Rome's greatest poet was sent into exile for life and his works were consigned to damnatio memoriae -- eternal forgetting.
But they weren't forgotten.
Readers touched by their beauty preserved their precious volumes and copied them by hand so that the literature which had offended the government of Rome may yet live on forever.
And it has.
But who was Ovid? And what crime did he commit to bring down his punishment?
This innovative novel presents the life of Ovid in a kind of live variety show, hosted by the narrator in the role of the emcee.
The show features light-hearted sexy bits based on Ovid's erotic poems (including a striptease by the emperor's granddaughter), stress poetry, Emperor Augustus' internal monologues, political commentary, and a police investigation ("what crime did Ovid commit?").
The investigation device allows the author to present several original ideas as to the possible causes of the exile. And all of this dazzling structural innovation is couched in movingly beautiful prose.
While the point isn't belabored, ultimately, like all of Bocheński's books, this too is a book about the individual's relationship to the ruling tyranny and the figure of Emperor Augustus looms large over the whole work.
Because of its frank treatment of the topic of dictatorship, the book was eventually banned by the communist regime, and that "exile" forced its author into a new role: that of a prominent political dissident.
"It would be difficult to find a more brilliant fictional treatment of Ovid's life than this hilariously serious entertainment"--Theodore Ziolkowski, Ovid and the Moderns
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