Arcadian Rome

The Georgics of Virgil

translated by David Ferry

"Next I’ll speak about the celestial gift of honey from the air.

Maecenas, give this section too your regard.

I’ll tell you in proper sequence about the greatest spectacle

of the slightest things, and of brave generals,

and a whole nation’s customs and efforts, tribes and battles.

Labour, over little: but no little glory, if favourable powers

allow, and Apollo listens to my prayer."

-  Virgil, Georgics, Book IV

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.

The Georgics of Virgil trans. by David Ferry. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005.

Solitary Renegade

The Stars My Destination 

by Alfred Bester

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

In the forests of the night.

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

- William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience

I was spurred to reread this book through participation in a Science Fiction reading group that started as an offshoot of a class I took last year. This book is one of the best that the group has read yet and it remains one of my favorites for a varity of reasons. The first of these reasons is the source material for the plot, since Bester adapted Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. This is also one of my favorite novels from my early years of reading and the revenge aspect of the Bester's novel rivals that of Dumas' romance. However, it is his imagination that soars and surprises the reader at every turn of the The Stars My Destination.
The opening section depicting the discovery of "jaunting", a form of teleportation, is brilliant both in imagination and execution of the idea. It is followed by the elements of what would become, more than a decade later, known as "cyberpunk", along with mythic references, sensational satire, and a touch of synesthesia for extra effect. The hero Gully Foyle, at the beginning ("Education: None. Skills: None. Merits: None. Recommendations: None." on his Merchant Marine Card) is unremarkable in almost every aspect. His growth, however, is made interesting and more than exciting by both his exploits and his interplanetary travels. The characters he meets from "The Scientific People" to the exotic Jisbella McQueen, "hot-tempered, independent, intelligent" and someone who liked to "smash all the rules"(p 74), are further demonstration of the imaginative heft of the story.
Reading this book reminded me why I enjoy science fiction. Whether it is "the greatest single SF novel", as Samuel Delaney claimed (he modestly excluded his own Dahlgren which could be considered a contender for the title), it is certainly a magnificent representative of the genre.  I will end with the motto of Gully Foyle, or is it his epitaph?

Gully Foyle is my name

And Terra is my nation.

Deep space is my dwelling place,

The stars my destination.

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Vintage Books, 1996 (1956)

Books

Fahrenheit 451 

by Ray Bradbury

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”  ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

This is one of the great dystopian novels of all time, especially for true bibliophiles. In this age of Kindles and Nooks and Ipads this story seems almost nostalgic, a fifties rendition of the future that reminded me of an Orwellian world ruled by a Huxleyan culture.
It is written in an allegorical style with a fantastic background that mixes futuristic ideas within a rule-bound society where the many are ruled by videos and drugs. Bradbury is effective in creating a nightmare and an evocative story, for he is a brilliant storyteller and this, like most of his stories, has a fantastic edge.
A totalitarian regime has ordered all books to be destroyed, but one of the book burners, Guy Montag, is the only human struggling for some truth. Montag is -- for those not familiar with the story -- a fireman. His job is to set fire to books so that no one will read and consequently understand the hopelessness of reality. He is lured into reading a book by a young woman named Clarisse who tells of a world of books, thoughts, and ideas. Of course the story of Adam and Eve immediately comes to mind. But this allegory has deeper meanings. What is the role of the book and what are the limits of language? What would you do if you realized your life is devoted to the destruction of that which you love? Are you willing to engage in the search for Truth? The denouement is brilliant and the result is a book that you will never forget. Once you have seen the amazing cinematic recreation by Francois Truffaut you will have additional images to put along side those of this book, emblazoned on your mind forever. This along with The Martian Chronicles is among my favorite Bradbury and the best fantastic fiction I have read.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Simon & Schuster, 2012 (1951)

Roman Arcadia

The Eclogues of Virgil: 

A Translation

by Virgil

"Sicilian Muses, sing a nobler music,

For orchard trees and humble tamarisks

Do not please everyone; so may your song

Be a forest worthy of a consul."

- Eclogue IV, (p 29)

These poems provide the foundation for a definition of pastoral. Virgil's book contains ten pieces, each called not an idyll but an eclogue, populated by and large with herdsmen imagined conversing and singing in largely rural settings, whether suffering or embracing revolutionary change or happy or unhappy love. They are inviting and easy to like, both attractive and intelligent. This was from early in Virgil's career and he is already an accomplished poet. The eclogues, written under the patronage of Maecenas, are called the Bucolics or country poems even though they are really highly civilized set pieces. Like much of Roman literature they look back to Greek examples, in this case that of Theocritus, the Greek poet of the third century B.C.
They highlight individual characters like Meliboeus and Tityrus in Eclogue 1. Here Virgil uses the two herdsmen to convey issues of power and its opposite. In Eclogue 2 Corydon and Alexis demonstrate the power of passion. Corydon coaxes Alexis saying, "O come and live with me in the countryside among the humble farms." (p 13)   Virgil is able to consider the result of erotic passion with some detachment through his use of homosexual passion in this country setting.  Perhaps the best known of the Eclogues is number four which foretells of a son to be born to Antony and Octavia.  Alas this event was not fated to happen and the birth prophesied would later be interpreted as one of a completely different boy, one who would have a career that outlived both the poet Virgil and Rome's empire if not her culture.
Through the eclogues as a whole there is the exploration of the idea of the nature of the pastoral, its innocence and seeming edenic being in comparison with the urban life of Virgil and most of his audience. In David Ferry's beautiful translation these verses come alive in a contemporary idiom. As Michael Dirda has said, this is a "volume to buy, read , and treasure."

The Eclogues of Virgil, A translation by David Ferry. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. 1999