At first frustrated, isolated, and alienated by his drab surroundings and the inability to speak his own Latin language, Ovid slowly begins to understand and adapt to the cultural differences of The Getae. Ovid is taken in by The Getae, a native tribe dwelling on the outer fringes of the Roman Empire. The first of five chapters begins with Ovid’s arrival in Tomis, located south of the Danube River in Italy. Written in poetic prose often meant to mimic Ovid’s own style, Malouf emphasizes the importance of living in nature and accepting cultural differences as a means of enriching, not threatening, one’s own outlook on life. He ultimately does so by shedding the strictures of the Latin language that have informed his conventional way of life, and by finding enlightenment in the primacy of nature.
Banished from his native tongue and unable to communicate with the savage locals, Ovid must learn to depend on, and coexist with, a people unlike his own. As the novel begins, the famed Metamorphoses and The Art of Love poet laments his exile to the desolate commune of Tomis, located outside the Roman Empire on the edge of the Black Sea. The story is narrated in the first person by Publius Ovidius Naso, also known as Ovid, the rudest and most refined poet in imperial Rome.
The book has often been cited as an example of post-colonial writing, a motif of Malouf’s work, with the metaphor of ancient Rome standing in for his modern-day Australia. Thematically, the book explores issues of acceptance, banishment, belonging, cultural tolerance, environmental dependence, death, rebirth, and most importantly, metamorphosis. Set in the outskirts of Rome in the first century A.D., the story tells of the Roman poet Ovid, and how his sudden exile to a land of barbarians helped to evolve his view of nature, civilized life, and the inextricable relationship between place and perspective. An Imaginary Life is the 1978 historical-fiction novella written by Australian author David Malouf.
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