An Imaginary Life

Citation

Malouf, David. An Imaginary Life, London: Random House,1978.

Annotation:

An Imaginary Life is a work of great imagination, original lyrical writing, highly inventive and surprisingly haunting.

The principal character is Ovid, the famous exiled Roman poet who is deeply sensitive, and ‘whose character response to adversity has lyrical and mystical implications.’

Ovid, being a poet, has a wide range of feelings and the first person narrative allows for a depth of intimacy and simplicity.  Although set in the ancient world of the Roman Empire, Ovid is speaking to a modern reader, presuming his written record will be read some centuries later on.

This is a tale of exile, using poetry to make sense of a world however cruel and barbaric and poverty stricken. Ovid for unknown reasons is exiled from Rome at the height of his poetic career, to a small village outpost between the Danube and the Black Sea. He is faced with living in this desolate backwater where the natives do not speak Latin and whose lives are spent barely surviving. ‘We are at the end of the earth. But I am describing a state of mind, no place.  I am in exile here.’ An Imaginary Life can easily be read on many levels. There are some comparisons to the real poet Ovid whose great work the Metamorphoses (c. A.D.8), ‘explores the notion of fluid boundaries between the spiritual, the animal and the human world.’

At the centre of this tale is Ovid’s encounter with a wild boy, brought up among the deer in the snow. It’s freezing and the village is often threatened by wolves and barbarians.

Ovid begins to transform himself through his writing and taking an interest in the community. He speaks simply and poetically of what he has been and what he must become if he is to survive. He is an artist, making shape out of the chaos of his exile and adapting his courage and curiosity into making art out of life.