The art of translation is both fascinating and, in my reading of Virgil, a deep necessity as I have no Latin (though I am working on that.) It is, of course, an art that engenders strong feelings. One of Virgil's great translators was C. Day Lewis, the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 till his death. I have been listening to his reading from his translation of the Georgics available at Amazon.L. P Wilkinson relates "how he (Lewis) felt as he worked at his version in the west country at a time when the bombs (of WWII) were beginning to rain on our cities. 'I felt more and more the kind of patriotism which I imagine was Virgil's-the natural piety, the heightened sense of genius of the place, the passion to praise and protect one's roots. Or to put down roots somewhere while there is still time, which it takes a seismic event such as a war to most of us rootless persons."
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