Taking a Hammer, Nails and a Saw to Virgil's Georgics
Q. Is it really such a mighty leap?
It feels like scrambling in treacherous mountain terrain after a stroll in the valley. It's impertinent to render unstanzaic classical verse into sonnets - there's a gross cultural insensitivity about it. But with Hesiod I think I got away with it, largely because the original verse, as far as I could tell from a literal prose translation, has a relaxed formlessness, so it didn't get noticeably buckled when coaxed into 14-line receptacles. I think that's partly because Hesiod is a plain-speaking artisan-poet, someone so animated about the truths he wants to tell that he doesn't care too much about poetic proprieties. Virgil is completely different - more artist than artisan. The Georgics is a highly self-conscious work of art, punctiliously crafted with urbane skill and sophistication - and constantly taking the reader by surprise with its shifts, digressions and elaborations. All I could hope for was to render the passages that most appealed to me without the sonnet form distorting them grotesquely, and this turned out to be hard, slow work. In Virgil, more than in Hesiod, the verse is distinctly compartmentalised: he has grand passages with definite endings, and you can't place these conclusions anywhere but at the end of a sonnet. Luck has a lot to do with it: the number of lines there happens to be in each self-contained sub-passage. I managed to make it work for the The Twilight of the Golden Age and The Death of Caesar sequences (both in Book I) and for the wonderful Animal Passions sequence (in Book III). But the Beekeeping (Book IV) was really tough. It started reasonably, well but after four sonnets I found myself succumbing to the temptation to insert new images, new ideas to stretch the material so that it would finish in the right place. I'd inserted some filling into my Works and Days, but there it took the form of amplifying content that I thought might benefit in any case from greater clarity or impact. You can't do that with Virgil because mostly the clarity and impact are already present, unimprovably, in the original.
Q. What especially drew you to Virgil?
I'd enjoyed my Hesiod project hugely and was keen to find another classical writer I could render into sonnets in a similar fashion. The Georgics was an obvious possibility, because it's didactic pastoral, like the Works and Days, which was a massive influence upon it. I dipped into the Georgics and came across the astonishing passage about the driving force of lust in animals. The transcreative impulse inside me was aroused - I couldn't keep my sonneteering hands off this. The imaginative intensity of Virgil's descriptions (especially of the bull, but also, more briefly, of lioness, bear, boar, tigress, horse, human, lynx, wolf, mare) is amazing - I'd never read anything like it. I'd made the acquaintance of a great writer, and I was eager to explore further. You'll note that 'human' is in that list. Virgil devotes just six lines to a lust-fuelled youth who swims the storm-lashed strait, to visit a girl 'doomed to die on his untimely corpse'. It's Leander, but he doesn't even get name-checked. He's just an anonymous example, another species, sandwiched between the Sabine boar and Bacchus' spotted lynxes (so in my version he doesn't even get a sonnet to himself). This is thrilling, radical writing.
Q. Remind us about the man himself, his poetry, and the Georgics in particular
Q. Was he, like Ovid, a bit of a rebel?
I doubt it, though I may be wrong. He was well-established and, I think, ambitious. He had a lot to lose, and the times were turbulent, but by making his choices with care he kept his head well above water. After the battle of Philippi his property in Cisalpine Gaul, or possibly his father's, was confiscated for war veterans. But according to some sources the estate was restored to him on command of Emperor Augustus. Virgil moved in court circles. On two occasions his patron Maecenas was left in virtual control of Rome while Augustus was away: he gave the poet a house near Naples.
Q. Virgil was a pen name, wasn't it? If that's true, why did he choose it?
I've
formed the impression from my very limited reading on the matter that it was more a nickname than a pen name. He started
life as Publius Vergilius Maro. His name was punned, early on, with virgo (maiden) - no doubt his shyness had a lot to do with this. It was also punned with virga (wand), in reference to his
magical powers as a poet. Virgilius
stuck somehow. Some people, by the way, believed
there was a prophetic element in the Maro,
whose anagrams are Roma and Amor - two key Virgilian concerns.
Q. How do you set about making your new versions? Do you use a range of literal translations? You did some Latin at school. Is that still of some use? How many dictionaries do you have on the desk?
With the Virgil I've used a single prose translation, in the Loeb Classical Library series. It's by H. Rushton Fairclough, published in 1916, and revised by G.P. Goold in the late 90s. All my school Latin has drifted Lethe-wards - I was never any good at it anyway. I don't use dictionaries - sometimes I reach for a rhyming dictionary, but not often, only in emergencies.
Q. Where do you begin with a work like the Georgics?
My plan was to identify passages I liked and render just those initially. I wanted to ensure that I worked up something from each of the four books, so I followed up the clues in the Loeb introduction about the passages deemed to be most attractive. I imagined the thing spread out in front of me like a partially completed jigsaw, with the possibility of one day filling in the gaps to produce a version of the whole poem. To finish it, after generating about 30 sonnets' worth, would probably be a two-year project at least, and I came to the conclusion that I might be prepared to tackle this if I could secure a publishing commitment beforehand. Then I cooled on the idea. I'd hit the Beekeeping problem, and my current view is that to render the whole poem in sonnets (it's more than 2,000 lines) may not be feasible - or desirable. There are some very complex passages, and the intrinsically dubious enterprise would probably founder on them. It would be like climbing Everest in a diving suit. Why attempt it, except to get into the record books? However, I do need to progress the Beekeeping if I can, since there's a hole waiting for it in my latest poetry collection, provisionally called Animal Passions. There's no obvious place to stop until line 115 of the Latin, so it might need to be ten to twelve sonnets altogether. And I need to do something from Book II as well, so that all four books of the Georgics are represented in the collection.
Q. Below we can read your version of the delightful section about the bees. What aspects of your attempts so far, more specifically, are you unhappy with? Take us through some of your decision-making processes.
Below, as you say, are the six sonnets presented straight; and then there's a version with each sonnet marked up in typographic code, followed by the relevant prose translation (Fairclough, in the unrevised 1916 edition), followed in turn by a personal commentary. I hope that these commentaries will answer your question. In the coded sonnets italic type is used where I've been faithful to the translation. Bold type indicates a brazen interpolation, with no basis in the original. Ordinary roman type is used to show an amplification that's consistent with the original. You can see the epidemic of bold type breaking out in sonnet V. Then in sonnet VI I recover (with difficulty), but probably I now have to abandon VI and rewind to the beginning of V.
*
I.
Now I'll discourse on that rare gift of heaven,
honey - brought for our sustenance from the skies.
Look favourably upon my enterprise,
Maecenas. I'll unfold for you my vision
of a tiny world, with braveheart chieftains
and all the character and work and wars
and tribes of nations - our diminutive mentors.
My scope is narrow; trivial my pains.
Yet if Apollo, heavenly lord of song,
bends down his ear to harken to my prayer
and blesses my tongue with fluent minstrelsy,
and fickle Fortune lets me live so long,
keeping the bailiff waiting, critics beware:
glory in a shower of gold will rain on me.
II.
First, find your bees a suitable glade, a spot
with good shelter - for it's hard for them to bring
food back home if there's a wind blowing.
Make sure that sheep or frisky goats cannot
trample the flowers all around, nor a stray
heifer brush off the dew from the meadow
and bruise the poppies in the grass. Also,
avoid the lizard, who loves to shorten a bee's day,
and the bee-eater, and Procne, the swallow,
whose breast is stained with blood - such predators
have tongues trained to catch treats for ruthless young.
Make sure the waters of a clear spring flow
near by, with moss-green pools, and through the grass
a tiny, babbling brook, till now unsung.
III.
Choose a palm or a large wild olive tree
to provide shade, so when each new-crowned king
ventures out bravely from the hive in spring
at the head of his swarm, his troops glad to be free
of the combs, all will find shelter from the sun
among foliage. Across the water, still
or running, lay willow boughs and a plentiful
supply of boulders for them to land upon
and dry their wings should a wind in the east
have chanced to plunge any loitering bees
into the flood or drench them in a shower.
All around let cassia spread its floral feast
and thyme and savory strongly scent the breeze.
Let a retinue of violets drink in their marshy bower.
IV.
The hive itself, whether sewn from the bark of trees
or woven with pliant osiers, must be built
with a narrow entrance, or the honey will melt
in summer's heat and harden in winter. Your bees
too will be affected: it's by no means a waste
of time when in their homes they fill with wax
the tiny crevices and smear the larger cracks
and line the doorway itself with this paste
gathered from flowers. For all such work they keep
a store of glue more binding than the pitch
of Phrygian Ida, or lime. Some live apart,
it's said, in tunnels underground, or deep
in galleried pumice-rock, in caves in a ditch,
or in a rotten tree-trunk's crumbling heart.
V.
These bees in exile from the Roman state
live secretly, outside the law, a feckless clan
of tax-evaders, far from the eyes of man,
breeding prolifically, wild and reprobate,
a brigand band of shameless refugees.
Confederacies like this Nature condones -
immune to lectures and to well-aimed stones.
Forget them: love domesticated bees.
Coddle these. Smear their chamber's chinks with clay;
add a skin of leaves. Avoid that poisonous tree,
the yew. And beware of the toxic smells
of roasted crab. Keep your bees well away
from the deep marsh, from black mud's pungency -
and from echoes off rocks, like missiles from mangonels.
VI.
Once the golden sun has driven winter back
beneath the earth and flooded the yearning sky
with summer light, our bees unfailingly
range through glades and groves, far from the track
of our own sociable wanderings, to cull
bright flowers and lightly sip at the brink of streams.
Bright longings infiltrate their tiny dreams
which spill into action, tender, purposeful.
They're broody. And so they deftly shape
fresh wax and that golden gluey nectar,
honey. If you look up, you'll see the host
above their hive, so glad of their escape,
floating in summer air, on the wind's vector
a drifting cloud - like some dark, friendly ghost.
BEEKEEPING Deconstructed
[Book IV, 1ff]
I.
Now I'll discourse on that rare gift of heaven,
honey - brought for our sustenance from the skies.
Look favourably upon my enterprise,
Maecenas. I'll unfold for you my vision
of a tiny world, with braveheart chieftains
and all the character and work and wars
and tribes of nations - our diminutive mentors.
My scope is narrow; trivial my pains.
Yet if Apollo, heavenly lord of song,
bends down his ear to harken to my prayer
and blesses my tongue with fluent minstrelsy,
and fickle Fortune lets me live so long,
keeping the bailiff waiting, critics beware:
glory in a shower of gold will rain on me.
Fairclough:
1] Next will I discourse of Heaven's gift, the honey from the skies. On this part, too, of my task, Maecanas, look with favour. The wondrous pageant of a tiny world - chiefs great-hearted, a whole nation's character and tastes and tribes and battles - I will in due order to you unfold. Slight is the field of toil; but not slight the glory, if adverse powers leave one free, and Apollo hearkens unto prayer.
Saxton:
Virgil's preamble is only 7 lines of Latin verse, so I decided to put a bit of stretch into my sestet. The last 7 lines of the sonnet derive from just 2 lines of the original. I was pleased to make the connection between Apollo, associated with the sun and with poetry, and the shower of gold that signifies poetic glory, and I also enjoyed bringing in the bailiff as a personification of death (it seemed a reasonable interpretation of 'adverse powers', combining financial and bodily adversity in a single phrase). Virgil has the bees forming a nation, but I've made it nations, plural, for the sake of euphony - I could probably iron out this inaccuracy without too much difficulty, but it isn't a priority. When I'm sonneteering away, I find that there are usually certain rhymes, such as skies/enterprise and chieftains/pains in this case, that present themselves like gifts. Other rhymes, such as song/long, slot readily into place because one of the words, or sometimes both, are worker words that can be used in lots of different ways - 'long' is a good example here. Imperfect rhymes may be needed at times (heaven/vision), and help to prevent too monotonously sing-song a quality in the verse.
II.
First, find your bees a suitable glade, a spot
with good shelter - for it's hard for them to bring
food back home if there's a wind blowing.
Make sure that sheep or frisky goats cannot
trample the flowers all around, nor a stray
heifer brush off the dew from the meadow
and bruise the poppies in the grass. Also,
avoid the lizard, who loves to shorten a bee's day,
and the bee-eater, and Procne, the swallow,
whose breast is stained with blood - such predators
have tongues trained to catch treats for ruthless young.
Make sure the waters of a clear spring flow
near by, with moss-green pools, and through the grass
a tiny, babbling brook, till now unsung.
Fairclough:
[8] First seek a settled home for your bees, whither the winds may find no access - for the winds let them not carry home their food - where no ewes or sportive kids may trample the flowers, nor straying heifer brush off the dew from the mead and bruise the spring blade. Let the spangled lizard with his scaly back be also a stranger to the rich stalls, and the bee-eater and other birds, and Procne [the swallow], with breast marked by her blood-stained hands. For these spread havoc far and near, and, while the bees are on the wing, carry them of in their mouths, a sweet morsel for their cruel nestlings. But let clear springs be near, and moss-green pools, and a tiny brook stealing through the grass;
Saxton:
This sonnet renders 12 lines of the original, with neither stretch nor squeeze. I can't remember why I put the poppies in - probably because it's easier to imagine flowers being bruised than grass. The closing phrase, 'till now unsung', is my invention, introducing a touch of self-regard on Virgil's part that echoes the hint of braggadocio in my first sonnet ('critics beware'). I'll often pounce upon 'bring', 'ring', 'thing' or their homophones, because they give me the chance to match them to a vast repertoire of present participles (similarly, -y or -ie can be half-rhymed with limitless adverbs). 'Stray' was a no-brainer, because the -ay rhyme-hoard is also extensive. The -ow rhyme is used twice here, in the octave and the sestet - and that's just about acceptable, I think, as is the muffled half-rhyme, predators/grass.
III.
Choose a palm or a large wild olive tree
to provide shade, so when each new-crowned king
ventures out bravely from the hive in spring
at the head of his swarm, his troops glad to be free
of the combs, all will find shelter from the sun
among foliage. Across the water, still
or running, lay willow boughs and a plentiful
supply of boulders for them to land upon
and dry their wings should a wind in the east
have chanced to plunge any loitering bees
into the flood or drench them in a shower.
All around let cassia spread its floral feast
and thyme and savory strongly scent the breeze.
Let a retinue of violets drink in their marshy bower.
Fairclough:
and let a palm or huge wild olive shade the porch, so that, when the new kings lead forth the early swarms in the spring they love, and the youth revel in their freedom from the combs, a bank near by may tempt them to quit the heat, and a tree in their path may hold them in its sheltering leafage. In the midst of the water, whether it stand idle or flow onward, cast willows athwart and huge stones, that they may have many bridges whereon to halt and spread their wings in the summer sun, if haply the East Wind has sprinkled the loiterers or with swift gust has plunged them in the flood. All about let green cassia bloom, and wild thyme with fragrance far borne, and a wealth of strong-scented savory; and let violet beds drink of the trickling spring.
Saxton:
All this was relatively straightforward: the original Latin is 13 lines, only one line shy of a sonnet. The rhymes include gifts (king/spring, east/feast) and a worker word ('free'). Bees/breeze is also a kind of gift, but a flawed one: rhyming two words that start with the same consonant is not good practice. Virgil says, Make sure the bees have a bank or a tree to provide shade, but to imagine the bank providing shade you have think about its topography more precisely, and there wasn't space for this level of detail - it would have been boring in any case. So I dropped the bank without regrets. 'Marshy bower' deprives the violets of running water: I should probably attend to this discourtesy one day. 'Watery bower' would be a tempting quick fix were it not for the fact that we've had 'water' already in line 6.
IV.
The hive itself, whether sewn from the bark of trees
or woven with pliant osiers, must be built
with a narrow entrance, or the honey will melt
in summer's heat and harden in winter. Your bees
too will be affected: it's by no means a waste
of time when in their homes they fill with wax
the tiny crevices and smear the larger cracks
and line the doorway itself with this paste
gathered from flowers. For all such work they keep
a store of glue more binding than the pitch
of Phrygian Ida, or lime. Some live apart,
it's said, in tunnels underground, or deep
in galleried pumice-rock, in caves in a ditch,
or in a rotten tree-trunk's crumbling heart.
Fairclough:
[33] Then, let the hive itself, whether it be sewn of hollow bark, or woven of pliant osier, have its entrances narrow; for winter with its cold congeals the honey, while heat thaws and makes it run. Either trouble is alike to be feared for the bees; nor is it with vain zeal that in their homes they smear the tiny crevices with wax, fill the entrances with paste from flowers, and keep a store of glue, gathered for this very purpose, more binding than lime or the pitch of Phrygian Ida. Often, too, if report be true, they have made a snug home in tunneled hiding places underground, and are found deep in the hollows of pumice rock, or the cavern of a decayed tree.
Saxton:
Again, this was straightforward. All I added to Virgil's vision was the ditch, to fill out the sonnet at the end and provide an irresistible rhyme for 'pitch'. The gift rhymes here were trees/bees and wax/cracks; the worker words were 'deep' and 'apart'.
V.
These bees in exile from the Roman state
live secretly, outside the law, a feckless clan
of tax-evaders, far from the eyes of man,
breeding prolifically, wild and reprobate,
a brigand band of shameless refugees.
Confederacies like this Nature condones -
immune to lectures and to well-aimed stones.
Forget them: love domesticated bees.
Coddle these. Smear their chamber's chinks with clay;
add a skin of leaves. Avoid that poisonous tree,
the yew. And beware of the toxic smells
of roasted crab. Keep your bees well away
from the deep marsh, from black mud's pungency -
and from echoes off rocks, like missiles from mangonels.
Fairclough:
Yet keep them snug, smearing the chinks of their chambers with smooth clay, and flinging thereon a few leaves. And suffer no yew too near the hive, nor roast the reddening crab at your hearth; and trust not a deep marsh or a place where the smell of mud is strong, or where the hollow rocks ring when struck, and the echoes voice rebounds from the shock.
Saxton:
Welcome to the crime scene! - this is where I took unpardonable liberties. Virgil's image of certain bees choosing to operate outside the system, in the wild, in their secret roosts, prompted a fantasy of the outlaw life. This is consistent with the portrayal of bees as a model society, with lessons for humankind to learn from - but now it's me, not Virgil, running the show: I've ambushed the magic lantern and dropped in some of my own slides. The 'tax' these brigands are evading is their tithe of honey, of course; and 'breeding prolifically' aligns them with the lust-driven animals of Book III. In conjuring up Romans lecturing these reprobate bees and throwing stones at them, have I become too mocking? Seven lines of ironic interpolation is probably too much. 'Well-aimed' gives an extra twist to the absurdity of the stone-throwing. I manage to get back to Virgil just in time for the sestet, which is very faithful. But the damage is done. I'm attached to 'mangonels' - an example, I'd suggest, of rhyming serving as midwife to poetic felicities.
VI.
Once the golden sun has driven winter back
beneath the earth and flooded the yearning sky
with summer light, our bees unfailingly
range through glades and groves, far from the track
of our own sociable wanderings, to cull
bright flowers and lightly sip at the brink of streams.
Bright longings infiltrate their tiny dreams
which spill into action, tender, purposeful.
They're broody. And so they deftly shape
fresh wax and that golden gluey nectar,
honey. If you look up, you'll see the host
above their hive, so glad of their escape,
floating in summer air, on the wind's vector
a drifting cloud - like some dark, friendly ghost.
Fairclough:
[51] For the rest, when the golden Sun has driven winter in rout beneath the earth, and with summer light unlocked the sky, straightway they range through glades and groves, cull bright flowers, and lightly sip the stream's brink. Hence it is that, glad with some strange joy, they cherish nest and nestlings; hence they deftly mould fresh wax and fashion the gluey honey. Hence when you look up and see the host, just freed from the hive, floating towards the starry sky through the clear summer air - when you marvel at the dark cloud trailing down the wind - mark it well …
Saxton:
I remember agonising over the 'nectar'/'vector' rhyme. To call honey 'nectar', as if metaphorically, is hopelessly confusing, and 'vector' sounds like it's been brought in solely for the rhyme, which it has - it's an unnatural word in this context. There's probably a certain vagueness in the original here. This is how A.S. Kline rendered the lines in a 2002 translation: 'With this, with a delightful sweetness, they cherish their hive / and young: with it, with art, they form / fresh wax and produce their sticky honey.' When I first read this (only today, for the purpose of this workshop), I briefly entertained the idea that the 'sweetness' might be, quite simply, the nectar - but I soon discarded the possibility. Most probably it's the nurturing instinct, the pleasure (both 'strange' and 'delightful') taken in parenthood. Bees in fact collect nectar from flowers and, back in the hive, transform it by regurgitation into honey, which they store in honeycombs (this is where the 'wax' comes in). Either I could have fudged all this, as Virgil seems to (the three 'hences', in Fairclough's version, are baffling), or I could have been more scientifically precise, but it's unclear in my sonnet which of the two routes I've chosen to take. It's probably better not to tidy up the science - after all, the Romans didn't even know that the all-powerful leader of the hive is a queen, not a king. Perhaps I owe it to Virgil to leave the misconceptions of his culture intact. On the other hand, it might be relatively easy to fix this localised problem in a way that retains the nectar: I'd need to write about turning nectar into honey, rather than implying that nectar is the same as honey. I'm content with the 'ghost' at the end. But the sonnet has a demolition order on it in any case. At best, some of the language may get absorbed into the preceding sestet - assuming that I succeed in rebuilding the previous sonnet satisfactorily.