Helpful Score: 2
I am a great lover of all things classical. Got my first book of Greek myths in elementary school, started taking Latin in 9th grade, loved the Odyssey, liked the Iliad, love Ovid, Aeschylus, Suetonius, Livy, all the ancient heavy hitters....except Virgil.
There were a lot of really good exciting bits in the Aeneid, but the whole thing didn't hang together for me. It seemed really disjointed, like there wasn't a thread uniting the whole thing. I know the thread is supposed to be Aeneas and the last of the Trojans' escape from Troy and wander and struggle to reach Italy and establish their destined empire. But it kept going off on tangents. It started out really well, with the sacking of Troy, and then just unraveled.
I also found Dido extremely annoying. I know she's supposed to be tragic, but to me she just came across as clingy and spineless. Maybe that's just this translation, or my inability to think in a historical mindset, but it was her choice to hook up with Aeneas even though she knew he wouldn't be sticking around, so I had little patience for her complaints when he left. She was a great queen before he turned up, why couldn't she still be a great queen?
This is one of the few classics I've had to make myself finish.
There were a lot of really good exciting bits in the Aeneid, but the whole thing didn't hang together for me. It seemed really disjointed, like there wasn't a thread uniting the whole thing. I know the thread is supposed to be Aeneas and the last of the Trojans' escape from Troy and wander and struggle to reach Italy and establish their destined empire. But it kept going off on tangents. It started out really well, with the sacking of Troy, and then just unraveled.
I also found Dido extremely annoying. I know she's supposed to be tragic, but to me she just came across as clingy and spineless. Maybe that's just this translation, or my inability to think in a historical mindset, but it was her choice to hook up with Aeneas even though she knew he wouldn't be sticking around, so I had little patience for her complaints when he left. She was a great queen before he turned up, why couldn't she still be a great queen?
This is one of the few classics I've had to make myself finish.
In this new translation of Vergil's "Aeneid," Patric Dickinsopn captures Vergil's epic poem and preserves the spirit of the original poem, the color, the movement, the life, with fresh force of imagery an insight.
A uperlative translation of Vergil's Aeneid into English verse. No other version suprasses it in clarity and vigor. -- Horace Gregory
A uperlative translation of Vergil's Aeneid into English verse. No other version suprasses it in clarity and vigor. -- Horace Gregory
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Fitzgerald's is so decisively the best modern Aeneid that it is unthinkable that anyone will want to use any other version for a long time to come."--New York Review of Books
"From the beginning to the end of this English poem...the reader will find the same sure control of English rhythms, the same deft phrasing, and an energy which urges the eye onward."--The New Republic
"A rendering that is both marvelously readable and scrupulously faithful.... Fitzgerald has managed, by a sensitive use of faintly archaic vocabulary and a keen ear for sound and rhythm, to suggest the solemnity and the movement of Virgil's poetry as no previous translator has done (including Dryden).... This is a sustained achievement of beauty and power."--Boston Globe
Review
"Fitzgerald's is so decisively the best modern Aeneid that it is unthinkable that anyone will want to use any other version for a long time to come."--New York Review of Books
"From the beginning to the end of this English poem...the reader will find the same sure control of English rhythms, the same deft phrasing, and an energy which urges the eye onward."--The New Republic
"A rendering that is both marvelously readable and scrupulously faithful.... Fitzgerald has managed, by a sensitive use of faintly archaic vocabulary and a keen ear for sound and rhythm, to suggest the solemnity and the movement of Virgil's poetry as no previous translator has done (including Dryden).... This is a sustained achievement of beauty and power."--Boston Globe
Review
"Fitzgerald's is so decisively the best modern Aeneid that it is unthinkable that anyone will want to use any other version for a long time to come."--New York Review of Books
"From the beginning to the end of this English poem...the reader will find the same sure control of English rhythms, the same deft phrasing, and an energy which urges the eye onward."--The New Republic
"A rendering that is both marvelously readable and scrupulously faithful.... Fitzgerald has managed, by a sensitive use of faintly archaic vocabulary and a keen ear for sound and rhythm, to suggest the solemnity and the movement of Virgil's poetry as no previous translator has done (including Dryden).... This is a sustained achievement of beauty and power."--Boston Globe
Review
"Fitzgerald's is so decisively the best modern Aeneid that it is unthinkable that anyone will want to use any other version for a long time to come."--New York Review of Books
"From the beginning to the end of this English poem...the reader will find the same sure control of English rhythms, the same deft phrasing, and an energy which urges the eye onward."--The New Republic
"A rendering that is both marvelously readable and scrupulously faithful.... Fitzgerald has managed, by a sensitive use of faintly archaic vocabulary and a keen ear for sound and rhythm, to suggest the solemnity and the movement of Virgil's poetry as no previous translator has done (including Dryden).... This is a sustained achievement of beauty and power."--Boston Globe
This book was used for college so it does have some writing and traslations in the margin.
It It is an English poem about Greek mythology.
It It is an English poem about Greek mythology.
Not a paperback, a rebound hardcover edition with school markings
