The Epistles of Horace: Bilingual Edition

by David Ferry

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My aim is to take familiar things and makePoetry of them, and do it in such a wayThat it looks as if it was as easy as could beFor anybody to do it . . . the power of makingA perfectly wonderful thing out of nothing much.--from "The Art of Poetry" When David Ferry's translation of The Odes of Horace appeared in 1997, Bernard Knox, writing in The New York Review of Books, called it "a Horace for our times." In The Epistles of Horace, Ferry has translated the work in which Horace perfected the show more conversational verse medium that gives his voice such dazzling immediacy, speaking in these letters with such directness, wit, and urgency to young writers, to friends, to his patron Maecenas, to Emperor Augustus himself. It is the voice of a free man, talking about how to get along in a Roman world full of temptations, opportunities, and contingencies, and how to do so with one's integrity intact. Horace's world, so unlike our own and yet so like it, comes to life in these poems. And there are also the poems--the famous "Art of Poetry" and others--about the tasks and responsibilities of the writer: truth to the demands of one's medium, fearless clear-sighted self-knowledge, and unillusioned, uncynical realism, joyfully recognizing the world for what it is.Available in ebook for the first time, this English-only edition of The Epistles of Horace includes Ferry's translation along with his introduction, notes, and glossary. "Reading these versions we feel as if the streets that Horace walked have opened onto our own" (Peter Campion, Raritan). show less

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Edition: // Descr: xxxiii, 442 p. 17 cm. // Series: Call No. { 874 H78 7 c. #1 } Edited with Notes by Augustus S. Wilkins Contains Appendix and Index to the Notes. // //
Edition: // Descr: xxxiii, 442 p. 16.5 cm. // Series: Call No. { 874 H78 7 c. #2 } Edited with Notes by Augustus S. Wilkins Contains Appendix and Index to the Notes. // //

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11+ Works 461 Members
David Ferry's "Of No Country I Know: New & Selected Poems & Translations" won the 2000 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He has translated "The Odes of Horace" (FSG, 1997), "The Eclogues of Virgil" (FSG, 1999), & "Gilgamesh" (FSG, 1992). (Bowker Author Biography)

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Common Knowledge

Canonical title*
Briefe
Original title
Epistulae
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.

Classifications

Genres
Poetry, Fiction and Literature, Literature Studies and Criticism
DDC/MDS
871.01Literature & rhetoricLatin & Italic literaturesLatin poetryLatin poetsClassical period to 500CE
LCC
PA6396 .E5 .F45Language and LiteratureGreek language and literature. Latin language and literatureRoman literatureIndividual authorsHorace
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7 — English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Multiple languages, Spanish
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Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
13
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6