Francisco Miraval
One of the books my students have to read (not the whole book, unfortunately) is Metamorphosis, written by Ovid in Rome two millennia ago. The book tells 250 transformations of gods into humans or vice versa, of humans into animals, or of humans into inanimate objects, such a stones or stars.
Reading even just a selection of this long poem by Ovid always leads students to two kinds of incredulity. First, they can’t believe that people in the 21st century must waste their time reading this old book (a book, by the way, that includes the largest number of suicides and rapes among all books of that time.) Second, they can’t believe anybody ever accepted that all those “myths” were true.
In fact, Ovid himself said he did not believe in everything he included in his book. Also, with so many more productive activities deserving our time and attention, perhaps it is true that reading Ovid is wasting our time. After all, old books don’t enjoy the reputation and influence they used to have.
However, the real question the students want to ask is why they have to read a book describing things that don’t happen in our time. According to the students, no human being, either by decision of the gods or for some other reason, will ever be transformed into stone, or into a star, o into an ugly monster, or will ever acquire “divine” beauty, as Ovid describes in his book.
I then ask the students if they have heard about people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King Jr., or Jose de San Martin or Simon Bolivar, or other well-known leader of other country.
Unanimously, they say they had. Then, I ask them to give me examples of the use of the names of those persons. Very soon, they discover those names are used in schools, libraries, hospitals, streets, cities, ships, and statues. In fact, in many cases, people will know the name of a building or a place without knowing anything about the person whose name is used for that building or place. The transformation from human to stone is thus completed.
Then we talk about soccer, basketball or baseball players, and about singers and actors. Very soon, they realize those players or actors are usually called “idols” or “stars,” and sometimes they are treated as almost divine beings, having superhuman powers. The transformation from mere human to a “star” is thus completed.
Obviously, killers and criminals and dictators are frequently referred to as “monsters” deserving to be caught and killed. And a well-known image editor covers with a mantle of artificial beauty those faces lacking natural beauty. Thanks to image manipulation, an ordinary person suddenly becomes an extraordinary “star” not resembling that same person in his or her everyday life.
At the end of his book, Ovid said that time will not erode the relevance of his work even in the distant future. Even if we don’t believe it, he was right.