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    The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil
    The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil
    The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil

    By Virgil

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    About this ebook

    These delightful poems—by turns whimsical, beautiful, and vulgar—seem to have primarily survived because they were attributed to Virgil. But in David R. Slavitt’s imaginative and appealing translations, they stand firmly on their own merits. Slavitt brings to this little-known body of verse a fresh voice, vividly capturing the tone and style of the originals while conveying a lively sense of fun.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of California Press
    Release dateJul 13, 2011
    ISBN9780520949997
    The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil
    Author

    Virgil

    Publius Vergilius Maro – or Virgil – was born near Mantua in 70 BC and was brought up there, although he attended schools in Cremona and Rome. Virgil’s rural upbringing and his affinity with the countryside are evident in his earliest work, the Eclogues, a collection of ten pastoral poems. As an adult Virgil lived mostly in Naples, although he spent time in Rome and belonged to the circle of influential poets that included Horace. He also had connections to leading men within the senatorial class and to the Emperor Augustus himself. Following the Eclogues, Virgil wrote the Georgics, a didactic poem, and thereafter began his longest and most ambitious work, the Aeneid. He died in Brindisi in 19 BC.

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    Reviews for The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil

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    • 5/5
      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. The eclogues, written under the patronage of Maecenas highlight individual characters like Corydon and Alexis. In David Ferry's beautiful translation they come alive in a contemporary idiom. As Michael Dirda has said, this is a "volume to buy, read , and treasure."
    • 4/5
      Before the famous Greek author Virgil wrote "The Aeniad," he completed these ten pastoral works of poetry.I found these poems to be enjoyable to read and fairly easy to get through, but more often than not highly vague. The meaning or subject of the poems was not always apparent.Thus, I read the "Eclogues" again, this time aided by a study guide in the back of my edition. It proved to be extremely helpful, and I would definitely recommend that any reader use something similar.The language of this poetry is flowing and pretty, classical and intelligent, sensual, merry, and at times tragic.There are hints of divinities, love affairs, and even homosexuality in Eclogue II.The charmingly simple, yet nonetheless powerful, themes of these short poems focus on things such as shepherds, singing contests, sexual desire, twins, and soldiers.I enjoyed reading this book, but not as much as other poetry of the time period.Also look into - Sappho.
    • 5/5
      Virgil's Eclogues are the second and most influential step in the establishment of the pastoral mode in European and European colonial poetry (the first were some of Theocritus' Idylls). One is of course entitled to an opinion, but one should be aware that one's opinion of Virgil's poetry really doesn't matter; it certainly doesn't have any bearing upon the quality or influence of his poetry. Personally, I prefer many of the Ancient Greeks to any of the Romans. I also frequently feel that Virgil receives too much attention relative to the Greeks. There are many reasons for this, many of them historical. I'm not trying to change things with regard to who is more popular. Virgil was among the greatest of all poets who have ever lived. His Eclogues are perfect gems of the genre, strung on a single necklace. I'll go so far as to say that no poet has ever been greater than Virgil, not even Homer (pretending for the moment that Homer was a single person). To me, both the Odyssey and the Iliad are far superior to the Aeneid. Even this isn't a fair comparison because I've read Homer in Greek but not Virgil in Latin. Yet I must say that Homer didn't write the equivalent of Virgil's Eclogues nor of his Georgics, so Virgil has greater breadth. And, even though I prefer the Idylls of Theocritus to the Eclogues of Virgil, Virgil's Eclogues are more completely of the genre toward which Theocritus only pointed, and as such they are a more finished work of art as a whole than the Idylls, which aren't all written in the same genre. It's true that Virgil copied Theocritus, but also true that Theocritus didn't write an enduring epic poem, or any epic poem as far as we know. Seeing ratings below three for any poetry of Virgil's (since it's Virgil's poems that gets rated in aggregate, not any particular translation or edition) only makes me wonder how someone so ignorant could even end up with a LibraryThing account in the first place. If you don't like Virgil, that's fine. There's no question but that you're entitled to your own likes and dislikes. But please don't presume to rate Virgil or any other truly great poet unless you've read him or her very deeply. If you still think he sucks after reading him deeply in Latin, please do rate him low. And, in that case, please let me know why you think so. But even then it's only one opinion against the judgment of 2,000 years of readers and scholars.On the other hand, possibly those rating Virgil's poetry on the low end of the scale are actually rating the translation or the edition that they read. Such a rating is completely valid, but, unfortunately, such a rating has no meaning whatsoever on LibraryThing. I wonder if there might be a way to create a composite rating for an author with separate ratings for each work and individual editions of each work. This would be something I might find truly useful. But it's probably difficult to do and most people likely don't care anyway.Regarding the edition of the Eclogues at hand, the one translated by David Ferry and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I will only say that the translation is very, very good. Ferry has clearly read his Virgil carefully and draws over into English some of Virgil's excellences, which is to say that Ferry is a good poet himself. Even though I haven't studied Latin formally, I like having the Latin en face since so much of Latin is transparent to even an ignorant one such as I am.

    Book preview

    The Gnat and Other Minor Poems of Virgil - Virgil

    Introduction

    This mixed bag of poems was called the Virgilian Appendix by Josephus Justus Scaliger, the Dutch philologist and historian, in 1572. There had been a tradition of crediting Virgil with the writing of various of these poems, and Statius, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian, and Suetonius could all be cited (not always directly or convincingly) as authorities. Modern scholars have decided, however, that none of the poems is likely to have been Virgil’s.

    The effects of the misattribution have been equivocal. The advantage has been that the poems were preserved, Virgil’s name having had a certain authority. (Even today, poetry editors look at the name first, and then at the poem.) The disadvantage is that modern readers somehow blame the poems for this mistake and seem to hold them responsible for being fakes.

    There is a difference, though, between a fake and a misattribution. The former is an intentional fraud on the part of the writer (or painter), while the latter is an error for which the writer and his poem cannot be held responsible. It is improbable that Scaliger was intentionally trying to mislead anyone or to profit in any way from his verdict. And it would be a shame if we were to dismiss these pieces, which are appealing, charming, and affable. If they were good enough to have been mistaken for the work of Virgil, that should count in their favor rather than the other way. Think of them, if you will, as a sheaf of anonymous poems, in which case they do not labor under so heavy a

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