Géorgiques

by
Alain Michel

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Géorgiques

by Alain Michel

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 357 ratings · 32 reviews

These two volumes provide a commentary, with text, on Virgil's Georgics, a poem in four books probably written between 35 and 29 BC. The introduction, in Volume 1, treats the poem's historical background and its relationship to the early years of Augustan Rome, Virgil's use of prior literary material, his stylistic and metrical expertise, and questions of poetic structure....more

Unknown Binding, 384 pages

Published January 1st 1997 by Imprimerie Nationale Editions (first published -29)

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Feb 03, 2010 Buck marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: self-congratulatory-multilingual, poetry

The Georgics is a long, didactic poem about agriculture. It is not sexy. In fact, it’s almost defiantly unsexy, like a bull dyke in flannel. But it doesn’t care what you think. It has nothing in common with you. It doesn’t watch home makeover shows. It’s not down with your favourite bands. It’s a supremely humane and civilized poem written at a time when your ancestors and mine were still painting themselves blue and grunting over a fire. So don’t tell me it’s not cool. It isn’t, but that’s not...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Nick rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Allow me to clarify those stars you see above.
I love Virgil, with all of my heart. His depth is devastating and his verse, in the original Latin, is uncanny. Before Shakespeare he was the definition of greatness. And I love the Georgics. For some people, the Aeneid will always be the end of the discussion on epics. But for me, no other large poem in the ancient world compares to the Georgics. I honestly believe that the West had to wait for Dante before it got another masterpiece of this magnit...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

Imagine if Michael Pollan had written The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World using hexameter verse. Now you can begin to understand how cool the Georgics is.

“Unfortunate man, what grass you have had to secure!
Sit down on this couch, and let us both rest from our fears.
Plants-eyed view can do us no good. Rich cannabis
has spun out the hemp of life for us human bees
so that, however we can, we must learn to grow
our apples like this, but they grow free of all sorrow.

There are two bongs...more

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Jun 23, 2009 Jon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an excellent translation of Virgil's Georgics (the four poems he wrote just before the Aeneid), describing and praising the life of the farmer. The translator, Janet Lembke, is somewhat unique in that she's an American, her father was a farmer, and she is a naturalist as well as a classicist. So she avoids the usual Britishisms (corn, where we Americans would say grain) and manages to be elegant, accurate, and clear. These are the poems that Virgil-lovers tend to praise most highly. Most...more

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Snorri Sturluson I'm ashamed to say I have never "plowed" the Georgics, but at least I knew the poems were about farming. Your review made me think of the only one of...more
updated Jun 26, 2009 03:06pm

Jon Wow...thanks for the comment. The Romans definitely liked to think they were in control--which is my idea of why they hated not just sea battles but s...more
Jun 27, 2009 09:04am

Snorri Sturluson Improbus labor? On the lush, sun-kissed plains and hills of Italia? Hmmmm. Methinks he doth, etc.
Jun 27, 2009 12:49pm

Jan 02, 2011 Jesse Lopes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Crops, trees, animals and bees are the four themes of this lovely meeting between Hesiod and Theocritus. The poet's words resonate with the same intoxicating beauty as all his work, and the essence of that beauty is no doubt the mastery of simile which makes the descriptions of homely things so immersive and strangely thrilling (like the thrill from a tracking shot by Tarkovsky). When this element is added to the many synonyms for copse, grove, brook, etc., one feels almost as if in a paradise o...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was recommended in the newsletter of a farmer I follow on social media, and I'm glad I picked it up. It was a quick read, but can also be read in small sections.

I thought it was gorgeous, funny, horrifying, a nostalgic (for Virgil!) tour of rural Italy back when farming was very much manual labor. Observations of stunning specific beauty and philosophical remarks alternate with detailed descriptions of how to test soil using a sooty basket as a filter, how to care for bees, train a pair of...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

A great poem rendered into decent verse by an acclaimed translator. In his translation, David Ferry opts for a rhythm loosely resembling iambic pentameter while still attempting to approximate conversational English. Such a style, in my opinion, is well suited to narrative verse, but falls flat when it comes to poetic description. Given that 90% of the Georgics describes Roman pastoral practices, this means the translation reads like a bad catalogue. Only the narrative on the last few pages of t...more

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Apr 03, 2011 Dylan Suher rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It is very hard for a city boy (and I imagine this is a common trend among modern audiences) to relate strongly to nature in the way the Georgics sometimes require. I frankly struggled with the first two books on cultivation of crops, and found the last two books, on husbandry and apiculture (not to mention, really, the Aeneid) to be far more amenable to my particular sensibility. But when I was lucid enough to grasp it, I found the Georgics to be brilliantly infused with that same great and sub...more

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May 16, 2013 Geoff Cain rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: herzog, bus

Again, I curse you and love you Werner Herzog for putting up that reading list at the Rogue Film School. What strange paths are you leading me down in the 52nd year of my life? This is the West's first poem of pure description. it is supposedly about farming and animal husbandry but it is really about how well someone can actually write about farming and animal husbandry. Vergil can do this very well. Strangely enough, Book Four is meant to be about bees and ends with a beautiful retelling of th...more

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Sep 08, 2012 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, poetry, philosophy, mythology

The Works and Days by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod was written around 700 BC. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts. It also contains an outline of the mythology of the gods of ancient Greece. In the poem Hesiod also offers his brother extensive moralizing advice on how he should live his life. I mention this because The Works and Days was the poet Virgil's model for composing his own didactic poem in hexame...more The Works and Days by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod was written around 700 BC. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts. It also contains an outline of the mythology of the gods of ancient Greece. In the poem Hesiod also offers his brother extensive moralizing advice on how he should live his life. I mention this because The Works and Days was the poet Virgil's model for composing his own didactic poem in hexameters known as The Georgics. Like many of the Roman writers and artists, Virgil looked to the Greeks for a model. Works and Days shares with the Georgics the themes of man's relationship to the land and the importance of hard work.
The Georgics itself is a poem in four books, published in 29 BC. It is the second major work by the Latin poet Virgil, following his Eclogues and preceding the Aeneid. As its name suggests (Georgica, from the Greek word γεωργεῖν, geōrgein, "to farm") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example of peaceful rural poetry, it is a more complex work in both theme and purpose.
The work consists of 2,188 hexametric verses divided into four books. Each of the books covers different aspects of the agrarian culture. Book One begins with a summary of the whole poem and typical obeisance to the gods and Augustus himself. In addition to Virgil's intention to honor Caesar he also honors his patron Maecenas. In the middle books he shares his lofty poetic aspirations and the difficulty of the material to follow.
Mirroring Hesiod Virgil describes the succession of ages of man emphasizing the tension between the golden age of Jupiter and the age of man. The focus on the importance of Augustus is fascinating as it adds a political aspect to what is primarily an arcadian poem. Throughout the poem the theme of man versus nature is present as is the relation of man to animals. I found the discussion of Bees and the similarities with human society in the fourth Book one of the most fascinating sections of this marvelous poem.
Always of interest to me are philosophical influences, and there were two predominant philosophical schools in Rome during Virgil's lifetime: Stoicism and the Epicureanism. Of these two, the Epicurean strain is predominant not only in the Georgics but also in Virgil's social and intellectual milieu. Both his friend,the poet Horace, and his patron Maecenas were Epicureans. The Georgics was also influenced by Lucretius' Epicurean epic De Rerum Natura, one of my favorite Roman texts. The combination of philosophy, arcadian poetry, mythology, and politics makes this work a beautiful compendium of Roman culture. (less)

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Sep 26, 2010 Matt rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Time for some brutal honesty. Can you read Latin? Do you have a Master’s in English… or at the very least some layman’s understanding of linguistics? No? Me neither. And that means that The Georgics probably won’t really be appreciated by us.

I bought the bilingual edition because I wanted to see the original Latin. Seeing as the Latin pages are roughly half as long as the English translation on the opposite page, it’s not hard to see that something is lost in translation. Whether it be the rhyth...more Time for some brutal honesty. Can you read Latin? Do you have a Master’s in English… or at the very least some layman’s understanding of linguistics? No? Me neither. And that means that The Georgics probably won’t really be appreciated by us.

I bought the bilingual edition because I wanted to see the original Latin. Seeing as the Latin pages are roughly half as long as the English translation on the opposite page, it’s not hard to see that something is lost in translation. Whether it be the rhythm, the tones or just the word choice, how can poetry be appreciated when it’s processed through translation? In an effort to hear the words, though I’ve never studied Latin, I tried reading it aloud. Given that Latin is the basis for modern Romance languages, I used the pronunciation learned during my otherwise unfruitful Spanish minor. Then I added a French accent. To give it some class. What resulted sounded like a spoken word staccato by a Mexican Pepe Le Pew.

I’m guessing Latin sounds a little different.

I know the Greeks and Romans often used hexameters which generally gets translated into iambic pentameters for English. The Iliad, The Odyssey and even Virgil’s own epic work The Aeneid are all translated in this manner. But those are stories. Even though we may lose much of the nuance, the tale remains the same. When dealing with a didactic pastoral poem such as The Georgics, the nuance matters. In English, this is a straightforward poem about farm work and other observations in nature. It’s not particularly moving nor beautiful. Though I did find the last few pages of the Second Georgic rather exceptional even through the translation. Virgil’s overly sentimental about the life of the farmer, but he has some rather poignant lines about the virtues of farming over those who seek glory in war

I’m sure most people can find something, some page or passage, that speaks to them. But if you want to see if you can truly appreciate Virgil in English, let this note from David Ferry, the translator, serve as your test.

In translating the Georgics I have used iambic pentameter, with frequent anapestic substitutions, as my metrical system. In English a six-foot line comparable to Virgil’s hexameters would, in my opinion, be impossible to manage without extreme artificiality.

In the case of many Latin words (proper names, names of places, and so forth), I have sometimes barbed the vowel sound to indicate the metrical stress, and sometimes to indicate that a final e is to be heard as pronounced, not silent. Introduction XIX.

Out of my own inability to appreciate the finer qualities of these poems, I give it 2 stars. If you can speak in iambic pentameter, count metrical feet as you read and don’t have to google “anapestic”, there’s probably enough here to warrant 4 or 5 stars.(less)

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Jan 20, 2013 Marc L added it · review of another edition

Shelves: latin-literature, rome

Gelezen in het Nederlands, vertaling van Ida Gerhardt.
Onwaarschijnlijk mooie, krachtige vertaling van Ida Gerhardt. Leerdicht, maar niet helemaal: aanbeveling oudromeinse deugden, pleidooi voor orde en stabiliteit, duidelijke verwijzing naar het beleid van Augustus, maar veel minder ziekelijk-behagend als in de Aeneis. Ook oog voor de donkere kanten van het boerenbedrijf: het zware ploeteren, de misoogsten en ziektes.

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May 15, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: romance-and-poetry

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Jan 31, 2010 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Georgics is a compilation of prose/poetry, mostly about the country. It recounts the beauty of the Roman countryside, farming, farm life, simplicity, and animals. This book is simply a person's experience written on paper, worth the look into another's life experience.

It is not an easy read-but definitely a classic.

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May 15, 2009 Elizabeth added it · review of another edition

Shelves: poetry

I’d not read the Georgics or the other lyrics of Virgil. I find them strange, strange. Not quite as fun as I thought they might be. Not quite as thick with oddity. These are such strangely instructive poems. The drive behind them really feels to me so much like instruction, so little like poetry. How much of this is translation? In this Ferry translation the Latin was alongside, which I like very much. You can see how much needs to be added -- lines upon lines to get us where we need to go. Wher...more

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Nov 28, 2008 Andy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's amazing that a book-length poem about caring for grapes, trees, bees and cattle can be so fascinating and beautiful. I read it aloud with a friend early in the summer here in Madison, outdoors, and loved every page. The ends of each of the four sections are particularly stunning--Vergil goes haywire, riffing on the agricultural material until he takes it into apocalyptic reflections on the transformation of labor and society in Italy due to war and political intrigue, the breaking up of sma...more

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Jun 07, 2009 Dorothy is currently reading it · review of another edition

I'm reading this in the big fancy UC press Dryden, the one I bought online at 2 in the morning a couple years ago. Finally reading some of the Dryden.

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Nov 30, 2012 Jason R. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I must admit that many of the references were lost on me as a city boy. But it sure sounded good and it's Virgil, for God's sake.

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May 30, 2010 Pavel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Excellent translation, helpful notes. Reading this takes you to another world.

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Feb 11, 2013 Adam Hanover rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classical-poetry

David Ferry's translation is fantastic. The voice of Virgil remains formal yet alive.

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Jun 02, 2012 Maria rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A mio avviso l'opera più bella di Virgilio.

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Sep 19, 2012 Evan Simpkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

God's gift to poetry

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May 31, 2012 Kristi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, own, poetry, farm-book-club

Great work by Virgil on the care of the land and painting an archetype of the small farmer. I loved Books I and II. Books III and IV seemed a little disappointing - less poetic, less philosophical. I also had mixed feelings about this translation after comparing it to others that seemed more faithful to the original, whereas this one sought to sound poetic, which at times led to feelings of inadequacy (about the translation).

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Sep 02, 2011 Kathleen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this while also reading Playing the Farmer by Philip Thibodeau, which greatly improved my enjoyment of The Georgics by giving it some context. Virgil did for farming what Thoreau did for living in the woods - made it seem a noble and meaningful, for former city dwellers pining for the "good old days" of hanging out at the senate and other such fun activities in Rome.

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Jun 29, 2011 Cassandra Silva rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites, poetry, books-of-antiquity

I am such a sucker for beautiful prose. Virgil writes like no other. What a rare treat to find the story of Orpheus at the end of this collection! Stunningly written I must say. I had the K.R. McKenzie translation. An instant favorite.

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Oct 31, 2007 Ben rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Virgil is no doubt a gifted poet, and the translation is very good. But in the end, this is still just a poem about farming. I can appreciate some of the themes and mythology, but most of the time I was bored. But hey, if you're into growing grapes, raising cattle, and making honey, this book's for you!

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Mar 11, 2010 Chris Selin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nice to know that if I ever run into Virgil while in purgatory, we'll have a common interest to chat about:-)

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Oct 17, 2009 Laura rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1999, classics, non-fiction, ancient-lit

This was the hardest book to read. I don't know why it was worse than any of the other classics, but it about killed me. Even illustrating the margins didn't help. Good luck

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May 06, 2010 !Tæmbuŝu marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, poetry

Reviewed by The Independent

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Dec 13, 2009 Charles rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Caitlyn Dixon

Shelves: classical-verse

A new translation of Virgil's Second major work on agriculture, vine-culture, husbandry, and bee-keeping.

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