The Aeneid
by Virgil
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Book Summary Information
Author: VirgilIntroduction: Bernard Knox
Translator: Robert Fagles
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Published: 2006-11-02
ISBN: 0143059025
Number of pages: 1
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Book Reviews of The Aeneid
Book Review: epic undertaking
Summary: 5 Stars
Allen Mandelbaum's translation of Virgil's Aeneid won the National Book Award in 1973. Of that translation Robert Fagles wrote: it "has a wonderful, detailed liveliness in every line."
That's true. I love the Mandelbaum Aeneid and have taught undergrads from it for nearly a quarter-century.
But into this year of stock depressions and women not being worthy of the Oval Office comes a ray of pure joy. (Yes, OK, Obama is a ray of hope, yes he is. But I don't teach him twice or three times a year.)
The Robert Fagles translation is beyond lively: it's lyrical. It's compelling, like the poem itself. I think it may move even the least-motivated undergrad to feel . . . . something.
Of the death of Dido:
Mandelbaum:
For as she died
A death that was not merited or fated,
but miserable and before her time
and spurred by sudden frenzy, Proserpina
had not yet cut a gold lock from her crown,
not yet assigned her life to Stygian Orcus.
Fagles:
Since she was dying a death not merited or deserved,
no, tormented, before her day, in a blaze of passion -
While I miss the reiteration of "fate" (arguably Virgil's favorite noun) -- nam quia nec fato merita nec morte peribat,sed misera ante diem subitoque accensa furore, -- I still find the Fagles lines more liquid and agonizing, more urgently pulling the reader along to an awful consequence.
There's a similar comparison even in the best of Mandelbaum, the speech Aeneas makes to Dido, when the reader realizes how much he hates his life and how he longs to have been allowed to stay in Troy.
And the text itself is a thousand time more helpful. Here is a longer glossary than in Mandelbaum's and maps and a genealogy and the best thing: digressive notes on the translation with sound-bites from other translations. Check out the info on the pictures on the temple doors in Book I. The best is the discussion - complete with quotes from Dryden writing about his own translation - on Mercury's line to Aeneas in 4.710-11. Anyone who doubts the inherent misogyny of Rome need read no further.
Mandelbaum probably didn't get any control over the textual apparatus in the Bantam edition, but for a teacher - and I would think, a reader - that's really beside the point. What the Fagles' translation offers is much more helpful. Much.
For this I may have to do that least-favorite thing: copy all my notes into a new edition. Sigh.
Summary of The Aeneid
The much-anticipated new translation of Virgil's epic poem from the award-winning translator of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.Unabridged CDs - 15 CDs, 18 hours
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