Virgil S Georgics

Virgil's "Georgics "is a paean to the earth and all that grows and grazes there. It is an ancient work, yet one that speaks to our times as powerfully as it did to the poet's. This unmatched translation presents the poem in an American idiom that is elegant and sensitive to the meaning and rhythm of the original. Janet Lembke brings a faithful version of Virgil's celebratory poem to modern readers who are interested in classic literature and who relish reading about animals and gardens.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

“In the whole of European literature there is no poet who can furnish the texts for a more significant variety of discourse than Virgil. [He] symbolizes so much in the history of Europe, and represents such central European values...” –T.S. Eliot The Georgics (29 BC) is a poem by Roman poet Virgil. Although less prominent than The Aeneid, Virgil’s legendary epic of the Trojan hero Aeneas and his discovery of what would later become the city of Rome, The Georgics have endured as a landmark in the history of poetry. The Georgics were inspired by Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura and Hesiod’s Works and Days, an Ancient Greek poem describing the creation of the cosmos, the history of Earth, and the role of agriculture in human life. The Georgics is considered Virgil’s second major work of three and has inspired generations of poets and scholars interested in the ability of literature to bridge the artificial gap between humanity and the natural world. “What makes the cornfield smile [...] What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof / Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees; / Such are my themes.” Beginning with these lines, Virgil’s Georgics is a poem about the life of the world and the need for order to ensure humanity’s survival. Surveying such diverse topics as the creation of the universe, the cycles of human history, and the technical processes applied to soil and animals to produce food and sustain life itself, this poem attempts to rekindle in its reader a sense of unity with the world. Written in a time of immense political upheaval following the death of Julius Caesar and the rise of Emperor Augustus, The Georgics is as much a poem of survival as of faith, a falling back on the old ways that sustain and nurture life, a way of preserving a volatile present for a future forever in the making. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Virgil’s The Georgics is a classic work of Roman literature reimagined for modern readers.

A collection of ten classic essays on Vergil's Georgics, written between 1970 and 1999. The contributions represent recent developments in Vergilian scholarship, and are placed in context in a specially written Introduction.

The Description for this book, Virgil's Poem of the Earth: Studies in the Georgics, will be forthcoming.