Cornell classicist publishes new translation of 'Aeneid'
The Roman poet Virgil spent the last 11 years of his life writing the "Aeneid," an epic poem of a hero's journey from Troy to Italy, styled on Homer's "Odyssey" and "Iliad."
Frederick Ahl, Cornell professor of classics and comparative literature, has published a new translation for Oxford University Press, in an effort of labor that rivals Virgil's.
"It took me longer, actually -- I wasn't being supported by the emperor," Ahl said. "I just love the work and have ever since I was a child. But it's taken me most of my life to understand it."
What distinguishes this "Aeneid" is Ahl's use of Virgil's original meter and his line-by-line restoration of the poet's wordplay, an element often lost in translation.
"The Romans loved puns and anagrams, which translators tend not to translate," Ahl said. "In our thinking, if something is funny it cannot in any way be serious. But the ancients found that humor and earnestness went side by side. Almost all life contains the elements of the humorous and the pathetic and the touching -- and an epic poem certainly does."
Virgil created something like a symphony, Ahl said, except with "all the music notes for a score on one line."
"The wordplay, the puns and anagrams, are the pivotal chords that enable the poet to change register and to set up multiple resonances simultaneously. And if we ignore these multiple resonances then we are doing something akin to playing Beethoven on a tin whistle."
Ahl was committed to do justice to Virgil and his literary masterpiece.
