The Aeneid

(Hardback)

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Rising to the challenge of rendering the poem's Latin hexameters by adopting English iambic ones, Len Krisak's Aeneid doubles down on the English poetic tradition by also featuring rhyme.

In Krisak's hands, these devices provide not only a superb kind of music but the snap and power of an epic adventure that glories in what only formal poetry can do. Enhanced by an Introduction and an extensive set of notes by Christopher M. McDonough, this Aeneid works as story, voice, and verse.

'Len Krisak not only boldly meets Virgil line-for-line, but in a hexameter that answers the original meter, all while hewing to straightforward English with a weather eye on the Latin.' A.E. Stallings

Reviews

"Virgil's Aeneid , though central to the Western canon, is also one of the most difficult to tackle for the translator, with its knotty syntax, its famously 'pious' protagonist, and its slippery ambivalence toward questions of truth and power. In this fresh translation, Len Krisak not only boldly meets Virgil line-for-line, but in a hexameter that answers the original meter, all while hewing to straightforward English with a weather eye on the Latin . The six-beat line has a reputation in English for dragging, but Krisak's hexameters drive along briskly. His choice to rhyme throughout, sometimes chiming ingeniously and sometimes with subtler off-rhyme effects, brings home that we are reading not only an epic narrative, but a verse performance. This work, concerned with human displacement in the aftermath of a prolonged war, with its themes of personal responsibility, duty, and leadership, and imbued with anxiety about the direction of a nation, could not be more topical." A. E. Stallings
"Len Krisak's translation of the Aeneid is smooth, speedy, musical, and clear. Sometimes witty, always ingenious, Krisak's rhymes manage to feel effortless ; together with meter, they move the story briskly along. Virgil's variety is here: dark vision, but also vividness and pace . The Aeneid is a narrative that is also a great poem; Krisak's rendering, accurate line for line and also packed with lush imagery, constantly reminds us of these twin facts." Rachel Hadas, Board of Governors Professor of English, Rutgers University-Newark
"Yes, another English Aeneid . . . but one that merits its place in the great tradition of translations of the untranslatable. There are passages where Krisak seems to hit on exactly the right word or turn of phrase that has eluded so many readers and translators of Virgil's epic before him. This is a splendid book, which surely deserves to be the choice for classes reading the Aeneid in English, or for those who wish to become better acquainted with the premier poet of Augustan Rome ." Lee Fratantuono, Professor of Classics, Ohio Wesleyan University
"Len Krisak's rhymed English hexameter couplets will allow readers to experience the Aeneid as its first Roman audience did: here is an exciting story told in an unprecedented way ." Charles Martin

Author Bio

Len Krisak has translated Horace's Odes (2006), Virgil's Eclogues (2010) Ovid's Erotic Poems (2014), and Prudentius' Crown of Martyrs (2019). Among other honors, he is the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Prize, the Richard Wilbur Award, and the Robert Frost Prize.

Christopher M. McDonough is Alderson-Tillinghast Chair in the Humanities, Sewanee: The University of the South.