The Nature of Things (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Lucretius (Author), A. E. Stallings (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 18, 2007 | Series: Penguin Classics

The seminal Epicurean text, in a brilliant new translation

The Epicureans of ancient Rome discarded the ideas of life after death and of an interventionist God in favor of the tactile pleasures of nature. In The Nature of Things, Lucretius celebrates with wit and sharp perception the extraordinary breadth of the Epicurean belief system, ranging from the indestructibility of atoms and the discovery of fire to the folly of romantic love and the phenomena of clouds and rainstorms.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Titus Lucretius Carus (who died c.50 BC) was an Epicurean poet writing in the middle years of the first century BC. His six-book Latin hexameter poem De rerum natura survives virtually intact, although it is disputed whether he lived to put the finishing touches to it. As well as being a pioneering figure in the history of philosophical poetry, Lucretius has come to be our primary source of information on Epicurean physics, the official topic of his poem. A. E. Stallings was born in 1968. She grew up in Decatur, GA, and was educated at the University of Georgia and Oxford University in classics. Her poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry (1994 and 2000) and has received numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize (Pushcart Prize Anthology XXII), the 1997 Eunice Tietjens Prize from Poetry and the third annual James Dickey Prize from Five Points. Richard Jenkyns is Professor of the Classical Tradition, University of Oxford, a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and author of a number of books including Dignity and Decadence: Some Classical Aspects of Victorian Art and Architecture and The Victorians and Ancient Greece.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (December 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140447962
• ISBN-13: 978-0140447965
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

167 of 168 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a real poem, July 30, 2010

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Owen Cramer (Colorado Springs, Colorado United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Nature of Things (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Lucretius missed being translated in full by any of the classic English early modern translators: Chapman, Dryden, Pope. (Dryden did tantalizing selections) So it's fitting that Stallings goes back to those roots with a translation in rhymed fourteeners (think ballad form: da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum/da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, in couplets). There are a number of reasonably good translations available, including Latham's reliable prose in the older Penguin Classics edition, but this is the most ambitious modern attempt at a full, poetic translation of what is both (in Latin) a marvelous, sonorous epic poem and a fascinating account of Epicurean philosophy (serious, scientific, respectful of the gods but the opposite of conventional piety, mordantly disrespectful of love and politics).

133 of 139 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable translation, April 30, 2010

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John Scott "Human Bean" (Tokyo Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Nature of Things (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

After reading the work in two other translations, I was very pleased to find this one. In my opinion, it's the best. The artistry is still there, but the meaning isn't being sacrificed for the sake of poetry. For me, that's important.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fluency, January 20, 2012

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sojourner - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Nature of Things (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Lucretius' poem DE RERUM NATURA is still revolutionary, fundamental to a view of the world that is materialist, atheist and humanist at the same time. The text's influence on civilized thought has been immense and yet, somehow clandestine, not unlike a samizdat.

Ms. Stallings has translated the Latin into English rhyme with admirable ease and fluency; reading, I find passages enrapturing me; it is amazing how elegantly the English language lends itself to this transformation of Latin, as compared to the stiffness of my native German.

Readers who do not know Lucretius might learn the trick from him to look at life with cold yet loving eyes, at the same time enjoying the unique presentation of his ideas in rhyme of the most sophisticated kind, thanks to a superb translation.