Book 41 - "The Love-Artist" by Jane Alison
Thursday, April 27th, 2006 18:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeTwo offenses ruined me: a poem and an error.
Love and betrayal in Ancient Rome.
No-one knows why the Roman poet Ovid was exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea, or why only two lines of his poem "Medea" have survived, so it leaves the novelist a lot of scope in imagining what could have happened.
Ovid is out of favour with the puritanical Emperor Augustus after writing a book of advice about love, and decides that it might be prudent to leave Rome for a while. He takes a holiday on the Black Sea coast, while restlessly awaiting the publication of his latest work, "Metamorphoses", which he hopes may bring him back into favour at court, and while there he sees a young girl emerging from a pool like one of the transfigured characters from his book. Taking Xenia back to Rome with him, he cynically manipulates her into fulfilling her role as his muse, while Ovid himself is manipulated by the new patron he hopes will bring him back into the Imperial good books. And all the while he is desperate for Xenia to use her witch's powers to tell him whether his work will survive him and his name will be known forever.
Although their plots are very different, "The Love-Artist" reminded me of one of my favourite books, Naomi Mitchison's "The Corn King and the Spring Queen", whose main character is also a witch from the coast of Black Sea who travels to the supposedly more civilised parts of the Roman Empire.
Love and betrayal in Ancient Rome.
No-one knows why the Roman poet Ovid was exiled to Tomis on the Black Sea, or why only two lines of his poem "Medea" have survived, so it leaves the novelist a lot of scope in imagining what could have happened.
Ovid is out of favour with the puritanical Emperor Augustus after writing a book of advice about love, and decides that it might be prudent to leave Rome for a while. He takes a holiday on the Black Sea coast, while restlessly awaiting the publication of his latest work, "Metamorphoses", which he hopes may bring him back into favour at court, and while there he sees a young girl emerging from a pool like one of the transfigured characters from his book. Taking Xenia back to Rome with him, he cynically manipulates her into fulfilling her role as his muse, while Ovid himself is manipulated by the new patron he hopes will bring him back into the Imperial good books. And all the while he is desperate for Xenia to use her witch's powers to tell him whether his work will survive him and his name will be known forever.
Although their plots are very different, "The Love-Artist" reminded me of one of my favourite books, Naomi Mitchison's "The Corn King and the Spring Queen", whose main character is also a witch from the coast of Black Sea who travels to the supposedly more civilised parts of the Roman Empire.
