crystals like this to just be laying around:

In case I didn't find anything I planned to get there early enough to photograph the sunrise so the trip wouldn't be a total bust.

I went with my youngest daughter who took the day off from work. She had no recollection of being there as a kid.

I know, nice pics and all, but what does this have to do with writing? I wondered if I could paint the experience with words and get close to the same feeling.

I opened the car door and looked around at my purple-tinged surroundings thirty minutes before sunrise. I walked around the CRV and popped open the back, opened the passenger door to get my camera bag. 

If it was a movie you'd expect to hear a breeze, the clichéd scree of a hawk, various subtle but unidentifiable animal noises, maybe a rabbit running through the brush, little birds taking off. But there was none of that. Complete silence, except for a slight hi-pitched tone of tinitus. Completely alone. 

The first sounds I heard were my boot-crunch on the dried sticks and rocks as I wandered among the dried parchment flowers of the fourwing saltbush, and brittle, twisted, frayed-silver sagebrush roots.  The plastic click and aluminum slide of the tripod legs and various soft button presses as I got my camera ready for sunrise. 

Then it was just waiting. No wind, so the 24-degree temperature didn't feel cold at all. Slowly pacing and wandering around until moments before sunrise I saw a better view for the picture. I ran back to the camera, slipping in the sand, grabbed the tripod and ran back to the better spot just as the sunlight grazed the mountain.

So did I capture the feeling? Whether I succeeded or not doesn't matter. It's the attempt. I had to slow down and quiet my racing mind enough to re-live the experience and try to put it into words.

So here's your challenge. One of these weekends coming up, take a solitary day trip and try to capture it in words as well as pictures.

What's Behind Your Smile?

Ovid's Influence

Vivid Imagery

I had never heard of Ovid until I was reading a book on Shakespeare and the author mentioned him. He summed up his comments with this statement:

There is hardly a single Shakespeare play or poem that does not owe character, language or plot to Ovidian mythology.
Mark Anderson, "Shakespeare" by Another Name

My curiosity was piqued and I've been slowly reading him since. The "Ovidian mythology" refers to the book Metamorphoses and I downloaded several free versions on iBook. I finally paid a few bucks for the complete works that includes the original Latin, English verse translations, and prose translations of not only Metamorphoses, but the rest of his poetry, and a biography.

So why bother reading some dusty old poetry written a couple thousand years ago? Because the imagery is surprisingly vivid. For example, here is how Ovid describes the goddess Envy:

[Envy] rises sluggishly from the ground, and leaves the bodies of the serpents half devoured, and stalks along with sullen pace. And when she sees the Goddess [Pallas] graced with beauty and with splendid arms, she groans, and fetches a deep sigh at her appearance. A paleness rests on her face, and leanness in all her body; she never looks direct on you; her teeth are black with rust; her breast is green with gall; her tongue is dripping with venom. Smiles there are none, except such as the sight of grief has excited. Nor does she enjoy sleep, being kept awake with watchful cares; but sees with sorrow the successes of men, and pines away at seeing them. She both torments and is tormented at the same moment, and is ever her own punishment.”

Isn't that just how envy feels?

Here is an excerpt of the story of Phaethon taking a joyride on his father's Sun chariot (with a time lapse of me sketching a portrait of Ovid):

Book of Changes

Metamorphoses is made up of fifteen books and spans from the creation of the earth to the reign of Augustus. These myths were recorded by others before him, but Ovid was the first person to bring them all together in chronological order. The first eleven Books deal with the Gods and Demi-Gods, and Book 12 tells of the Trojan War. The remaining Books gradually bring us to Ovid's time, with the death of Julius Caesar and the beginning of Augustus's reign.

The theme of metamorphosis seems to start with Jove raping various nymphs and humans, and his wife, Juno, punishing them by changing them into various trees, animals, rocks, whatever. And so it goes, the Gods punishing everyone for their own actions and petty jealousies.

However, there are no lessons to be learned. These aren't morality tales.  Ian Johnston, retired instructor at Vancouver Island University, observes:

The lasting impression is that the metamorphoses provide a wonderful basis for telling stories effectively, nothing more. 

It is there for us to enjoy as an example of a story for its own sake, something we can read and enjoy for the moment, without being led to some system of belief about the world or some cosmic understanding. 

What we remember from the poem is the clarity of particular episodes memorably delivered, rather than any consistent illumination of what one might call a vision of life.

If you read the prose translation of Metamorphoses you'll notice the structure is a bit different. The Books are further broken into Fables, and after each Fable is an Explanation. When I first started reading the prose translation I was confused by the explanations. The fables were entertaining, but the explanations seemed misguided, didactic, and often ludicrous. I was glad that Ian Johnston shed light on them:

The extraordinary tendency of the Middle Ages to moralize Ovid, to force onto the poem very didactic interpretations entirely consistent with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, becomes easier to understand. Interpreters in that period certainly put something into the poem that is not there, but did not displace or violate some central vision of things.

Ovid's Influence on Writing

Writers will benefit a great deal from reading and studying Ovid. Ian Johnston also points out:

...if one wants to have any sort of historical appreciation for the development of English poetry, understanding the influence of and the reference to Ovid is essential. 

What we are learning, as we read this poem, is not how to understand the world but how to use language and the resources of fiction delightfully.

(In researching Ovid it was inevitable that I'd come across lots of discussion around the various Greek, Roman, Latin, and English poetic forms. I won't go into that here, but see the footnotes if you're interested.*)

Fun Things I Learned from Reading Metamorphoses

• Origin of werewolves (lycanthropy).
• Rover was the name of one of Actaeon's hounds.
• Earth as a sphere was common knowledge in Ovid's time.
• Dreadlocks were referred to (dread-inspiring locks).
• The raven was Pallas's favorite bird. (I wondered why Edgar Allan Poe had the raven sit upon a bust of Pallas.)

How to read Metamorphoses

• Keep in mind Ovid is dark. The stories are often brutal and violent, but the poetic imagery is mesmerizing.
• Read the verse translation, and if you need a little clarification read the same passage from the prose translation. I know, it seems like a translation of a translation but sometimes it helps.
• When you read the prose translation, skip the explanations. They were added by translators in the Middle Ages to impose didactic interpretations reflecting teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

And finally, here is a poster of Ovid with some motivational thoughts for writers:

*Here are a few links that will give you a great refresher on poetic forms:

• Dactylic Hexameter
• Rhythms of Latin Poetry
• Iambic Pentameter