LE Aeneid

I wanted to share with you my LE Aeneid - No 248- which arrived today. It's a gorgeous volume and my lousy pictures fail to do it justice, the flash robbing the book of it's true lustre and draining the colour. Please also try to ignore my grubby fingers.

Outstanding, Quicksilver. Thank you for sharing, and enjoy it in good health.

Oh QS it's lovely, lovely, lovely and thank you for the photos!!

> 2, 3

Thanks. Glad you like it.

It's magnificent, QS. It will stand proud among your other books. Thanks for sharing.

> 5

Thanks drasvola. Somehow it feels less "old fashioned" than the other titles I have seen in this series. This is a brand new Folio volume dressed up as a LE - other titles in this series have, I think, all been previously published by the Society.

It looks very attractive - I'm debating going with it as my commitment for the new membership year.

The completist in me would prefer a volume that complements the Folio Homer volumes I have but this is too beautiful for such trifling concerns!

>5 drasvola: Sorry, Quicksilver, not to be argumentative but The Aeneid was produced by Folio in 1993, reprinted 1995(Folio 60 p.251#756) as part of their Myths and Classics series. The Fagles translation updates the Dryden and the illustrations vary from the original.

Well, my copy has arrived and is on the bed unopened, I shall have to wash my hands thoroughly of soil and hydraulic fluid, I shall pull a fresh, clean and fluffy white towel from the linen closet on which to lay the prize, I shall have to wash again as equipment oils are stubborn and sneaky, I will approach the undamaged LE style carton and (to be continued after, hopefully, a bit of time gleefully chortling.)

So much for your keyboard...

;-)

> 8

Let us know what you think olepuppy. I'm pretty happy with my copy and think it's a real stunner.

Olepuppy remember to wash your hands every time you turn a page :)

...gently with my razor knife opened just enough to cut the tape I open the package. As I remove the paper wrap from the solander box the razor slips and falls and leaves a triangular score across the title on the spine...gotcha! Then I gaze at the lovely book and the Clements binding and inhale deeply the aroma of good leather, Aeneid has a similar heft as the others in the series, not optimal for reading with one or two hands in the air while lying on one's back, but that's just how much a bunch of good paper weighs and I love it. I get a bowl of southern milk chocolate ice cream and begin the inner perusal, first noticing that the plates are printed on a textured paper like Modigliani, I like, I'm staring at the frontispiece when, in slow motion but with no time to scream I watch the overloaded soup spoon of sweetened cow let loose its load directly onto the word Virgil-gotcha! I continue to 'look at the pictures' and they don't really hit me but they're OK and I hope they'll grow on me as I read the Fagles translation. I pick and choose samples of prose throughout the book and I like the non-stilted language and as I begin to read the introduction the damn boy cat chases his mother up across the desk and directly across Aeneid WITH CLAWS EXTENDED, yeah it's true, I'm sick, 5 pages shredded.

>10 Quicksilver66: so I like it a lot, I love this series of LE's, could wish for a lower price for me but the choice is made and that's that and I'm happy to have it(on the ten payment plan.)

>9 LaCamera: That's the thing with a few numbers and letters on it?

>11 ironjaw: Too late to worry about a little grease now, ironjaw, the cats have gone and...gotcha!

I feel like I'm watching a horror show...!

I'm getting antsy for renewal!!

Olepuppy tell you you're joking about the mama cat, the baby cat and the 5 shredded pages...I'm having palpitations hurry up!!!

>12 olepuppy:

olepuppy, if you have a moment, would you post the opening lines here? I tend to judge translations of the Aeneid based on how the invocation reads.

> 12

Brilliant post olepuppy. Had me in stitches.

>16 Django6924: - would you just post the opening lines?

Wars and a man I sing - an exile driven on by Fate,
he was the first to flee the coast of Troy,
destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil,
yet many blows he took on land and sea from the gods above -
thanks to cruel Juno's relentless rage - and many losses
he bore in battle too, before he could found a city,
bring his gods to Latium, source of the Latin race,
the Alban lords and the high walls of Rome.

Tell me,
Muse, how it all began. Why was Juno outraged?
What could wound the Queen of the Gods with all her power?
Why did she force a man, so famous for his devotion,
to brave such rounds of hardship, bear such trials?
Can such rage inflame the immortals' hearts?

Translated from|:
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit
litora - multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum, saeve memorem Iunonis ob iram,
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
inferretque deos Latio; genus unde Latinum
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.

Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso
quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere casus
insignem petate virum, tot adire labores
impulerit. tantaene animis caelestibus irae?

Edited to correct typo.

...from teh gods above

Leetspeek in the Aeneid? That is an up to date translation!

Here's the Dryden translation:

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?

Here's the C. Day Lewis translation, comissioned for BBC broadcasting:

I tell about war and the hero who first from Troy's frontier,
Displaced by destiny, came to the Lavinian shores,
To Italy --a man much travelled on sea and land
By the powers above, because of the brooding anger of Juno,
Suffering much in war until he could found a city
And march his gods into Latium, whence rose the Latin race,
The royal line of Alba and the high walls of Rome.
Where lay the cause of it all? How was her godhead injured?
What grievance made the queen of heaven so harry a man
Renowned for piety, through such toils, such a cycle of calamity?

Thank you appaloosaman, Huxley, and drasvola!

Interesting to compare. For whatever the felicities of Fagles' translation, and I'm sure it's very faithful to the original, it (and even more so the C. Day Lewis translation) sounds flat and somewhat prosaic to my ears. Dryden's wins as poetry--despite the handicap of rhyming couplets.

I read a translation many years ago that sounded, for me, just the right tone. It may have been rather free in literal adherence to the original, but it had the sonority and speed that seemed well-suited to the tale. I still remember the opening line, but alas, don't know the translator:

Arms and the man I sing, who earliest came
Fate-bound for refuge from the coast of Troy
To this Lavinian shore and Italy....

> 22

That translation is very close to:

http://www.amazon.com/Aeneid-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0192832069#reader_0192832...

>22 Django6924:

I agree that this translation is not Fagles' best (at least in terms of poetic feel) - that prize in my view goes to his Iliad.

>24 appaloosaman:

I totally agree. His Iliad is the best--easily beating out my previous favorite--Richmond Lattimore's.

It's a shame there's no translation of the Aeneid by Milton.

What, nobody pulling for Fitzgerald's Aeneid translation? Although I don't on the whole like the Dryden translation, I do think he has got the best opening line.

Django, I thought you liked the Pope translation for the Iliad and the Odyssey? For me, I agree that Fagles edges out Lattimore (don't like the Pope) for the two volumes.

I think Fitzgerald's my favourite, actually.

As an undergraduate, we used Pharr's 'Purple Aeneid' to muddle through the Latin text, and I still have a flick through it occasionally. Highly recommended!

>15 Texaco: Texaco, the book is fine, the last word in post is the last 'gotcha', sorry to make you fret!

>17 Quicksilver66: Happy ya got some chucks from it, Quicksilver!

>22 Django6924: It is interesting to compare the translations, have the translators worked from identical Latin texts?
Do some of the variations in translation derive from the differences over time in the translator's English?

29 Oh, right, duh, sigh, thank you for clearing that up Olepuppy. Got mine today as well and shall wait for just the right moment to open.

>30 Texaco: Well then I hope you enjoy it too, Texaco.

A slightly strange event occurred this morning in relation to the previously mentioned 'fresh, clean, and fluffy white towel' used to swaddle the newborn Aeneid yesterday. As I dried my hair after shower I received this wonderful yet weirdly-timed aroma of leather and realized the source as Aeneid. It was like my head was wrapped in leather! Tho I prefer 'clothesline fresh', this 'fresh leather' fragrance could be a hit among hide-loving bibliophiles...or not.

There's another demographic that might embrace that scent as well. Best not to go into specifics here though. ;)

>27 kdweber:

I like Pope's translation very much! The problem with it--as with Dryden's Aeneid--is that heroic couplets aren't the best way to render Homer's lines. I can't read classical Greek, but I have heard it read, and it is very light and quick, despite being longer than Pope's iambic pentameter. It also seems to flow inexorably along. Heroic couplets stick, no matter how briefly, at every rhyme. Dryden's opening lines of the Aeneid show that it's possible, with sufficient skill and inspiration, to surmount the halting nature of rhymed couplets, but even Dryden can't sustain this through such a long poem.

Heroic couplets do seem very limiting to the modern ear. This is probably not helped by the fact that when delivered by readers/actors without skill the rhyme becomes over-dominant. My view of this was revised when I saw a modern production in English of Moliere's Tartuffe where the translator had faithfully preserved Moliere's Alexandrine meter and rhyming couplets. The audience found the production hilarious and the skillful delivery meant that the rhyming couplets never became obtrusive and often served to point up lines.

The real problem with couplets is that they are almost synonymous with the amateur poet, slushy sentiment card verses and, the poet laureate of the bad couplet, William McGonagall.

I'm quoting C. Day Lewis (Introduction to his translation of The Aeneid):

"...to find an equivalent for Virgil's language, his choice and arrangement of words--this can hardly be done. In the first place, it is impossible to reproduce the melodic variety and the complexity of rhythm which he achieved within the Latin hexameter..."

"If one cannot create a poetic style equivalent to Virgil's, might it not be best to concentrate upon what is reproducible--his story--and make a prose translation?"

"My translation is, in fact, a line-for-line one. Now the difficulty about such a translation, if the metre is regular, is that the original is constantly compelling you either to pad a line or to leave something out: but, if the metre is not regular, you lose your momentum."

"When a poet sits down to translate another poet, he always wants something of him, though he may not be fully aware of this."

"A translation cannot be poetry in its own right unless it has been subdued to the imaginative process of its original; nor can it be a faithful translation unless it is in some sense an original poem."

>35 drasvola:

In post 26 I suggested (though it fell on deaf ears!) that Milton would have been the Aeneid's ideal translator, as he self-consciously adapted Virgil's heroic declamatory style into Latinate English for Paradise Lost. At school we were made to translate Book 4, and from that limited exposure to the original I'd suggest that Milton's manly tone and manipulative style best replicates the feel of native Virgil. Long ago schoolboys were put through the classics by translating one ancient author into the style of another - someone proficient should render Virgil into Milton and win the bays.

I'm with Day Lewis on that. For an interesting take on what can be done both by way of translation and for giving a feel of the original through a "version", I commend Tony Harrison's play The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus. Harrison is a poet in his own right and a classicist. He blended his own translation of large sections of Ichneutai as a play within a play with the satyrs from Ichneutai forming a verse chorus for the modern prose play.

It was brilliantly inventive and delivered the classic feel of a Greek satyr play in a way that genuinely caused initial shock to the audience (which was most of it) that was unfamiliar with the genre.

You can judge the frisson that ran through the mixed sex audience as the satyrs sprang on stage - see http://www.terrydavies.com/musicanddance/thetrackers.html for a photo of Barry Rutter in all his priapic glory. The men felt inadequate, the women were reminded of pony club...

> 37

Pretty suggestive, indeed!

> 36

I'm not qualified to judge what sounds "natural" in English poetry, not being a native speaker, but any translation of a poem poses the same problem. Since you mention Milton, let me say that Paradise Lost has been translated into Spanish in all possible ways: poetic adaptations, prose translations and even a bilingual edition in verse-by-verse translation, published in facing pages, which keeps the hendecasyllable metre.

All very laudable attempts but nothing like the original.

This thread from the Ancient History group
http://www.librarything.com/topic/96889
notes the death of Bernard Knox, the distinguished classicist who wrote the introduction to this LE (and the FS editions of the Fagles translations of Homer).

A heart-felt obituary note in the New York Times informing of Prof. Knox's death. Follow the link in > 40. Thank you very much, affle, for letting this group know.

Got my first LE today. The Aeneid. Numbered 1543

>42 LesMiserables:

Mine arrive Friday (in the UK) - numbered 1553!

Loved the smell on opening the box. Surprised at how light the book felt - just as I was on first opening my set of Pepys's diaries.

I had at least to take a look at the Fagles Aeneid, as representing one of the few glimmering hopes my £60 voucher had of not passing away unused, but I just can't hear in it anything that would induce me to read the book. C.H. Sisson (1986) takes more liberty with the text but to my mind that's justified for the sake of a work that's more nearly a poem in English:

This poem is about battles and the man
Who, fugitive but in the hands of fate,
Came first from Troy to the Lavinian shores,
Tossed to and fro on land as on the sea
By violence from above, the unforgetting
Anger of Juno was the cause of that;
And in war too he suffered much until
He had laid the foundations of his city
And brought his own gods into Latium
- Whence came the Latin race, the Alban fathers
And finally the high walls of Rome.

Muse, bring to mind the causes, say what injury
To her divinity made the Queen of Heaven
Drive this man, so remarkable for his piety
Through such a circle of misfortune to face
So many drudgeries. Who would have thought
There could be such resentment in the gods?

There's not much hope for my voucher, then, but in a roundabout way it's brought belatedly to my attention the MHRA's 2011 publication of Gavin Douglas' 1513 Scots translation, and I've gladly placed an order for it, £26 for two hardback print-on-demand volumes. I haven't read much more of it than the fragments Ezra Pound gives in his ABC of Reading.

The battelis and the man I will discruive
Fra Troyis boundis first that fugitive
By fate to Italie come, and coist Lauyne
Ouer land and se cachit with meikill pyne
Be force of goddis aboue, fra euery stede
Of cruel Juno throw auld remembrit feid
Grete payne in batteles sufferit he also
Or he is goddis brocht in Latio
And belt the ciete, fra quham of nobil fame
The Latyne peopil taken has thare name,
And eike the faderis princis of Alba
Come, and the walleris of grete Rome alsua.
O thow, my muse, declare the causis quhay,
Qyhat maiesty offendit; schaw quham by,
Or zit quharefor, of goddis the drery Quene.
So feil dangeris, sic trawell maid sustene
Ane worthy man fulfillit of pietie:
Is thare sic grief in heuenlie myndes on hie?

The MHRA edition has modernised spelling, which I don't generally welcome, but seems to have been well received so I'll take my chances on that.

I've long owned a copy of the wonderful (when you're in the mood for it) blustering, galumphing Richard Stanyhurst translation of the first four books into English hexameter., from 1582. The opening four lines are his own addition, but their loss would perhaps be a pity.

I that in old season wyth reeds oten harmonye whistled
My rural sonnet: from forest flitted (I) forced
Thee sulcking swincker thee soyle, thoghe craggie, to sunder.
A labor and a travaile too plowswaynes hertelye welcoom.
Now manhod and garbroyls I chaunt, and martial horror,
I blaze thee captayne first from Troy cittye repairing,
Lyke wandring pilgrim too famosed Italie trudging,
And coast of Lauyn: soust with tempestuus hurlwynd,
On land and sayling, bi Gods predestinat order:
But chief through Iunoes long fostred deadlye reuengment.
Martyred in battayls, ere towne could statelye be buylded,
Or Gods theare setled: thence flitted thee Latin ofspring,
Thee roote of old Alban: thence was Rome peereles inhaunced.

My muse shew the reason, what grudge or what furye kendled
Of Gods thee Princessse, through so cursd mischeuus hatred,
Wyth sharp sundrye perils too tugge so famus a captayne.
Such festred rancoure doo Sayncts celestial harbour?

By comparison with much that's to come those lines are quite sober and gracious.

44

I have only experienced the Robert Fitzgerald and the Cecil Day Lewis translations so my third reading with this LE, will be new to me with Fagles.

Fitzgerald and Lewis are different, but equally enjoyable, so I expect much the same with Nagles.

I must also do Dryden, of course, at some point.