ECLOGUES & GEORGICS OWCN : NCS P

Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics are a bridge from their Greek roots in Theocritus and Callimachus to the vigorous forms of the pastoral tradition. In the English case it runs through Spenser, Jonson, Milton, Pope, Gray and into the Eighteenth Century to become a tributary flow into Romanticism, and beyond down to Robert Frost. Virgil makes for us the connection, through allusion and allegory, to politics and history, alongside the persisting religious strand. Erato, Muse of love poetry, enters into relations with Calliope, Muse of Epic poetry (both are invoked in Virgil's Aeneid) - and the link will persist through the centuries. You see this here in C. Day Lewis's 1940 translation of the Georgics: - in his ,Dedicatory Stanzas to Stephen Spender: "Now, when war's, long midwinter seems to freeze us/And numb our living sources once for all,/That veteran of Virgil's I recall/ Who made a kitchen garden by the Galaesus/On derelict land , and got the first of spring/ From airs and buds, the first fruits in the fall, /And lived at peace there, happy as a king./Naming him for good luck, I see man's native/Stock is perennial. and our creative/Winged seed can strike a root in anything." In our times of renewed war in Europe amidst a rapidly degraded nature, again it may be time to "strike a root" in our "biosphere".

Virgil requires no comment. C. Day Lewis' trans. is beautiful but at times too free. He translates the ominous "iuvenis" of Eclogue I as "young prince," and while everyone agrees that this figure politically refers to Octavian, it is just as important to understand that it at the same time refers to a generic (or even specific, but not politically prominent) youth--that is, to be quite clear, a young lover. Virgil's writings consist of several layers, one of them political, another homoerotic, and it does not help to translate that latter layer "away." Day Lewis renders the "king" of the bees in Book IV of the Georgica as "queen," but not only was Virgil's view that bees were asexual widely-held in his day, but more importantly, the eusociality of the bees was exemplary to him precisely because it was (so he believed) asexual: for a homosexual man, it would denote an ideal utopian society in which reproduction takes place but females are no longer needed! This critical (if ironic) message on the erotic level of the book is lost in trans. R.O.A.M. Lyne's introduction is helpful, but too short to serve as a key to Virgil's work; he also largely ignores or is unaware of the homoerotic layer in Virgil's writings. I read Day Lewis' trans. alongside an introductory treatise by Michael von Albrecht (in German), which helped significantly in making out some of Virgil's many nuances.

I found this translation of Virgil's 'Eclogues' rich in visual and pensive detail. A pleasure to read always.

P.53，１２－１３行目。North Star's rising....北極星はほぼ不動で、昇ってくるなんて表現はありえない。そもそもここで北極星と言っているのは原文ではArcturus。Oxford World Classicの本にこんなのがあるとは！どうも古典の翻訳には、形式にとらわれすぎて内容がかなりいい加減な部分もあるようだ。

Will use to supplement class textbook