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The Georgics of Virgil
Bilingual Edition
A translation by David Ferry
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks, May 2006
ISBN: 978-0-374-53031-0, ISBN10: 0-374-53031-9,
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 224 pages, Notes/Glossary,
Trade Paperback, $15.00
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John Dryden called Virgil's
Georgics
, written between 37 and 30 B.C., "the best poem by the best poet." Newly translated by the poet and translator David Ferry, the
Georgics
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 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 cattle and 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 to what they have to contend with: storms, and plagues, and wars, and all mischance.
Praise
"This is the best poetry of Ancient Rome, rendered by the best translator of modern America."—
Peter Campion,
Poetry
"John Dryden, who translated the poem into heroic couplets, gave a judgment—'the best poem by the best poet'—that is often cited. Less often noted is the challenge implicit in it: who would be the best translator of the best poem by the best poet? . . . Ferry is well-known for his versions of the Gilgamesh epic and of Horace's
Odes
and
Epistles
. His style is a contemporary version of Wordsworth and Frost, with a diction that does not wander into too high or too low a register. Accessible, sparing in its use of metaphor, it favors the delicate understatement, the quiet climax . . . Here is a translator who trusts his poet: a good many passages can be considered the most literal rendition into natural English that makes metrical sense . . . This translation responds to Dryden's challenge on its own terms. For the reader who wants the full effect, the Latin waits temptingly on the facing page; but for a living, lucid, readable rendition into English, Ferry's translation will do in a heartbeat."—
Philip Thibodeau,
Harvard Review
"Ferry's translation of the enchanting
Georgics
is for poetry lovers like a drink of water from a country spring on a summer day. It's refreshing, invigorating, and almost intoxicating in the pleasure of discovery it offers. Where has Virgil's great work been all this time? Shoved aside in the canon of poetry as the study of Latin (and Greek) is taken up by fewer and fewer hands. And the
Georgics
were never the first of Virgil's poetry to be introduced to students of Latin. That place of honor was reserved for the
Aeneid
, Virgil's epic of the founding of Rome . . . The
Georgics
, [a poem of] four books written just before the
Aeneid
in about 30 B.C., are in the same hexameter, but rather than the long, stately pull you hear and feel from that great epic, [this poem's] verse is quick and precise, and may be understood more easily by modern ears . . . [This work might] well, in its vividness, in its exactitude, be [David Ferry's] most winning and impressive translation yet . . . In his illuminating introduction, [Ferry] points out the many echoes of the
Georgics
in English and American poetry—in Milton's
Lycidas
and
Paradise Lost
, in Spenser, in Shakespeare's songs, in James Thomson, in Keats, and especially in the works of Wordsworth, Frost, and William Carlos Williams . . . The
Georgics
are Virgil's tale of the fall of man from perpetual ease, from a time when wine flowed in the streams to the sweaty and painful reality of hard work. Its title, from the Greek, roughly means "the working of the earth," akin to Hesiod's
Works and Days
. . . To step into Virgil's work is like opening a door that gives way to a landscape that looks familiar in all its particulars—grass, trees, goats, streams, bees, clouds, hills—but is fundamentally different. No struggle between man and God, no singular fault of man and woman has made it this way; it just is . . . From time to time, Virgil [herein] retells one of the mythic tales. His account here of how Orpheus lost Eurydice forever in the underworld, when he disobeyed instructions and looked back to watch her following him, is one of the most affectingly beautiful versions ever written . . . The
Georgics
[primarily concern] the natural world and the daily life of man and the other creatures in it. Virgil's attitude toward his subjects is one of acceptance and joy . . . To glorify, to sing of things just as they are, was Virgil's great task in the
Georgics
. Ferry's task has been to present to the modern English reader Virgil's great and affecting [work] in all its grandeur and simplicity."—
Anthony Day,
Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Ravishing . . . [Ferry exploits] to perfection the resources of sound and rhythm . . . Always euphonious, often singable, and sometimes magnificent—truly worthy of the best poet's best poem."—
William Mullen,
The New York Sun
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