The greatest poet of Rome's golden age, Virgil was born in 70 b.c. in northern Italy. His Eclogues-satirical, passionate, nostalgic-are among the most influential poems of love and pastoral fancy ever written. David Ferry-whose versions of the Odes of Horace and Gilgamesh established him as a master translator-skillfully captures the playfulness and tones of Virgil's magical verse. This bilingual edition includes concise, informative notes and an excellent Introduction.
The greatest poet of Rome's golden age, Virgil was born in 70 b.c. in northern Italy. His Eclogues-satirical, passionate, nostalgic-are among the most influential poems of love and pastoral fancy ever written. David Ferry-whose versions of the Odes of Horace and Gilgamesh established him as a master translator-skillfully captures the playfulness and tones of Virgil's magical verse. This bilingual edition includes concise, informative notes and an excellent Introduction.
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Overview
The greatest poet of Rome's golden age, Virgil was born in 70 b.c. in northern Italy. His Eclogues-satirical, passionate, nostalgic-are among the most influential poems of love and pastoral fancy ever written. David Ferry-whose versions of the Odes of Horace and Gilgamesh established him as a master translator-skillfully captures the playfulness and tones of Virgil's magical verse. This bilingual edition includes concise, informative notes and an excellent Introduction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9788892672918 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Youcanprint |
| Publication date: | 06/27/2017 |
| Sold by: | StreetLib SRL |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
David Ferry, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for his translation of Gilgamesh, is a poet and translator who has also won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, given by the Academy of American Poets, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, given by the Library of Congress. In 2001, he received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2002 he won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. Ferry is the Sophie Chantal Hart Professor of English Emeritus at Wellesley College.
Read an Excerpt
Corydon fell in love with a beautiful boy
Whose name was Alexis, the darling of his master.
So every day of the week he took himself
To the dense and gloomy shade of a beech-tree grove,
And flung out his hopeless ardor in artless verses:
"O cruel Alexis, why are you deaf to my songs?
Have you no pity at all? Or don't you know
That Corydon's going to die for love of you?
Even the cows are seeking out the shade,
The little green lizards are hiding themselves in the bushes,
The laborers are worn out from the heat,
And Thestylis is pounding garlic and thyme,
Getting lunch ready, but under the burning sun
There's only my voice and the voice of the wailing locust.
Oh, wouldn't I have done better to put up with
The anger and haughty disdain of Amaryllis?
Or with Menalcas, swarthy though he is?
O fair Alexis, don't put too much trust
In your complexion. Remember that the blossoms
Of white privet fade and the darker blossoms
Of hyacinths are what the gatherers gather.
Perhaps you do not know, Alexis, who
It is you scorn: how many cows I have,
With all the milk they yield, summer and winter;
A thousand lambs, my lambs, pasture upon
These hills around; my voice is like the voice
Of Amphion on the slopes of Aracynthus,
Calling his herds. Nor is it that I'm bad-looking.
The other day when the wind was entirely still
And the sea was therefore like a mirror I saw
Myself in the mirror an said to myself that I,
If mirrors tell the truth, you being the judge,
Need never fear comparison with Daphnis.
"O come and live with me in the countryside,
Among the humble farms. Together we
Will hunt the deer, and tend the little goats,
Compelling them along with willow wands.
Together singing we will mimic Pan,
Who was the first who taught how reeds could be
Bound together with wax to make a pipe.
Pan takes care of the shepherd and the sheep.
You oughtn't to mind if the reed bruises your lip;
Think how Amyntas practiced, learning to play.
Damoetas when he was dying bequeathed to me
This pipe I have, of seven hemlock stalks
Of different lengths. 'Now you're its master,' he said,
And foolish Amyntas was full of envy of me.
Besides the pipe I have two fawns I found
In a dangerous nearby valley, still so young
Their coats are speckled with white and eagerly
They feed at the udder of one of my ewes as if
They were really baby lambs; I've saved them for you;
Thestylis keeps telling me she wants them,
And maybe I'll give them to her, since it is clear
How little you think of the gifts I offer you.
O beautiful Alexis, come, see how
The Nymphs are bringing you baskets full of lilies,
See, the lovely Naiad makes a bouquet
Of palest violets and scarlet poppies for you,
Flower of fennel, narcissus blossoms also,
With yellow marigold and hyacinth,
And bound together with twine of cassia
And other fragrant herbs. And I myself
Will gather chestnuts as an offering,
And also downy peaches, and waxen plums,
Such as my Amaryllis used to love;
And I'll pluck laurel too, and the nearby myrtle,
The mingled perfume of them being so sweet.
"Corydon, you're a yokel. What makes you think
Alexis would care in the least about what you offer?
And as for gifts, would Iollas offer less?
Alas, alas, what have unhappy I
Been hoping for? In my distraction I
Have brought the sirocco down upon my flowers
And let the wild boar in to my crystal springs.
Ah, whom are you fleeing? A madman! Even the gods
Have lived in the woods, and Paris lived there too.
Let Pallas live in the city that she founded.
Let me dwell here lamenting in the forest.
The fierce lioness follows after the wolf,
The wolf pursues the goat, the wanton goat
Seeks out the flowering clover in the field,
And Corydon, Alexis, follows you.
Each creature is led by that which it most longs for.
"Look, here are the oxen come in from the fields,
Dragging the plow behind them, as the sun
Causes the shadows to lengthen and multiply,
And I still burn with love; love knows no limits.
Ah, Corydon, what madness has hold of you?
The vine on the leafy elm is only half-pruned --
Why not at least go about some needful task,
Binding the twigs together with pliant rushes.
There'll be another Alexis, if this one rejects you."
Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., New York, New York, USA. From THE ECLOGUES OF VIRGIL, translated by David Ferry. Copyright © 1999 David Ferry. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | ix |
| ECLOGUE I | 3 |
| ECLOGUE II | 11 |
| ECLOGUE III | 17 |
| ECLOGUE IV | 29 |
| ECLOGUE V | 35 |
| ECLOGUE VI | 45 |
| ECLOGUE VII | 53 |
| ECLOGUE VIII | 61 |
| ECLOGUE IX | 71 |
| ECLOGUE X | 79 |
| Acknowledgments | 89 |
| Notes | 91 |
| Glossary | 99 |
Interviews
David Ferry has tackled some of literature's most imposing giants. In a series of inventive, critically acclaimed translations, Ferry has published renderings of the odes of Horace, the epic of Gilgamesh, plus individual poems by Baudelaire, Goethe, Poliziano, and Hölderlin, that bring a poet's ear and a scholar's thoroughness to the classics. A respected Wordsworth expert, a professor at Wellesley College, and an extremely skillful poet in his own right, Ferry produces shapely translations that are first and foremost a good read.
Two years ago, Ferry's The Odes of Horace made many poetry lovers happy, even if they found a line or two too much of a departure. This year, both Ferry's Of No COuntry I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations and his The Eclogues of Virgil, published in bilingual form, are being released. The two books offer a rare chance to think about how poetry and translation inform each other, and how the worlds of scholarship, writing, and translation converge.
In Ferry's capable hands, Virgil's Eclogues retain their multilayered character, their depth, and their songlike quality. Swings in mood and tone are preserved, but a 20th-century sensibility is added. Contemporary phrases like "put up or shut up" and unexpected words like "yokel" make the translation fresh and relevant. These short poems of love and longing are among the most influential poems in the history of literature, and after all these centuries, they are still funny, sorrowful, and true.
"Virgil invents this brilliantly organized pastoral form — the eclogue," Ferry says. "But that doesn't mean the pastoral tradition wasn't already there. The beginnings are probably an actual shepherd's song. But Virgil is such a brilliant organizer. He makes it so radiantly there."
Aviya Kushner talked with Ferry about Virgil's lasting power, a life in poetry, and the joys — and travails — of translating the greats. This interview, which fittingly touched on the pastoral tradition, took place in Ferry's tree-filled garden in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
barnesandnoble.com: There are often personal motivations behind translators' projects. Why did you decide to translate Virgil, and why the Eclogues in particular?
David Ferry: I just got hooked on the idea of translation. The Eclogues are so visible in the kind of English and American literature that I love, and my scholarly work is in Wordsworth — who is very Virgilian. The first and ninth Eclogues are particularly powerful for me, because I've done some writing about homeless people. (Dwelling Places, University of Chicago Press, 1993). The epic of Gilgamesh has that kind of material in it as well, so there are those kinds of connections.
bn: In your Introduction and detailed notes, you do a marvelous job of outlining Virgil's visibility throughout literature. "The Eclogues are everywhere," you write, pointing out that Milton, Keats, and even Frost drew on Virgil. Why are the Eclogues so exciting to so many writers throughout the centuries? And why are they exciting to you?
DF: The amazing thing to me is that Virgil made a book in which there's an astounding variety of difference between the poems — and yet it is really a book. Maybe nothing so artful and yet so true to life had ever been made, at least outside the epic and dramatic genres. Even though there were the idylls of Theocritus, Virgil really invents the pastoral genre. The pastoral genre is so artful and yet so true to life. The Eclogues are short poems. They seem like simplifications, but they stand for a lot. They seem to go back to the beginning of things — but they get at truth.
bn: How are the Eclogues artful?
DF: So artful, because one meter governs the distribution of tones of speech in all of them — and yet that meter and distribution have the widest range of different effects. So artful because the book is like a concert, song replying to song, a series of marvelous performances.
bn: Those are two interesting points. I'd like to hear more about meter as an issue here. How did you handle Virgil's meter? Did you choose to preserve it?
DF: The meter is hexameter in the Latin, and the English language equivalent is iambic pentameter. English works with a very different system. The hexameter in English is likely to break into halves because it is an equal number of feet, and it quickly loses its emphasis and runs the risk of becoming shapeless. Iambic pentameter provides more opportunities for a variety of pause. And so in both translating Horace and Virgil, I chose pentameter. I have a lot of anapestic substitutions for the iambic pentameter, but those are allowable substitutions within the iambic system.
bn: I'm curious about how you handled line breaks, which are so crucial in a poem. Did those present problems too?
DF: The danger of any long line is losing its character as verse, if the line ending isn't perceptibly marked. Rhyme is one way to do it. There are occasional rhymes in my translation, but not many. Latin in general didn't become a rhyming language until the Middle Ages.
bn: What else was difficult about translating Latin into English?
DF: I am not in any specific way trying to imitate the Latin meter or sentence structure, because Latin is so different from English and the behavior of Latin is different from English. Virgil is deeply involved in the nature of Latin. Trying to imitate it directly would be foolish. Given these differences between English and Latin, my aim was to be as faithful as I could to Virgil's meaning and to his figures of speech. Throughout, I'm trying to get at what's said. I'm trying to capture the tone and changes in the tone. In Eclogue II, for example, there is a mixture of pathos and comedy. And in Eclogue III, where the shepherds are sassing each other, I try to provide some equivalent. Virgil never says anything like the "hollering." (The passage reads: "I saw you / Trying to steal a goat from Damon's flock / While Damon's dog was barking and I was hollering, / "Look what's happening! Where's he running to? / Tityrus, round up the flock"!)
bn: You mentioned early on that The Eclogues are like songs. How so?
DF: They are often explicitly singing contests, and the pretense behind it is that parts of the Eclogue are sung. One idea behind it is that song is pleasing, and The Eclogues are there for pleasure. Song is a condensed form, and the truths that the Eclogues convey can be given in this particularly intense form. Virgil writes: "What can music do against the weapons of soldiers?" Music is seen as a civilizing force that's very beautiful but also very vulnerable, and vulnerable to the powers outside it. Power is a theme that repeats in The Eclogues. My book's cover is a 16th-century illustration of the first Eclogue. There's a castle in the background, symbolizing that power can be beneficent or malevolent. But in any event, it's unpredictable. And so, in Eclogue IX, they are losing their property but forgetting the song.
bn: Let's walk through one of The Eclogues — number two, excerpted here. What is the poem "about," and what were the tough parts in translating it?
DF: I am uneasy in any poem about saying that there is a central subject. I think the subject of the poem is getting from one tone to another and making it both moving and entertaining. If you can say that there is a central subject, it's the attitude toward love. At the end of the opening passage, "and flung out his hopeless ardor in artless verses." In that line, the word "ardor" is both taken seriously and not. That's true throughout the poem. In the case of this particular poem, what I found really hard is learning in a way not to worry, to trust Virgil's moving from one tone to another. For example, when he says spitefully: "And maybe I'll give them to her, since it's clear / How little you think of the gifts I offer you," and right in the next line he says "Oh beautiful Alexis." What was difficult was learning not to get overanxious about taking care of these shifts.
bn: I noticed that you mentioned several friends in the acknowledgements. You thank fellow poets, several classicists, and other scholars. What is the importance of friends when working on a translation?
DF: [Chuckles] It's very important to have friends who know the stuff I'm translating — and I have a lot of them!
bn: How do your translation projects affect your poetry? Does reading another writer so closely have a strong effect?
DF: Sometimes with a poem of my own, like those about the homeless, I deliberately went looking and asking for poems in other languages that might be related. For example, there is a translation of "Les Aveugles" ("The Blind People") by Baudelaire and I deliberately looked for such a poem...so part of it is the act of looking. Part of it is that I'm the same person and I am likely to be attracted by material that I read in the same way that I'm attracted to material to write about. When any writer has read a great writer in his own language — say, Shakespeare — that little writer can't become Shakespeare, but that writer knows more about what language can do. I don't know if that's any different with translation. I have no hope of becoming Horace or Virgil, but I know more about what's possible in a poem.
bn: Tell me about your New and Selected Poems, due out from University of Chicago Press in October.
DF: The book is very close to a collected poems, rather than a selected poems. Because the book is so near to being a "collected," it's a little scary, because I don't want to feel that this is it, because that's how anyone who puts together a collected is bound to feel.
bn: What's next for you, in translation projects?
DF: I'm translating the Epistles of Horace right now, which will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
bn: Exciting?
DF: Oh, absolutely.