The Georgics of Virgil: Bilingual Edition

The Georgics of Virgil: Bilingual Edition

The Georgics of Virgil: Bilingual Edition
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Book Summary Information

Translator: David Ferry
Edition: Paperback
Audio: Latin (Unknown); Latin (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-05-02
ISBN: 0374530319
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Book Reviews of The Georgics of Virgil: Bilingual Edition

Book Review: An Essential Poem and a Beautiful Translation
Summary: 5 Stars

I should start by admitting that I'm completely unqualified to judge the accuracy of this translation. My high school Latin has twenty years of rust on it, and it was never good enough to pass judgment on another's translation. All I can do is (1) judge Ferry's translation as poetry, and (2) assume that it is faithful to Virgil and judge Virgil based on what I read in this translation.

This is an absolutely beautiful set of poems that is essential reading to any student of European literature. On the surface, it sounds painfully boring. Virgil writes of bees and crops and trees and how to mate a bull. 50% of the poem involves direct instruction in how to best accomplish these tasks. However, he somehow manages to make it all beautiful and fascinating and profoundly human.

Two themes account for its beauty. One is the understanding that animals and plants live and die in a way that might not be human yet is still noble. Virgil cares for his subjects--whether it's a bee having its wings clipped or a formerly great stallion suffering the indignities of old age. The other is a wide-eyed awe for everything in life--the average human's monotonous work mixed with a few moments of bliss, the random destructiveness of nature, and the beauty that surrounds every moment.

As a lover of literature, I'm surprised by how much later poetry I quickly detected in these poems. They clearly influenced much later literature (e.g., Wordsworth). As a human, I'm surprised by how certain I am that I will return to these poems throughout the remainder of my life. They contain such an abundance of energy and joy that I'm still trying to decipher exactly how Virgil managed it.

This isn't the best review I've ever written, but it fails for the right reasons--because of the awe I have for these poems. I'm a 36-year old high school English teacher stunned that I'm still discovering words of such shocking beauty.

Summary of The Georgics of Virgil: Bilingual Edition

John Dryden called Virgil's Georgics, written between 37 and 30 B.C.E., "the best poem by the best poet." The poem, newly translated by the poet and translator David Ferry, is one of the great songs, maybe the greatest we have, of human accomplishment in difficult--and beautiful--circumstances, and in the context of all we share in nature.

The Georgics celebrates the crops, trees, and animals, and, above all, the human beings who care for them. It takes the form of teaching about this care: the tilling of fields, the tending of vines, the raising of the cattle and the bees. There's joy in the detail of Virgil's descriptions of work well done, and ecstatic joy in his praise of the very life of things, and passionate commiseration too, because of the vulnerability of men and all other creatures, with all they have to contend with: storms, and plagues, and wars, and all mischance.

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