One of the great delights of the literary arts is their ability to give form to dreams and fantasies. There is no limit to a writer’s imagination, and a skillful writer can make the strangest things seem quite natural. A compelling theme in literature is that of transformation, or metamorphosis. One of the most famous tales of metamorphosis is Franz Kafka’s story by the same name, but there are many others. Why do we like reading about these things, pleasant or unpleasant? Partly because they tickle our fancies, no doubt, and partly because we can identify with them on some level, even if most of the transformations we undergo are less dramatic. Here are some of the most amazing metamorphoses in prose and verse I have come across.
1: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and And Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll. (1872) A mushroom that makes you grow or shrink, courtiers who turn into a pack of playing cards, a fussy baby who turns into a pig-Carroll’s classics are full of alarming transformations. For full immersion in this world where precise logic mingles freely with utter nonsense, try to get editions with the original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel.
2: Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. (1902) These imaginative tales of origins explain how the world changed from primordial times and became the interesting place it is today, with alphabets and wondrous beasts. For example, find out how a misadventure on the banks of the “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River” gave the elephant his long trunk.
3: Lamia by John Keats. (1820) This is a tragic poem about enchantment and disillusionment. Lamia is a sorceress trapped in the form of a serpent who falls in love with a mortal young man. She regains human form, seduces him, and conjures up a palace where they are to marry, but the young man’s mentor, a level headed philosopher, sees through the illusion and destroys their happiness.
4: Metamorphoses by Ovid. (8 A.D.) This very beautiful collection of myths by one of Rome’s great poets concerns “bodies changed to various forms.” A girl fleeing the embrace of a god turns into a laurel tree; a nymph becomes fused with the boy she is amorously attacking, creating the hermaphrodite; a beloved sculpture, in the tale of Pygmalion, comes to life under its creator’s caresses. The strange stories are told with such vividness that they have inspired centuries of artwork and spin-off literature.
5: The Metemorphosis by Fanz Kafka. (1915) The dehumanization of modern life becomes literal in this story of an earnest fellow named Gregor Samsa. He works hard as a traveling salesman, laboring to pay off a large debt his parents owe his employer, but is forced to miss work for the first time in five years when he wakes up one morning “transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” He injures himself trying to maneuver his body around, and when he ventures out of his room his family drives him right back in-in all one of the grimmest and most affecting short stories you’ll ever read.
6: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue. (2006) Donohue’s wonderfully imaginative first novel depicts the experiences of Henry Day, a Pennsylvania farm boy, who’s snatched by a band of feral, woodland changelings and replaced by a doppelganger. While Henry tries to adapt to life as a hobgoblin, his replacement takes human form and grows up to become a musical prodigy.
7: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. (1886) Dr Jekyll begins as a good man of sound character, but he performs a reckless experiment on himself that has grisly results. He develops a potion that changes him into Mr. Hyde, an alternate personality in which all the potential evil in his nature flourishes. He also develops an antidote to change himself back into Dr. Jekyll, but, of course, things go awry.
