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Title: VIRGIL'S AENEID by Virgil ISBN: 0-394-52827-1 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 12 September, 1983 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Billson's Vergil's Aeneid
Comment: What a shame that THIS edition of them all is printed in the worst edition. The paper is brittly, gauzy and somewhat iridescent, the ink is sallow on the paper, the book lacks an introduction, any critical notes (any indication that the last words of the text are in fact the last words, and not a typo or printer's error, seeing as how they end at the bottom of the page and are followed immediately by the plastic cover).
It is perhaps because of the Aeneid that the phrase "les traductions sont comme les femmes: quand elles sont belles, elles ne sont pas fideles; quand elles sont fideles, elles ne sont pas belles." I have spent much of the summer in meticulous scrutiny of four editions of the aeneid: the lind, mandelbaum, humphries, and billson. the process has led me to some resultant nasty and pretentious slants of minds against the first and third of the abovelisted translations, which are in many parts mistaken, lacking in detail, and overall, diluted and generalized. the billson is actually a very difficult text if one is without a firm grounding in the english poetry that flourished a few centuries ago; billson takes delightful ''liberties'' in his word choices, and takes a unique and exhilarating grammar form, that is typically ''classical''.
i do not recommend reading this one, nor reading it in close comparison to all the other available translations. pick up a copy of wheelock's latin instead.
Rating: 5
Summary: "...one whom Virtue crowned..."
Comment: [This review refers to the Dover Thrift verse
edition of the AENEID translated into English
by Charles J. Billson in 1906.]
As incredible as it may seem, I prefer this
Billson verse translation over that of Allen
Mandelbaum (which I also have in the Bantam
Classic edition, 1970). What causes one person
to like one translation, and another to prefer
someone else's? It is a matter of taste, but
also of conditioning through aesthetic experience
and expectation. I have read a great many poems
in a great many forms. To my sense and sensibility
there is something about the Mandelbaum translation
of the AENEID which is too confining...too clipped...
it does not seem, to me, to flow freely. And yet
Billson's translation has archaic word choices --
but the flow of his translation seems more interesting
and "freer" than that of Mandelbaum.
Here is a sample of Mandelbaum:
I sing of arms and of a man: his fate
had made him fugitive; he was the first
to journey from the coasts of Troy as far
as Italy and the Lavinian shores.
Across the lands and waters he was battered
beneath the violence of High Ones, for
the savage Juno's unforgetting anger;
and many sufferings were his in war --
[Bantam Classic, 1970.]
And here is Billson in the Dover edition with
the same passage:
Arms and the Man I sing, who first from Troy
A Doom-led exile, on Lavinian shores
Reached Italy; long tossed on sea and land
By Heaven's rude arm, through Juno's brooding
ire,
And war-worn long ere building for his Gods
A Home in Latium: whence [came] the Latin race,
The Lords of Alba, and high-towering Rome.
To my senses, and sensibility, there is something
about Billson's language and flow which seems to
have more august grandeur -- epic style, sound, and
sweep.
Here is an even more telling example -- the famous
scene in which Aeneas plucks the Golden Bough:
[Mandelbaum:] ...just so
the gold leaves seemed against the dark-green
ilex;
so in the gentle wind, the thin gold leaf
was crackling. And at once Aeneas plucks it
and, eager, breaks the hesitating bough
and carries it into the Sibyl's house.
[Billson:] So on that shadowy oak the leafy gold
Glimmered, and tinkled in the rustling air.
Forthwith Aeneas grasped the clinging bough,
And plucked, and bare it toward the Sibyl's
cell.
There seems to me a fineness of poetic sensitivity
there, in Billson, to choose those words just so --
and have the words almost resonate with the sounds
of the objects they are describing.
Rating: 5
Summary: Splendid Translation
Comment: This review is one of the this particular translation and not of Virgil's Aeneid. This translation is outstanding. It is a prose translation undoubtedly made by some nineteenth century British Classicist. That, however, takes nothing away from it. This is the one translation I have found that actually succeeds at keeping the beauty of Virgil's words. It makes for great sounding language and it is not spoiled by modern idioms or expressions. The translator keeps his text very literal and yet somehow manages not to sound redundant or awkward. Indeed, the words simply flow. I do not know who the translator is and oddly enough, the book doesn't tell you either. I highly recommend this translation especially to anyone who is tired of the classics not sounding like classics.
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Title: The Odyssey by Homer ISBN: 0486406547 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 16 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
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Title: The Iliad by Homer ISBN: 0486408833 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 23 December, 1999 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
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Title: Beowulf by R. K. Gordon ISBN: 0486272648 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 30 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $1.00 |
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Title: The Iliad of Homer by Homer, Richmond Lattimore ISBN: 0226469409 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: July, 1961 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Odyssey by Homer, Robert Fagles, Bernard Knox ISBN: 0140268863 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 29 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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