Principio sedes apibus statioque petenda, or: Irstfay indfay away omehay orfay ethay eesbay

More buzz about bees...there's a new translation by David Ferry in the latest Atlantic Monthly (ensconced here behind the subscriber wall, alas, but including audio of the poet reading his English translation as well as in the original Latin) of a portion of Virgil's Georgic IV (alternate English translation here; Latin here) which, it turns out, is all about honey bees. My year or so of high school Latin was way too much Caesar and woeful little Virgil, but don't call it a dead language: why, you could have heard it spoken on television on two separate occasions just yesterday (Xander's "Librum incendere!" on a Buffy rerun, and, of course, the famous "Wingardium leviosa!" in a movie-channel airing of one of the Harry Potter films).

Comments

[avril]

Virgil's Georgics is on my reading list this year as I've been intrigued with his ancient gardening wisdom since reading about him in Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun (one of my favorite books ever and one I read at least twice a year~don't let the movie make your mind up for you).

[Chan S.]

According to the Atlantic Monthly blurb accompanying Ferry's translation, his new translation of the Georgics will be coming out in May, which should be interesting to check out. Frances Mayes's book is one of those that I cannot believe I haven't read yet...but I know I will one of these days. I saw about 5 minutes of the movie flipping through channels one night and, yes, it looked pretty preposterous.

[David]

I've been translating Catullus lately. The days I slept through Mr Nemesh's latin class in eighth grade ar coming back to haunt me. Hmmm...

Thanks for the tip on David Young's stuff.