Day One Hundred and Seventy
The Aeneid Page: 311
It is a nearly inexpressible pleasure to read Virgil after slogging through Beckett. The crisp, impetuous swift poetry after the sluggish, plodding mush. I feel like I stepped out of a dank and smelly sickroom into a crisp, bracing winter morning. Here is purpose, drama, heroics. Here are quick deeds performed for lasting purposes. Here is life. If you cannot be thrilled, challenged and inspired by the great epics mourn that your soul perished without you. I’ll understand if you’re not quite ready for Virgil. If you need to brush up your mind, strengthen your reading skills, get some background to help you along please do. Read the Wikipedia article, talk to someone who is as enthused as I am, feed yourself something a bit stronger than your usual fare, and then sit down with a dark beer, a fine wine, or some strong coffee and go to it. If you don’t love it right away, teach yourself to and let it strengthen you. I was particularly struck by these lines, although the great beauty of the poem is the effect built up over thousands of lines; “Some struck seeds of fire/Out of the veins of flint”.
And here is quote from a Latin Literature Anthology’s preface.
“The editors of Latin Literature in Translation have no delusions about the originality of their work. We readily agree that this is a thing of past and scissors, and we blush to think what some of our learned colleagues in the Classics may say when they find here no Latin text, no scholarly emendations, not even reference to the profound works of the Germans on Altertumswissenshaft, but only a weakened brew, served up for those whose heads are not strong enough to stand the original.”