David Malouf
David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life envisions the life of the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso in the first century CE after Emperor Augustus banishes him to Tomis, a desolate village bordering the Black Sea, on the outskirts of the Roman Empire, at the edge of civilization. Malouf imagines the author of Metamorphoses recounting his own experience with metamorphosis through his first-person voice.
Deprived of the comforts of a life of luxury in Rome, Ovid endures an existence stripped to its bare minimum at Tomis. He lives in a hut, relies on others to survive, and since none speak Latin, is bereft of speech until he learns to speak their language. He is painfully self-conscious of his status as an outsider, viewed with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity by the villagers.
Ovid’s transformations are gradual, internal, and experienced in separate stages. First, he learns the villagers’ language, joins them on their hunts, assists with net-making, and cultivates an appreciation for their lifestyle, recognizing it as one more grounded in reality than his previous life in Rome. He sheds his former identity and is born anew:
It is about to begin. All my life till now has been wasted. I had to enter the silence to find a password that would release me from my own life.
One day, Ovid sees a young feral boy in the distance. The boy is captured and brought back to the village where Ovid becomes his caregiver and teacher. He tries to tame the wildness out of the boy and teach him the ways of living among humans. But circumstances change and, in an ironic twist, the novel concludes with the boy as guide and Ovid as student.
In lyrical, luminous language, Malouf explores the boundary between civilization and nature. He uses Ovid as his vehicle to articulate a metamorphosis from an urbane existence to one of total immersion in the natural environment. Ovid learns from his feral companion to read and appreciate nature and to live in total harmony within it. His final transformation, a merger with the earth from where he sprang, is accepted with total peace and equanimity.
The narrative unfolds in a beautiful, poetic prose laced with mysticism and mythology. It includes flashbacks to Ovid’s childhood, recollections of dream sequences, and meditations on his life. From his initial assessment of living with barbarians, Ovid re-fashions himself twice over. By releasing his former self, he embraces his new identity, first as one of the villagers and then as a student of nature learning at the feet of a child master teacher.
The novel can be interpreted on multiple levels. It is an allegory, situating Australia at its center, and representing Ovid’s metamorphoses as a culture’s gradual acceptance of and appreciation for the indigenous people and their knowledge of the environment. It conveys the wisdom and re-prioritization that can come with aging. It is an account of the internal metamorphoses and life-altering experiences of the author of Metamorphoses. And, finally, it recounts a man’s quest for self and belonging.
Recommended.