The Georgics

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

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, abun

I should start by admitting that I'm completely unqualified to judge the accuracy of this translation. My high school Latin has twenty years of rust on it, and it was never good enough to pass judgment on another's translation. All I can do is (1) judge Ferry's translation as poetry, and (2) assume that it is faithful to Virgil and judge Virgil based on what I read in this translation. This is an absolutely beautiful set of poems that is essential reading to any student of European literature. On the surface, it sounds painfully boring. Virgil writes of bees and crops and trees and how to mate a bull. 50% of the poem involves direct instruction in how to best accomplish these tasks. However, he somehow manages to make it all beautiful and fascinating and profoundly human. Two themes account for its beauty. One is the understanding that animals and plants live and die in a way that might not be human yet is still noble. Virgil cares for his subjects--whether it's a bee having its wings clipped or a formerly great stallion suffering the indignities of old age. The other is a wide-eyed awe for everything in life--the average human's monotonous work mixed with a few moments of bliss, the random destructiveness of nature, and the beauty that surrounds every moment. As a lover of literature, I'm surprised by how much later poetry I quickly detected in these poems. They clearly influenced much later literature (e.g., Wordsworth). As a human, I'm surprised by how certain I am that I will return to these poems throughout the remainder of my life. They contain such an abundance of energy and joy that I'm still trying to decipher exactly how Virgil managed it. This isn't the best review I've ever written, but it fails for the right reasons--because of the awe I have for these poems. I'm a 36-year old high school English teacher stunned that I'm still discovering words of such shocking beauty.

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.

this book was really informative