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A review by george_r_t_c
The Eclogues and the Georgics by Virgil
3.0
Oliver Lyne, the editor of this translation of Virgil's first two works, seems not to like the translation very much, criticising Cecil Day Lewis for being unclear or misleading at least three times in the introduction, which seems like a bad marketing idea.
CDL's verse translation is not metrically regular, usually I think iambic but with a lot of flexibility, and the lines are very long, from 11 to 16 syllables each, and very often enjambed in a way that disguises the line ending, so it sometimes has a prosy feel. It's conversational, accessible, with a few colloquialisms and contractions, but there are lyrical parts that as a result stand out a lot.
In Eclogue III he rhymes 'ditties' with 'titties' which kind of ruins the immersion for me, as they say. Kind of hard to come back from that, but here's a good passage from the final Eclogue:
But I shall go and set to music for the Sicilian
Shepherd's pipe the poems I write in Chalcidic verse.
I shall live hard in the forest, where wild beasts have their lairs--
My mind is made up--and cut the name of my loved Lycoris
Upon the young trees' bark: my love will grow as the trees grow.
CDL's verse translation is not metrically regular, usually I think iambic but with a lot of flexibility, and the lines are very long, from 11 to 16 syllables each, and very often enjambed in a way that disguises the line ending, so it sometimes has a prosy feel. It's conversational, accessible, with a few colloquialisms and contractions, but there are lyrical parts that as a result stand out a lot.
In Eclogue III he rhymes 'ditties' with 'titties' which kind of ruins the immersion for me, as they say. Kind of hard to come back from that, but here's a good passage from the final Eclogue:
But I shall go and set to music for the Sicilian
Shepherd's pipe the poems I write in Chalcidic verse.
I shall live hard in the forest, where wild beasts have their lairs--
My mind is made up--and cut the name of my loved Lycoris
Upon the young trees' bark: my love will grow as the trees grow.