The Georgics celebrates the crops, trees, and animals, and, above all, the human beings who care for them. It takes the form of teaching about this care: the tilling of fields, the tending of vines, the raising of the cattle and the bees. There's joy in the detail of Virgil's descriptions of work well done, and ecstatic joy in his praise of the very life of things, and passionate commiseration too, because of the vulnerability of men and all other creatures, with all they have to contend with: storms, and plagues, and wars, and all mischance.
The Georgics celebrates the crops, trees, and animals, and, above all, the human beings who care for them. It takes the form of teaching about this care: the tilling of fields, the tending of vines, the raising of the cattle and the bees. There's joy in the detail of Virgil's descriptions of work well done, and ecstatic joy in his praise of the very life of things, and passionate commiseration too, because of the vulnerability of men and all other creatures, with all they have to contend with: storms, and plagues, and wars, and all mischance.
Paperback(Bilingual edition)
-
SHIP THIS ITEMIn stock. Ships in 1-2 days.PICK UP IN STORE
Your local store may have stock of this item.
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
The Georgics celebrates the crops, trees, and animals, and, above all, the human beings who care for them. It takes the form of teaching about this care: the tilling of fields, the tending of vines, the raising of the cattle and the bees. There's joy in the detail of Virgil's descriptions of work well done, and ecstatic joy in his praise of the very life of things, and passionate commiseration too, because of the vulnerability of men and all other creatures, with all they have to contend with: storms, and plagues, and wars, and all mischance.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780374530310 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 05/02/2006 |
| Edition description: | Bilingual edition |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.65(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Georgics of Virgil
By David Ferry
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2005 David FerryAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-53031-0
CHAPTER 1
FIRST GEORGIC
What's right for bringing abundance to the fields;
Under what sign the plowing ought to begin,
Or the marrying of the grapevines to their elms;
How to take care of the cattle and see to their breeding;
Knowing the proper way to foster the bees
As they go about their work; Maecénas, here
Begins my song. You brightest lights of the sky
That shepherd the year as it moves along its way;
O Liber, O generous Ceres, if by your favor
The earth exchanged the acorns fallen from oak trees
For ripening ears of grain, and blent the newly-
Discovered grape with the waters of Achelóus;
And you, O Fauns, you presences of the fields
(O Fauns and Dryads, come and dance together!),
I sing to praise the blessings of your gifts.
And you, O Neptune, you whose mighty trident
Struck the earth and the nickering steed was born;
You, guardian of the groves, because of whom
Three hundred snow-white cattle peacefully browse
The rich Ceáean glades; and you, O Pan,
The keeper of the flocks, consent to come
From your Lycáean woods and thickets and
From Máenalus that you love; Minerva, you,
Inventrix of the olive; and Triptólemus,
Who taught us how to use the crooked plow;
And you, Sylvanus, carrying in your hand
A cypress tree uprooted from the ground;
You gods and goddesses all, who with such kindness
Watch over our fields and vineyards and who nurture
The fruits that seed themselves without our labor,
And all the crops, with rain that falls from heaven;
And you, O Caesar, although we know not yet
What place among the councils of the gods
Will be your place, whether you choose to be
The guardian supervisor of our cities,
Caretaker of our lands, your temples bound
With the myrtle wreath of Venus your goddess mother,
So that the whole great world acknowledges you
The author of our bounty and lord of seasons,
Or whether you come as god of the immense
Unmeasurable sea, the god all sailors
Pray to, the god that Ultima Thule swears
Subjection to, and Tethys offers her waves
As dower for your marriage to her daughter,
Or whether you'll appear in the autumn sky,
A new zodiacal star in the place between
The Virgin and where Scorpio will retract
His claws to make a place in the heavens for you —
Whatever it be (the Underworld would not
Dare hope for you as ruler, and may the dread
Desire of kingship there never be yours —
Though Greece fell under the spell of Elysian Fields
And Proserpina when her mother called her home
Was reluctant to return to the fields above),
Grant me the right to enter upon this bold
Adventure of mine, grant that I make it through,
Pitying me along with those farmers who need
To be taught to find their way, and grant that we
May come into your presence with our prayers.
* * *
When spring begins and the ice-locked streams begin
To flow down from the snowy hills above
And the clods begin to crumble in the breeze,
The time has come for my groaning ox to drag
My heavy plow across the fields, so that
The plow blade shines as the furrow rubs against it.
Not till the earth has been twice plowed, so twice
Exposed to sun and twice to coolness will
It yield what the farmer prays for; then will the barn
Be full to bursting with the gathered grain.
And yet, if the field's unknown and new to us,
Before our plow breaks open the soil at all,
It's necessary to study the ways of the winds
And the changing ways of the skies, and also to know
The history of the planting in that ground,
What crops will prosper there and what will not.
In one place grain grows best, in another, vines;
Another's good for the cultivation of trees;
In still another the grain turns green unbidden.
From Lydian Timólus, don't you see,
Our fragrant saffron comes, from India
Our ivory, from soft Arabia
Our frankincense, our iron ore from the naked
Chalýbian tribes, from Pontus castor oil
From the testicles of beavers, and from Epírus
The mares that are the mothers of the horses
That are born to win Olympic victories.
Nature apportioned it thus to diverse places;
So it has been from the very beginning of time,
When Deucalion threw the stones into the empty
Landscape and thus created stony men.
So, if the soil of the field you're getting ready
Is rich and fertile, set your oxen to work
In early spring to turn the earth, and then
Let it lie waiting for summer's heat to bake it,
So as to keep the weeds from flourishing
And interfering with the joyous grain;
But if the soil is sandy, leave it alone;
In early September it will be enough,
Just as Arctúrus rises in the sky,
To rake it lightly, trying to keep what little
Moisture that may be there from drying out.
And every second season let the land
Be idly fallow, so that what happens happens;
Or, under a different constellation, sow
The seeds for a crop of yellow barley, having
Uprooted and carried away the wild pulse with
Its quivering pods shaking with laughter, or
The pods of the slender vetch, or the rattling stalks
Of the lupine plant. Flax scorches the earth; oats too;
And poppies suffused all through with the sleep of Lethe.
By alternating crops you make toil easy.
And don't be ashamed to saturate the soil
With the rich dung of beasts, and scatter the sooty
Ashes left from your household fires last winter.
Changing the crops is restful for the fields;
Sometimes they're not ungrateful not to be plowed;
They need to rest. Sometimes it's a good idea
To torch the empty fields and let the flames
Burn the stubble away: maybe the earth
Thus takes into itself rich nourishment
And secret power, or it may be that the heat
Bakes away taints in the soil, or that it gets rid
Of undesirable moisture by sweating it out;
Or that it opens up new avenues
And hidden passages by which the juice
Will make its way to the new young leaves that need it;
Or, on the contrary, maybe it narrows the veins
And hardens the earth around them, affording them
Protection from the violent pelting rain
Or from the heat of the sun, or winter cold.
And in addition the farmer does well for the land
Who uses his hoe to break up the clotted glebes
And drags the wicker harrow over them;
Not without cause does golden Ceres look
Benignly down upon him from the height
Of Mount Olympus. And he does well who drives
His plow obliquely crosswise back across
The ridges that he raised when he plowed before
And breaks them down. It's thus he disciplines
And trains the soil he works, and gives it order.
Farmers, pray for summers with lots of rain,
And winters with lots of sun; the grain is pleased,
The fields are pleased, when the soil is dry in winter.
Thus Mýsia and Gárgara, exultant,
Will glory in the harvests that come in.
How shall I tell of the man who flings down the seeds,
And then attacks the field, lays low and levels
The heaped-up sandy soil that gets in the way
And induces water to flow down from a brook
Through channels toward his planting, and when there's drought
And the field is parched and scorched and the little plants
Look like they may be dying, behold, there's water?
You can hear the muttering guttural sound of the water
Moving down through the smooth stones of the channels
And gushing into the fields to quench their thirst.
And how shall I tell of the man who, when the stalks
Are on the verge of being overburdened
By the weight of the growing ears, summons his sheep
To graze the ebullient plant back down to where
The tender leaves and the furrow's top are equal?
Or the man who uses sand to drink up water
Collected in marshy places when a river
Overflows, and the lowland hollows steam?
* * *
But though both men and cattle do their work,
And do it well, there are the mischievous geese
And Strymonian cranes, and choking fibrous weeds,
And overshading trees, to trouble the crops.
For Father Jupiter himself ordained
That the way should not be easy. It was he
Who first established the art of cultivation,
Sharpening with their cares the skills of men,
Forbidding the world he rules to slumber in ease.
Before Jove's time no farmer plowed the earth;
It was forbidden to mark out field from field,
Setting out limits, one from another; men shared
All things together and Earth quite freely yielded
The gifts of herself she gave, being unasked.
It was Jupiter who put the deadly poison
Into the fangs of serpents; commanded the wolf
To seek and find its prey; ordained that the storm
Should cause the sea to rise and flood the land;
Stripped from the leaves of oaks the dewlike honey
That made them glisten there; hid fire from man;
Turned off the flow of wine that everywhere
Ran in the streams; all this so want should be
The cause of human ingenuity,
And ingenuity the cause of arts,
Finding little by little the way to plant
New crops by means of plowing, and strike the spark
To ignite the hidden fire in veins of flint.
Then rivers began to sense that hollow canoes
Were floating upon their waters; sailors began
To count the stars in the sky and give them names:
Pleiades, Hýades, Arctos, starry child
Of Lycaón. And then they learned to snare
Wild beasts in traps and fool song birds with lime;
Here one man lashes the river with his line,
Seeking the depths; and there another drags
His dripping fishnet through the ocean waters.
Then came the hardness of iron and then the shriek
Of the sharp blade of the saw as it made its way
(For earlier men used wedges to cleave their wood);
Then followed other arts; and everything
Was toil, relentless toil, urged on by need.
There came a day when in the sacred wood
The acorns and arbutus began to fail
And the oracle of Zeus denied men food.
It was then that Ceres first taught how to turn
The soil with iron instruments, as trouble
Came to the grain, the evil rust-blight eating
Into the stems, the sluggish hairy thistle
Prospering in the fields, destroying crops,
And in their place a thorny undergrowth,
Caltrops, goose grass, and other burry things.
Among the smiling cultivated plants
Darnel and tares and sterile oat-grass thrive.
Therefore unless you take up your hoe, attacking
The enemy weeds over and over again,
And over and over again shout at the birds
To scare them away, and use your pruning knife
To keep on cutting back the overgrowth
That threatens your plants with shade, you will, alas,
End up, defeated, staring at your neighbor's
Granary full of corn, and in the woods
You'll shake the oak tree, frantic for something to eat.
* * *
Next I must tell about the weapons the farmer
Needs for sowing his seeds and raising his crops:
The plow blade in the curved plow's wooden frame,
Ceres' lumbering wagon, the heavy carts
And the heavy threshing-sledge, the ponderous hoes,
The wicker hurdles and all the other tools
That Céleus of Eleúsis thought of,
And Íacchus's mystic winnowing-basket.
You have to have all these for when you need them,
If you want to win the glory the land can offer.
A young elm in the woods is bent by the force
Of the will of muscle to make the beam or stock
That takes the curving shape of the plow they're making.
To the end of this is attached an eight-foot pole,
Fitted with "ears" that shape and mold the earth
As the plowing proceeds, and a double crosspiece that functions
So as to be a socket for the share.
Then, too, in the woods, a little linden tree
Is felled to make the yoke, and a beech for the handle
With which to steer and turn the chariot plow.
But before they can be used, the linden wood
And beech wood must be cured by hearth-fire smoke.
I could tell you many old sayings and many maxims
(Unless you're unwilling to hear such trivial things).
First, you have to level the threshing ground
With a heavy stone roller, and after that, with your hands
You must bind the soil together with sticky clay
So it becomes solidified and makes
A kind of floor. This is to keep the weeds
From coming up from under, and keep the soil
From drying out and crumbling into dust,
Opening holes for pests to get up through
And make a fool of you. The little mouse
Builds his house and storehouse under the ground.
The mole, down there, digs sightlessly through the earth
To make his chambers. Toads are found in holes,
And many other monsters the earth begets.
The weevil can ravage almost all your grain,
And ants are ravagers too, fearful of being
Poverty-stricken when they get to be old.
Consider this too: if in the woods the almond
Lavishly blooms so that her boughs bend low,
Fragrant with blossom, then too the crops will be
Lavishly rich as well, with the great heat
Of the great exultant threshing following on;
But if the tree be overburdened with leaves
And therefore over-copiously shady,
The frustrated thresher will thrash and beat the stalks
And chaff will be the only riches they yield.
Many's the time when I myself have seen
The farmer treating seedpods with the black
Oil of olive lees, or else with nitre,
Then simmer them over a gentle fire, trying
To soften the deceitful husks and make them
Yield more fully than they otherwise might.
I have seen seeds, no matter how carefully
Selected and with many pains examined
To be the best, degenerate nevertheless,
Unless, year in, year out, over and over,
Men labor to find the largest seeds again.
All things by nature are ready to get worse,
Lapse backward, fall away from what they were,
Just as if one who struggles to row his little
Boat upstream against a powerful current
Should but for a moment relax his arms, the current
Would carry him headlong back again downstream.
* * *
And furthermore we must observe the stars
And where they are and at what time of year,
Arctúrus, and the Goats, and the bright Snake Star,
Just as the sailor must, when making for home,
Braving the stormy seas past Pontus coast,
And Abýdos, at the jaws of the Hellespont.
From the time of the autumnal equinox
When light and shade divide the world between them,
And sleep and waking are equal, oxen and men
Must set themselves to work, planting the barley,
Until the time when the rains are about to come,
And winter the intractable begins.
Autumn is also the time to plant your flax
And Ceres' poppy seed, and not too late
For bending over the plow, while the earth is dry
And the clouds still high, the rains still holding off.
Spring is the season for planting beans, and the time
When the loosened furrows will accept the clover,
And the millet newly planted every year,
As snow-white Taurus with his golden horns
Comes up in the springtime sky and Canis falls,
Yielding his annual place to his opposite star.
But if it's a crop of wheat, or maybe spelt,
Or corn you're tilling the ground for, wait to plant
The intended seeds in the furrows that you've plowed,
Entrusting your yearly hope to the grudging earth
Till the Pleiades take their leave of the morning sky
And till you no longer can see the bright stars shine
In the crown of Ariadne. Many have sowed
Before the departure of Maia, and they have found
That the crop they expected has fooled them with empty husks.
But if you're not above the wish to plant
Vetch, or kidney beans, or Egyptian lentils,
Boötes as it sets will send no signs
Prohibitive to this; you may plant them then,
Or any time before the winter's frosts.
To govern all this and give it order, the sun
Traverses the fixed divisions of the heavens,
Making his golden journey through all twelve
Zodiacal constellations of the skies.
Five zones partition the universe of things.
One glows for ever with the scorching heat
And flashing light for ever of the sun;
To the right and left, at the farthest extremes of the world,
Two zones of ice and stormy dark for ever;
Between these two and the central sunlit zone
Are two the gods allow to mortal men,
And between these two a heavenly ellipsis
In which the turning signs may be observed.
To the north our world steeply ascends to the high
Riphaean cliffs of Scythia, and then
To the south sinks down to the sands of the Libyan desert.
One pole is always high above our heads;
The other is far far down below our feet —
Only black Styx and the Shades of the Dead can see it.
There in that sky the constellation Snake
Slides forth and slithers its riverine coils around
And in between the Bears that fear the water
And never descend to feel cold Ocean's touch;
Down there, they say, there is unchanging darkness,
And endless silence, there, is everywhere.
Or else, they say, the Dawn returns down there,
Bringing them back the light of our previous day;
Or when we feel the breath of the morning sun,
Brought back to us by his panting horses, then
Vesper, down there, is shining in their sky.
Thus, though the sky is changeful, men can predict
The seasons as they change and what they bring:
The time for harvest, the time for planting seeds,
The time to brave the unfaithful sea with oars,
The time to bring the warboats down to the water,
The time to fell the pines with which to build them.
It's not without reason that we've learned to watch
The rising and the setting of the stars,
Marking the equal seasons as they change.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Georgics of Virgil by David Ferry. Copyright © 2005 David Ferry. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Introduction,
FIRST GEORGIC,
SECOND GEORGIC,
THIRD GEORGIC,
FOURTH GEORGIC,
Notes,
Glossary,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,
Also by David Ferry,
Copyright,