A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Having already read Stanley Lombardo's translation of The Aeneid, I wasn't much interested in Robert Fagles's translation. But Jeff Emanuel highly recommended the Fagles translation and he caused me to give in and get it. I am glad he did.

The Fagles translation is greatly superior to even the Lombardo translation, and causes me to love The Aeneid even more than I did after having finished with Lombardo's excellent work. As Jeff points out, Fagles does a brilliant job in remaining true to Virgil while at the same time making The Aeneid accessible to modern audiences. The result is a graceful and rolling poetry closely mirroring Virgil's own style that can be appreciated by English readers without the jarring and irritating colloqualisms that many translators--including, at times, Lombardo--resorted to. Fagles's translation reveals Virgil's poetry to be highly lyrical, deeply eloquent and very moving indeed.

The foreword by Bernard Knox is very informative and helpful, as are the glossary, notes, and the afterword by Fagles. In the afterword, Fagles crystallizes my appreciation for Aeneas, when he points out that Aeneas avenged Pallas as Achilleus avenged Patrocles, he sought a home as Odysseus did, and he defended it as Hektor defended Troy--and even more successfully.

An excellent translation and one that should be a part of any library. And yes, I am still bound and determined to read Dryden's translation, which is an epic in its own right. But Fagles's translation should have its own hallowed place in the Virgilian pantheon, and I will most certainly get Fagles's translations of Homer. They promise to be just as deeply satisfying as his translation of Virgil, after all.