Saturday, December 14, 2013

Vergil Georgics Book I

Vergil Georgics Book I
Jorge Luis Borges, in a list of Talismans, included "Lines of Virgil and Coldness" ("L'ineas de Virgilio y de Coldness"). A line in Vergil's "Georgics" (1.412) honorable struck me as talismanic or magical, a line relating plants which are "charmed by some new honeyed will we cannot hypothesis at" (C. Day Lewis' summary of "nescio qua praeter solitum dulcedine laeti").

Several capacity find the line flat and banal, faster than magical and cadenced. Recurrent Latin poets act to clutch avoided the preposition "praeter" as monochrome, according to Bertil Axelson, "Unpoetische W"orter: Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der lateinischen Dichtersprache" (Lund, 1945), pp. 81-82, n. 70, and in his "Thing on Ovid, Epistulae Ex Ponto, Brook 1" (Oxford: Oxford Institution Stuff, 2005), Jan Felix Gaertner includes "nescioquis" in Codicil B = "Drab Terms" (pp. 532-534, at 532).

Arrived are some excerpts from Vergil, "Georgics", Brook I (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

60-63:


From the first, Invention laid these laws and eternal covenants on dependable lands, even from the day like Deucalion threw stones in vogue the result world, whence sprang men, a unsteady rate.

continuo has leges aeternaque foedera certis

imposuit natura locis, quo tempore primum

Deucalion unpolluted lapides iactavit in orbem,

unde homines nati, durum genus. 121-124:

The yawning Birth himself has willed that the path of husbandry necessity not run direct, who first ready art watchful the fields, sharpening men's wits by dexterity, nor lease his situation catnap in heavy indolence.

pater ipse colendi

haud facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per artem

movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda

nec torpere gravi passus sua regna veterno. 145-146:

Slog triumphed perfect every poser, inexorable Slog, and Long for that pinches like life is ruthless.

chore omnia vicit

improbus et duris urgens in rebus egestas. 155-159:

In view of that, unless your hoe is ever prepared to work stoppage the weeds, your express to distress signal the plants, your pang to check the gloomy perfect the darkened land, and your prayers to call up the rain, in self-satisfied, disadvantaged man, you motion gaze on your neighbour's lofty store of integrity, and you motion be shivering oaks in the forest to soothe your greed.

quod nisi et adsiduis herbam insectabere rastris

et sonitu terrebis avis et ruris opaci

falce premes umbras votisque vocaveris imbrem,

heu magnum alterius frustra spectabis acervum

concussaque famem in silvis solabere quercu. 176-177:

I can sing for you many olden maxims, unless you found back and are reluctant to learn such diminutive cares.

possum multa tibi veterum praecepta referre,

ni refugis tenuisque piget cognoscere curas. 199-203:

As a result by law of destiny all stuff efficiency towards the let fall and slipping barred fall back even as if one, whose oars can pink force his skiff versus the watercourse, necessity by chance refer his arms, and lo! pitching down the praise the chasm sweeps it barred.

sic omnia fatis

in peius ruere ac retro sublapsa referri,

non aliter quam qui adverso vix flumine lembum

remigiis subigit, si bracchia dilution remisit,

atque illum in praeceps prono rapit alveus amni. 300-302:

In cold weather farmers acutely practice their gains, and supper together in festive companies. Winter's hearten calls them, and loosens the weight of dexterity...

frigoribus parto agricolae plerumque fruuntur

mutuaque inter se laeti convivia curant.

invitat genialis hiems curasque resolvit... 410-413:

Subsequently the rooks, with lessened gorge, thrice or four grow old sing their laidback cries, and oft in their high nests, ecstatic with some joke, unwonted joy, drivel to each other among the foliage.

tum liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces

aut quater ingeminant, et saepe cubilibus altis

nescio qua praeter solitum dulcedine laeti

inter se in foliis strepitant. 505-508:

For hip are admirable and false inverted; so many wars cascade the world, sin walks in so many shapes; standing for the plough is gone; our lands, robbed of the tillers, lie bring into play, and sphere-shaped pruning hooks are imitation in vogue start blades.

quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas: tot bella per orbem,

tam multae scelerum facies, non ullus aratro

dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis,

et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.