Timely Engagements: Summer and Sustainability in The Georgics of Virgil

American Poetry Review, The, Nov/Dec 2006 by Becker, Robin

Timely Engagements

Summer and Sustainability in The Georgics of Virgil

The Georgics of Virgil: A Translation by David Ferry Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005. Bilingual Edition.

September 2006

TIME-THE BONANZA AT THE CLOSE OF the academic year-calls with a seductive voice.

The schoolgirl in me leans a forehead against against the glass window of the yellow bus, yearning for summer.

Some writers I know pocket slivers of Time all year and inhabit them fully. I'm waiting for June, July, and August-a pasture of Time whose far fence I can't see. Or I will myself not to see.

This summer, David Ferry's translation of The Georgics of Virgil provided a capacious opportunity to consider Time. An iambic pentameter almanac of how to do everything rural-prepare a field, breed horses, raise bees-The Georgics combines the best of an informative non-fiction book, verse from a praising poet's eye and ear, and an epic meditation on how work constructs and confers meaning. Because the academic year organizes my work life, I experience Time differently from the farmer or agricultural worker. Nevertheless, in the fallen world, Time and work shape animate life. The noun "georgic" originates in the Greek words for earth (geo) and work (ergon), and in his introduction, Ferry names poets he identifies as engaged in "the pastoral of hard work." He includes Milton, Spenser, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, and Frost. (To this list I'd add Dylan Thomas, whose "Fern Hill" feels distinctly georgic.) Echoes from these poets and others surfaced as 1 read. Much of the text details seasonal agricultural work, but readers will recognize the Edenic paradise Virgil evokes before "Jupiter himself ordained / That the way should not be easy" in the fallen world.

Before Jove's time no farmer plowed the earth;

It was forbidden to mark out field from field,

Setting out limits, one from another; men shared

All things together and Earth quite freely yielded

The gifts of herself she gave, being unasked.

It was Jupiter who put the deadly poison

Into the fangs of serpents . . .

Serpents. Floods. Blight. Particularly appealing to me is Virgil's belief that the oracle of Zeus and the gods, not the humans, chucked paradise and brought Time as we know it into being. Our blaming, sin-ridden, guilt-inducing pieties have no place in Virgil's tale. The gods fought, and now humans and animals must live where the gods "Turned off the flow of wine that everywhere / Ran in the streams."

In the farming community where I live, workers labor through the summer to fill local farm stands and stores with produce. This annual harvest of lettuces, blueberries, peaches, tomatoes and apples gestures towards an earlier paradise while providing us with an earthly one. We now live where "want should be / The cause of human ingenuity," and Ferry rejoices in that ingenuity. Lyrical passages on Time mediate this celebration of human effort, as in these lines that prefigure Ecclcsiastes:

... The time for harvest, the time for planting

seeds,

The time to brave the unfaithful sea with oars,

The time to fell the pines with which to build

them . . .

Repeatedly, Virgil references the time-bound and the timely. Hc emphasizes the importance of paying close attention to the natural world, ofliving harmoniously with animals and plants by practicing good stewardship. He upbraids ("No storm comes on without giving you any warning") and, in the First Georgie, he cautions "there are days / That are right for doing certain kinds of work / And days that are wrong." People must "pay heed to the months and stars," to Ceres, Jupiter, Minerva and Neptune who, as adversaries and helpmates, make appearances in the mortal sphere. ("Above all else / Be sure to pay due reverence to the gods.") Virgil's convictions originate in close observation; he draws his rules of practice from experience. An opposing force, however, lies in the potent hold of superstition, evident in animal sacrifice:

So, as is right for us to do, we'll sing

Our rustic songs in honor of the god,

And, taking the goat by the horn, we'll lead him

up

To the sacrificial altar, and afterwards roast

The rich goat meat on spits of hazelwood.

Happily, in the fallen world, everyone and everything animate is educable. Trees will "give up their wildness, and, with frequent tilling, / Be ready to learn whatever you want them to learn." Explaining the differences between stock-grafting and bud-grafting in spring, Virgil observes a tree "exulting in its boughs" at the propagation of unfamiliar fruit. However, a susceptibility to injury or attack gives The Georgics its poignancy. Behind each instruction lies the accident, the illness, the storm, the weevil. Near the close of the second Georgie, Virgil declares: "That man is blessed who has learned the causes of things, / And therefore under his feet subjugates fear / and the decrees of unrelenting fate . . ." Here Virgil reaches toward scientific inquiry, seeing in it how knowledge may subdue dread and occupy a mind brooding over its destiny.