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161 of 162 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a real poem, July 30, 2010
This review is from: The Nature of Things (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market 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).
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127 of 132 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable translation, April 30, 2010
This review is from: The Nature of Things (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market 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.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fluency, January 20, 2012
This review is from: The Nature of Things (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market 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.
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