Virgil's Georgics (The Yale New Classics Series) [Hardcover]

Virgil (Author), Janet Lembke (Translator)

Book Description

Series: The Yale New Classics Series | Publication Date: March 11, 2005

Virgil’s Georgics is a paean to the earth and all that grows and grazes there. It is an ancient work, yet one that speaks to our times as powerfully as it did to the poet’s. This unmatched translation presents the poem in an American idiom that is elegant and sensitive to the meaning and rhythm of the original. Janet Lembke brings a faithful version of Virgil’s celebratory poem to modern readers who are interested in classic literature and who relish reading about animals and gardens.
The word georgics means farming. Virgil was born to a farming family, and his poem gives specific instructions to Italian farmers along with a passionate message to care for the land and for the crops and animals that it sustains. The Georgics is also a heartfelt cry for returning farmers and their families to land they had lost through a series of dispiriting political events. It is often considered the most technically accomplished and beautiful of all of Virgil’s work.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A major new translation.”—Rosanna Warren

“This work is clearly by a master translator. Lembke moves easily from the Latin hexameter into English verse of loose, five-beat rhythm that well captures that of the original.”—Michael Putnam, Brown University

This work is clearly by a master translator. Lembke moves easily from the Latin hexameter into English verse of loose, five-beat rhythm that well captures that of the original.”—Michael Putnam, Brown University

(Michael Putnam )

"A major new translation."—Rosanna Warren

(Rosanna Warren )

“An attractive and serious translation that gives English readers a good idea of the Georgics.”—David Quint, New Republic

(David Quint New Republic )

Book Description

In this masterful new verse translation, Virgil’s Georgics speaks as powerfully to our times as it did to the ancient poet’s. Janet Lembke presents this unsurpassed nature poem in an American idiom that is both elegant and sensitive to the meaning and rhythm of Virgil’s original paean to the earth.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300107927
• ISBN-13: 978-0300107920
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,754,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Updated Translation Highlights Virgil's Relevance, August 28, 2005

By 

Marcus Tullius Wardo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Virgil's Georgics (The Yale New Classics Series) (Hardcover)

Janet Lembke's new translation of The Georgics is correctly promoted as an Americanized translation of the classic poem. Just as Romans in the movies always seem to speak with British accents, English translations of Latin classics have tended toward British -- usually antiquated British -- diction. Lembke chooses a refreshingly straightforward American idiom that nonetheless feels true to the source. Lembke clearly has a background in farming, or at least gardening, because you can almost see the dirt under her nails and smell the earth on her jeans as you read, which I suspect is how an appreciative Roman reader might have felt about Virgil's work.

Virgil wrote The Georgics in a time of turmoil, delivering a didactic poem -- a lecture -- to inspire the militarized Romans to return to the attentive, productive farming on which Roman power originally was built. Perhaps he was something of a Wendell Berry for his time, for Virgil teaches, preaches, scolds, praises, admonishes and laments all in each of the four parts of the poem. Two of his overarching themes are that man must toil to make the world productive, but that disaster can befall every endeavor despite work and know-how. These themes are as relevant to a 21st Century office worker as they were to a Roman farmer.

Finally, Virgil is also deeply patriotic, lavishing praise on Italy for its bountiful soil and climate, promoting it as the best place on Earth. Here Lembke's American translation resonates because I, like Virgil, am very partial to my native land. Virgil knew firsthand the tragedy and injustice of politics and war (his family lost their land in northern Italy to resettled veterans), and does not turn a blind eye to the flaws in his nation and the troubles of his times. But he sees redemption in the hard work of making his native land fruitful, just as any American today might do.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Janet Lembke's Virgilian Lesson Book, September 11, 2007

By 

Jeffery S. Beam "Jeffery" (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Virgil's Georgics (The Yale New Classics Series) (Hardcover)

It's terribly unfashionable now, especially among "serious" poets, to premise that nature holds a mirror to humanity - humanity being far too civilized and dominant to be dumped into Mother Nature's roiling pot of existence. Many of our literary lights celebrate their egos ad nauseum. Nature in poetry might be a useful tool for symbolic argument, but seldom is it allowed to speak for itself - polishing our mirrors. When Janet Lembke and I first met we recognized our kinship instantly - that perennial society of ancients living and breathing science and religion, art and industry, myth and person all in one.

Janet, of course, is known for her many books on natural history that with literate candor and canny insight meld classical and mythic allusion with observed fact in crisply intimate and wide-eyed, lovely words. Thus I wasn't surprised when she, with Merlin-ease, transformed a series of photographic captions for a collection of miraculous olive trees images (Tuscan Treesby Mark Steinmetz and Janet Lembke, The Jargon Society, 2001) into a soaring book of minimalist poetry - conjuring from Italian soil and oil a harmonious tome of visual and poetic delights. No Italian chef could any more elegantly cook up a better Bolognese, a more perfect and integrated-integral -- one.

Janet's sisterhood with the earth has led inevitably to the garden and the table, thence to books on cooking and gardening - and even an impressive personal manual on how to help someone die. Early in her career, Janet translated old Latin poems, snatching them from the hands of pedantry back into their natural poetic state. Her translations of Hecuba, Electra, and other classical plays demonstrated her agility with archaic languages and her understanding of the antique mind. So it was inescapable that she would turn her gaze, and her bamboo stylus, to Virgil's Georgics. In her translator's note she raps her rapture in meeting with Virgil and reflects on those "men who knew much about poetry but little about farming" who before her rendered Virgil in "British English." She proclaims her "pleasure has been to use American English. In with grain, out with corn! Out with truncheons and buskins, in with sturdy twigs and boots!" It would take just such a woman farmer as Janet, who has farmed the wild and the tame as Virgil did, to do him contemporary justice.

Janet and I - imperfect and impudent children of Dame Kind that we are - proselytize ceaselessly our inseparable ties to the earth and the cosmos. The undeniable and inexorable threat of global climate change and the continued testosterone-driven antagonisms of nationalistic and religious fervor and market-driven greed (these even Virgil experienced first-hand) dispossesses us of our rightful bounty, peace, culture, self-awareness, and self-determination. Miguel de Unamuno instructs us, "From your work you will be able one day to gather yourself." Virgil teaches incessant labor, but also of its handsome gifts-fertility, abundance, and character. Virgil and Janet demand we re-inhabit our world in primal symbiosis. Being fruitful and multiplying is a much more complex command than we know. Virgil's Georgics is one lesson-book which can serve us well. Janet's Virgil proves the point. I'm happy to walk the furrows with Janet, my green friend.

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0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Virgil's georgics, September 30, 2009

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Carolyn Hentz Spooner "tigerlilycarolyn" - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Virgil's Georgics (The Yale New Classics Series) (Paperback)

We studied it in college class. It took too long to get it after I ordered it.