After giving us perhaps the finest modern versions of Homer
(rivaled only by Lattimore), Fitzgerald has now translated a
spirited, eloquent, fresh Aeneid - though some will still prefer
Allan Mandelbaum's. Fitzgerald has had his eye on Virgil for many
years - he edited Dryden's Aeneid, with notes and an expert
Introduction, in 1964 - but his own poetic voice is decidedly
un-Virgilian: brisk, bold, hearty, a sociable baritone. His
irregular pentameters, with continual enjambment, come in great
fluid rushes (less "faithful" but more readable than Mandelbaum's
slower-paced lines), often making a spring tide of a quiet
Virgilian stream. Virgil's discreet rhetorical emphasis sometimes
becomes startlingly colloquial: e.g., "Fortune has made a derelict/
Of Sinon, but the bitch/Won't make an empty liar of him, too." And
even when Fitzgerald tries to echo the original, he can't help
sounding more direct and homespun. Lively rather than exquisite,
vigorous and risky, with only a few outright anachronistic
clinkers: the most accessible Aeneid (since Dryden, anyway) for a
Latin-less modern audience, especially helpful in sustaining
readers through the often-wearisome battle scenes in the later
books. (Kirkus Reviews)
Virgil's epic vividly recounts Aeneas's tortuous journey after the Trojan War and the struggles he faced as he lay the foundations for the greatest continental empire. Rendered into a vigorous and refined English by the most important man of letters of the seventeenth century, this translation of the Aeneid "set a new, august standard so influential as to be epochal." For his version, John Dryden drew on the deep understanding of political unrest he had acquired during the Civil Wars of 1642-51 and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
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