The Aeneid
Description
This volume represents the most ambitious project of distinguished poet David Ferry's life: a complete translation of Virgil's Aeneid. Ferry has long been known as the foremost contemporary translator of Latin poetry, and his translations of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics have become standards. He brings to the Aeneid the same genius, rendering Virgil's formal, metrical lines into an English that is familiar, all while surrendering none of the poem's original feel of the ancient world. In Ferry's hands, the Aeneid becomes once more a lively, dramatic poem of daring and adventure, of love and loss, devotion and death. The paperback and e-book editions include a new introduction by Richard F. Thomas, along with a new glossary of names that makes the book even more accessible for students and for general readers coming to the Aeneid for the first time who may need help acclimating to Virgil's world.Product Details
Price
$42.00
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Publish Date
September 29, 2017
Pages
432
Dimensions
6.1 X 9.1 X 1.3 inches | 1.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780226450186
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
David Ferry is the author of a number of books of poetry and has translated several works from classical languages. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, and won the 2012 National Book Award for Poetry. Richard F. Thomas is the George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics at Harvard University.
Reviews
"Ferry's Aeneid can be read with excitement and pleasure."--Michael Dirda "Washington Post "
"An outstanding achievement."--Susan Kristol "Weekly Standard "
"From the long view and vantage of his own advanced age, Ferry has crafted an Aeneid not so much 'for the ages' (one never knows if that might be), but rather from and of our age in a manner not merely contemporary, but contemporaneous in spirit to what Virgil knew of war then, and remarkably what it still entails two millennia later. This not only enlivens for us a great classical poem, it also allows us to see our world as still classical in its demise and answering demeanor, no matter the drones that hover above. Loss, courage, blind rage, catastrophe, and chaos are the stuff of any age; David Ferry has held a finely polished mirror up to our own."--Peter Filkins "New Criterion "
"The shining merit of his version is a kind of transparency: somehow he has managed without losing tone, to efface himself, so that as slight a barrier as possible is put between the reader and a poem from another and distant world. . . . Ferry's is now the best modern version of the Aeneid, both for its loyalty to the original and for its naturalness to itself. . . . This translation has a youthful suppleness and flexibility. David Ferry is now ninety-three."--Times Literary Supplement
"A marvel throughout. . . . Ferry's blank verse is as understatedly traditional, and unflashy, as his diction. The whole accumulates into a stately, inevitable force. . . . The advantages of Ferry's version seem obvious to me: regularity of meter, clarity of image, simplicity of language, understatement of the horrific. Throughout, Ferry maintains a coolness even amid the most terrible drama. It is as if he were writing not in our still-Romantic (even if post-Romantic) personal vein, but altogether in another mode: a classical, fatalistic one, to be sure, but also one in which emotion and achievement matter communally."--New York Review of Books
"Ferry's rendition of The Aeneid has allowed me to look at this epic with fresh eyes and as a result has given me a new enthusiasm and excitement for The Aeneid which I never thought would be possible since I have translated it from the Latin on my own and have read various English versions of it so many times. It is astounding that in 2006, at the age of 82, Ferry undertook the most formidable and difficult work of his career by beginning his translation of The Aeneid. At an age when most literary and academic careers are winding down, Ferry has done his very best and most ambitious work."--Open Letters Monthly
"Ferry's version gains by its simplicity of language. . . . In Ferry's version, there's a notable balance of an eloquent sensibility and a narrative simplicity--both of which Virgil's epic demands, often simultaneously."
--Rain Taxi
"Though elegant, The Aeneid is also rough, then, and elegance and roughness abound in Ferry's completion of his work with Virgil. . . . The Aeneid is entirely distinctive, of personal and literary rather than popular and oral origins, a cornerstone of not just culture but also of calculated art. Ferry conveys its power even more than its majesty."
--Booklist
"An outstanding achievement."--Susan Kristol "Weekly Standard "
"From the long view and vantage of his own advanced age, Ferry has crafted an Aeneid not so much 'for the ages' (one never knows if that might be), but rather from and of our age in a manner not merely contemporary, but contemporaneous in spirit to what Virgil knew of war then, and remarkably what it still entails two millennia later. This not only enlivens for us a great classical poem, it also allows us to see our world as still classical in its demise and answering demeanor, no matter the drones that hover above. Loss, courage, blind rage, catastrophe, and chaos are the stuff of any age; David Ferry has held a finely polished mirror up to our own."--Peter Filkins "New Criterion "
"The shining merit of his version is a kind of transparency: somehow he has managed without losing tone, to efface himself, so that as slight a barrier as possible is put between the reader and a poem from another and distant world. . . . Ferry's is now the best modern version of the Aeneid, both for its loyalty to the original and for its naturalness to itself. . . . This translation has a youthful suppleness and flexibility. David Ferry is now ninety-three."--Times Literary Supplement
"A marvel throughout. . . . Ferry's blank verse is as understatedly traditional, and unflashy, as his diction. The whole accumulates into a stately, inevitable force. . . . The advantages of Ferry's version seem obvious to me: regularity of meter, clarity of image, simplicity of language, understatement of the horrific. Throughout, Ferry maintains a coolness even amid the most terrible drama. It is as if he were writing not in our still-Romantic (even if post-Romantic) personal vein, but altogether in another mode: a classical, fatalistic one, to be sure, but also one in which emotion and achievement matter communally."--New York Review of Books
"Ferry's rendition of The Aeneid has allowed me to look at this epic with fresh eyes and as a result has given me a new enthusiasm and excitement for The Aeneid which I never thought would be possible since I have translated it from the Latin on my own and have read various English versions of it so many times. It is astounding that in 2006, at the age of 82, Ferry undertook the most formidable and difficult work of his career by beginning his translation of The Aeneid. At an age when most literary and academic careers are winding down, Ferry has done his very best and most ambitious work."--Open Letters Monthly
"Ferry's version gains by its simplicity of language. . . . In Ferry's version, there's a notable balance of an eloquent sensibility and a narrative simplicity--both of which Virgil's epic demands, often simultaneously."
--Rain Taxi
"Though elegant, The Aeneid is also rough, then, and elegance and roughness abound in Ferry's completion of his work with Virgil. . . . The Aeneid is entirely distinctive, of personal and literary rather than popular and oral origins, a cornerstone of not just culture but also of calculated art. Ferry conveys its power even more than its majesty."
--Booklist
