The Aeneid of Virgil (Bantam Classics) - Softcover

Virgil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553210416 ISBN 13: 9780553210415

Verlag: Bantam Classics, 1981

Inhaltsangabe

Aeneas flees the ashes of Troy to found the city of Rome and change forever the course of the Western world--as literature as well.  Virgil's Aeneid is as eternal as Rome itself, a sweeping epic of arms and heroism--the searching portrait of a man caught between love and duty, human feeling and the force of fate--that has influenced writers for over 2,000 years.  Filled with drama, passion, and the universal pathos that only a masterpiece can express. The Aeneid is a book for all the time and all people.

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Throughout his life Virgil was a poet and as far as we know had no interest in pursuing any other career. He was born Publius Vergilius Maro in 70 BC near Mantua, in what now is northern Italy. His parents, farm owners, were people of property and substance, if not wealth, and were able to obtain for their son a first-rate education. On completing his education, he returned home and possibly began work on the Eclogues, which appeared between the years of 42 and 37 BC. In 41 BC, the Emperor Octavian (later known as Augustus) confiscated Virgil's family's property, and Virgil was obliged to travel to Rome to negotiate for its return. Fortunately for Virgil, one of the officials secured for him an introduction to the emperor; not only was his land returned, but he also met Octavian's confidant Maecenas, who became Virgil's patron for the rest of his life. An industrious, meticulous writer, Virgil was not prolific. In addition to the ten Eclogues, which apparently took at least five years to publish, Virgil wrote the four Georgics, which took seven years, and the Aeneid, his great masterwork. Virgil worked on the Aeneid for eleven years, until his death in 19 BC. Feeling, apparently, that the epic was still unfinished, he directed in his will that the manuscript be destroyed. To the great fortune of succeeding generations, the emperor, Virgil's most prominent friend and admirer, intervened to countermand this provision. He turned the manuscript over to two of Virgil's friends, Varius and Tucca, to edit only obvious errors and repetitions, without adding to the text. The result of their work is the beautiful and brilliant Aeneid we have today.

Allen Mendelbaum's five verse volumes are: Chelmaxions; The Savantasse of Montparnasse; Journeyman; Leaves of Absence; and A Lied of Letterpress. His volumes of verse translation include The Aeneid of Virgil, a University of California Press volume (now available from Bantam) for which he won a National Book Award; the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso volumes of the California Dante (now available from Bantam); The Odyssey of Homer (now available from Bantam); The Metamorphoses of Ovid, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry; Ovid in Sicily; Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti; Selected Writings of Salvatore Quasimodo; and David Maria Turoldo. Mandelbaum is co-editor with Robert Richardson Jr. of Three Centuries of American Poetry (Bantam Books) and, with Yehuda Amichai, of the eight volumes of the JPS Jewish Poetry Series. After receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia, he was in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. While chairman of the Ph.D. program in English at the Graduate Center of CUNY, he was a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and at the universities of Houston, Denver, Colorado, and Purdue. His honorary degrees are from Notre Dame University, Purdue University, the University of Assino, and the University of Torino. He received the Gold Medal of Honor from the city of Florence in 2000, celebrating the 735th anniversary of Dante's birth, the only translator to be so honored; and in 2003 he received the President of Italy's award for translation. He is now Professor of the History of Literary Criticism at the University of Turin and the W.R. Kenan Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University.

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Book I

I sing of arms and of a man: his fate had made him fugitive; he was the first

to journey from the coasts of Troy as far

as Italy and the Lavinian shores.

Across the lands and waters he was battered     5

beneath the violence of High Ones, for

the savage Juno's unforgetting anger;

and many sufferings were his in war-

until he brought a city into being

and carried in his gods to Latium;      10

from this have come the Latin race, the lords

of Alba, and the ramparts of high Rome.



Tell me the reason, Muse: what was the wound

to her divinity, so hurting her

that she, the queen of gods, compelled a man    15

remarkable for goodness to endure

so many crises, meet so many trials?

Can such resentment hold the minds of gods?



There was an ancient city they called Carthage-

a colony of refugees from Tyre- 20

a city facing Italy, but far

away from Tiber's mouth: extremely rich

and, when it came to waging war, most fierce.

This land was Juno's favorite-it is said-

more dear than her own Samos; here she kept     25

her chariot and armor; even then

the goddess had this hope and tender plan:

for Carthage to become the capital

of nations, if the Fates would just consent.

But she had heard that, from the blood of Troy, 30

a race had come that some day would destroy

the citadels of Tyre; from it, a people

would spring, wide-ruling kings, men proud in battle

and destined to annihilate her Libya.

The Fates had so decreed. And Saturn's daughter-        35

in fear of this, remembering the old war

that she had long since carried on at Troy

for her beloved Argos (and, indeed,

the causes of her bitterness, her sharp

and savage hurt, had not yet left her spirit;   40

for deep within her mind lie stored the judgment

of Paris and the wrong done to her scorned

beauty, the breed she hated, and the honors

that had been given ravished Ganymede)-

was angered even more; for this, she kept       45

far off from Latium the Trojan remnant

left by the Greeks and pitiless Achilles.

For long years they were cast across all waters,

fate-driven, wandering from sea to sea.

It was so hard to found the race of Rome.       50



With Sicily scarce out of sight, the Trojans

had gladly spread their canvas on the sea,

turning the salt foam with their brazen prows,

when Juno, holding fast within her heart

the everlasting insult, asked herself:  55

"Am I, defeated, simply to stop trying,

unable to turn back the Trojan king

from Italy? No doubt, the Fates won't have it.

But Pallas-was she powerful enough

to set the Argive fleet on fire, to drown       60

the crewmen in the deep, for an outrage done

by only one infuriated man,

Ajax, Oileus' son? And she herself

could fling Jove's racing lightning from the clouds

and smash their galleys, sweep the sea with tempests.   65

Then Ajax' breath was flame from his pierced chest;

she caught him up within a whirlwind; she

impaled him on a pointed rock. But I,

the queen of gods, who stride along as both

the sister and the wife of Jove, have warred    70

so many years against a single nation.

For after this, will anyone adore

the majesty of Juno or, before

her altars, pay her honor, pray to her?"



Then-burning, pondering-the goddess reaches     75

Aeolia, the motherland of storms,

a womb that always teems with raving south winds.

In his enormous cave King Aeolus

restrains the wrestling winds, loud hurricanes;

he tames and sways them with his chains and prison.     80

They rage in indignation at their cages;

the mountain answers with a mighty roar.

Lord Aeolus sits in his high citadel;

he holds his scepter, and he soothes their souls

and calms their madness. Were it not for this,  85

then surely they would carry off the sea

and lands and steepest heaven, sweeping them

across the emptiness. But fearing that,

the all-able Father hid the winds within

dark caverns, heaping over them high mountains; 90

and he assigned to them a king who should,

by Jove's sure edict, understand just when

to jail and when, commanded, to set free.

Then Juno, suppliant, appealed to him:



"You, Aeolus-to whom the king of men    95

and father of the gods has given this:

to pacify the waves or, with the wind,

to incite them-over the Tyrrhenian

now sails my enemy, a race that carries

the beaten household gods of Ilium      100

to Italy. Hammer your winds to fury

and ruin their swamped ships, or scatter them

and fling their crews piecemeal across the seas.

I have twice-seven nymphs with splendid bodies;

the loveliest of them is Deiopea,       105

and I shall join her to you in sure marriage

and name her as your own, that she may spend

all of her years with you, to make you father

of fair sons. For such service, such return."



And Aeolus replied: "O Queen, your task 110

is to discover what you wish; and mine,

to act at your command. For you have won

this modest kingdom for me, and my scepter,

and Jove's goodwill. You gave me leave to lean

beside the banquets of the gods, and you        115

have made me lord of tempests and of clouds."



His words were done. He turned his lance head, struck

the hollow mountain on its side. The winds,

as in a column, hurry through the breach;

they blow across the earth in a tornado.        120

Together, Eurus, Notus, and-with tempest

on tempest-Africus attack the sea;

they churn the very bottom of the deep

and roll vast breakers toward the beaches; cries

of men, the creaking of the cables rise.        125

Then, suddenly, the cloud banks snatch away

the sky and daylight from the Trojans' eyes.

Black night hangs on the waters, heavens thunder,

and frequent lightning glitters in the air;

everything intends quick death to men.  130



At once Aeneas' limbs fall slack with chill.

He groans and stretches both hands to the stars.

He calls aloud: "O, three and four times blessed

were those who died before their fathers' eyes

beneath the walls of Troy. Strongest of all     135

the Danaans, o Diomedes, why

did your right hand not spill my lifeblood, why

did I not fall upon the Ilian fields,

there where ferocious Hector lies, pierced by

Achilles' javelin, where the enormous   140

Sarpedon now is still, and Simois

has seized and sweeps beneath its waves so many

helmets and shields and bodies of the brave!"

*  *  *

Aeneas hurled these words. The hurricane

is howling from the north; it hammers full      145

against his sails. The seas are heaved to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Bantam Classics
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1981
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0553210416
• ISBN 13: 9780553210415
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar