Piece Comment

Review of Virgil's Georgics: ThoughtCast interviews the poet and translator David Ferry


The poetry of the "dead language" deserves this resurrection. David Ferry's recent translation of Virgil's Georgics renews eternal themes of man's relationship to nature, as its lover, destroyer, kind master, and dependent child. The conversation moves from the earthy realism of the Georgics (Like Seamus Heaney, Virgil does dig dirt), to the violent historical milieu of Virgil's time, to deep symbolic and mythological resonances within the poems, and finally to the craftsmanship of Ferry's translation. The interview would be relevant to anyone interested in the study and discussion of poetry.