debo confesar que empece a leer la traducción bilingüe de catedra de las geórgicas y como estaban en prosa les hice un poco el feo. Me pase a la traducción de CD Lewis en verso en inglés y, aunque a veces es muy agradable, siento que hay un montón de cosas que solo se inventa y peca MUCHISIMO excluyendo la metonimia virgiliana. En general, me pareció una traducción bien volada y hay partes donde los encabalgamientos dañan el ritmo del poema. ahora voy a terminar de leer la traducción de Catedra jajaja (me faltan dos libros). Virgilio es solo el goat la verdad.

The Georgics, specifically, were a beautiful read. I love the visions invoked by Virgil’s commentary on the art of farming both plants and animals (especially so, since I myself raise goats for milk).

Autumn drops her varied fruits at our feet, while far
Above on sunny rocks the vintage basks and mellows.
And all the time he has dear children who dote on kisses, A house that preserves the tradition of chastity, cows that
hang
Their milky udders, and plump young goats on the happy
green
Romping and butting with their horns.
The farmer himself keeps holidays when, at ease in a meadow, A fire in the midst and friends there to crown the flowing
bowl,
He drinks the health of the Wine-god and arranges for his
herdsmen
A darts-match, setting up the target upon an elm tree, And the labourers bare their sinewy bodies for country
wrestling.

- Georgics, book II, lines 521-531

After reading this, I came to the conclusion that I do not love pastoral poetry.

Grande fan des Bucoliques mais plutôt déçue par les Georgiques.

The Eclogues and Georgics are the other two major works of Virgil, more famous for his Aeneid. The Eclogues, a collection of ten poems, were written around 38 b.c. Virgil modeled this collection off of the Greek Bucolic tradition, as exemplified by Theocritus.

Bucolic poetry, which generally involves shepherds frolicking around the pastoral countryside and singing to each other, is really (really) not my genre of choice. Eclogues II, IV, and X were the strongest of the bunch, in my opinion. Eclogue IV is also historically notable, as you get to watch a young Virgil suck up to Octavian (i.e., the future Augustus Caesar) by mustering all the propaganda he can handle. So there's that. But give me Horace's Odes over these pastoral poems six days a week and twice on Sunday, so 3 stars for the Eclogues. I know, I'd be a terrible shepherd. Let's just move on.

Happily, I enjoyed the Georgics a great deal more. Published around 29 b.c., the Georgics is one long poem split into four books. With 2,188 verses, it is not a short work. Like the Eclogues, the Georgics spends a lot of time discussing livestock & agriculture. But the tone of the Georgics is much more majestic, and the poem soars as a result:

“[A]nd the time will come when there anigh, Heaving the earth up with his curved plough, Some swain will light on javelins by foul rust Corroded, or with ponderous harrow strike On empty helmets, while he gapes to see Bones as of giants from the trench untombed.” Book I.

Now that's the kind of agricultural poetry I can get into! Alternately, listen to Virgil describing the King of Bees:

“[H]im with awful eye they reverence, and with murmuring throngs surround, in crowds attend, oft shoulder him on high, or with their bodies shield him in the fight, and seek through showering wounds a glorious death.” Book IV.

Does the Georgics quite reach the heights of the Aeneid? I don't think so. But it isn't terribly far behind, and if you enjoyed the Aeneid the Georgics is definitely worth a read. 5 stars for the Georgics, leaving us with a grand total of 4 stars for the book as a whole.

Note: I read the Dryden translation, which is justly famous. If you liked the lofty language above, I would highly recommend it. It's old, so at times you may need to slow down and re-read something to understand what the hell he is talking about, but worth it in my opinion.

This book of pastoral poems from Virgil is very interested in agricultural methods. As I read the first half of it, I was bored out of my skull, spurred on only by the knowledge that the book was very short and that I could finish it quickly and move on to something else.

In the second half, something happened. I was sitting with my newborn son, just weeks old. For whatever reason, I decided to start reading the poem out loud to him. The act of reading the language did something to change it for me, and I was...not exactly engrossed, but definitely more attentive than I had been. I tried to slow down and just feel the rhythm of the language and the timelessness of the poetry. My son seemed to like it too, as much as a two week old can like anything.

The introduction tried to tell me that these books may have allegorical political meanings, but that was entirely lost on me. This is not a book I'll be revisiting very often, but the specialness of that one memory does mean that I have to bump up my star rating a bit. If you're in an unusually contemplative mood, these poems have been around for thousands of years, waiting to be read aloud.

In Virgil’s pastoral poetry, he addresses themes of song, love, and country. The characters are shepherds who sing and mourn together in the fields while tending their flocks. The Eclogues and The Georgics are wrote in meter. Virgil takes care to call on muses, invoke the gods, and illustrate the Italian countryside.

Тяжело читать переводную рифму, она как-будто нелепая. Плюс надо постоянно переходить на сноски - это отвлекает от истории

3 of 5, mostly because of the (free from Gutenberg) translation (James Rhoades (London 1881), blank verse)

The "Eclogues" and "Georgics" (Oxford World's Classics) by Virgil (1999)

I didn’t understand most of it

No it's not the most faithful translation. But it's a fun interpretation and as a hobbyist Classicist, I enjoyed it, especially the Georgics.