Virgil's "Bucolics": writing history and summary

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Virgil's Bucolics is one of the finest examples of pastoral Hellenistic poetry that has survived to this day. The great poet of ancient Rome, a born orator, a talented poet and musician, Virgil was known not only as a member of an elite creative society, but also as an outstanding politician of his time, who paid much attention to social problems, displaying them in his literary works and offering ways to solve them there..

Virgil

Publius Virgil Maro was born on October 15, 70 BC. e. in a we althy family, whose large incomes allowed the future poet to receive an excellent education. When the boy was 16 years old, he passed the rite of passage into a man and received the right to wear a toga instead of a youthful shirt. It so happened that the coming of age of the young poet coincided with the death of the great Roman poet - Lucretius, which immediately madeVirgil as his successor in the eyes of the creative elite of Roman society.

Enlisting the support of prominent figures of the word of that time, Virgil went on a long journey in order to receive a full education. During the time when he traveled and studied, the young man visited cities such as Milan, Naples, Rome. He actively studied Greek literature, philosophy, Roman law, cultural studies, poetics and many other humanitarian disciplines.

Despite his recognition in poetic circles, Virgil rarely read his works in public, and also paid little attention to small poetic forms, actively working on a large poem about the life of ordinary people.

Creative Concept

Inspired by Homer's large-scale works, young Virgil considers it his duty to continue the tradition of the great poet and create a voluminous work that could be recognized by his contemporaries.

The poet saw the main criteria for such work, first of all, the volume and quality of the alliterative verse, the saturation of the text with large and small details, as well as the variety of characters of the characters in the story.

However, not having sufficient experience in creating poetic works, Virgil unwittingly copies his idol. This is manifested in the direct borrowing not only of some plot parallels, but also in the use of tropes, stylistic figures, metaphors, epithets and poetic meters characteristic of Homer.

Despite the involuntary desire to copy Homer in many ways, Virgil still remainstrue to its style, which differs significantly from the slow and leisurely narration of Homer.

Proceedings

For a long time, the genre of large poetic forms was fundamental to the creative concept of Virgil. Before creating the famous "Bucolik", he wrote only a few small poems, which were not widely used.

Virgil's "Bucolics" became his debut large-scale work, the second part of which - "Georgics" - was not long in coming, becoming, by analogy with the works of Homer, a kind of "Odyssey" for the "Iliad", the role of which was played by the first Virgil's poem.

Having finally completed work on the first two tales, the young poet begins work on the story about the god Aeneas, called "Aeneid". The new work remained unfinished, but Virgil managed to write about 12 books of draft material, which, in terms of the depth of expression of feelings and the use of stylistic figures, is in no way inferior to the first two poems.

Virgil's Bucolics

The young poet's very first voluminous work, Bucoliki, is a collection of 10 pastoral poems that describe the simplicity of rural life and the true feelings of the people of Ancient Rome.

Written in 43-37 B. C. e., "Bucoliki" are almost an accurate reflection of the life and ideological views of young Romans.

Initially, Virgil wanted to bring the lightness and simplicity of Greek versification into the Roman poetic sphere. ForIn this he even inserted the author's translation of several songs of Theocritus, trying to imitate his style in all other parts of the work. However, the end result was not at all what the young poet had expected.

Analysis of Virgil's "Bucolic" allows us to state with accuracy that the poet not only failed to achieve his goal, but also in many respects bypassed his predecessors, revealing to the world a new type of poetic system with a special semantic load, manifested in the manner of writing.

Virgil is characterized by the description of complex and controversial topics in simple language. The author often uses simple metaphors to allegorically express dissatisfaction with the serious social and political processes taking place in his homeland.

Summary of Virgil's "Bucolik" chapter by chapter is given in the work of the ancient Roman poet. In addition to a detailed table of contents, the work is supplemented with extensive comments that provide an explanation for each controversial, unclear, verse or fragment of this literary work.

Division by semantic parts

The work of the poet can be conditionally divided into two independent parts. The first section includes actually bucolic verses dedicated to peaceful pastoral life, and the second - allegorical-bucolic ones, in which, using metaphors and allegorical means, Virgil describes the political situation in Ancient Rome, and also expresses the attitude of ordinary people towards it.

Poetic measurements

Despite inexperience and relatively little practice inversification, in his debut work, the young man uses several types of writing poetry at once. If we consider the summary of Virgil's Bucolic from the point of view of the typology of versification, we can get the following picture:

• III song - written in couplets, as it describes the poetic competitions of shepherds, therefore, it practically does not contain refined speech turns or a conscious selection of words in any particular poetic style.
• VII ode - written in quatrains, designed in a style similar to the third ode and differing only in shape and size. At the same time, the stylistic poverty of this section is preserved.

• VIII song - created by Virgil by analogy with the third and seventh songs. It differs only in poetic size and length of speech of each of the shepherds.
• I, IV, IX and X songs already refer to more serious experiments of the young author in versification. Since these sections, consisting of Virgil's political quotations ("Bucolics"), refer to the author's allegorical-bucolic experiences, both the poetic size of these opuses and the style of writing, and the filling with allegorical means differ significantly from the above examples of "pastoral works".

Influence

It is known that in the work of Virgil there are a huge number of references to the writers of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome who influenced him. Virgil's Bucolics clearly shows the direct influence of Theocritus, Catullus, Licinius Calvos, Mark Furius Bibaculus and many other learned men.

Also, Virgil combines several philosophical ideologies in his work at once, skillfully combining the theoretical provisions of Epicureanism with the didactic style of Hellenism, however, the work is devoid of the ideals of Epicureanism and, for the most part, refers to serious academic Roman versification. Virgil also actively borrows the theoretical principles of Theocritus' philosophy.

Contents

Besides the fact that the work has a political component and describes the historical reality of that period, Virgil's "Bucoliki" is a summary of the entire history of the Roman Empire through the eyes of a simple citizen. Many historians note an interesting fact - the fourth song of the work contains information about the birth of an unknown baby with a divine gift. The poet says that this child is able to rid the whole world of enmity, hatred and wars and establish eternal grace on earth and in heaven. Many influential thinkers of the past claim that Virgil theoretically could have predicted the birth of Jesus Christ.

Criticism

Not only the contemporaries of the brilliant poet, but also the descendants still hardly realize that Virgil's Bucolics depict. Modern art historians and writers note the incredible perfection of verse, completely uncharacteristic of other authors of the era of Hellenistic versification. Even the masters of the word of ancient Greece could not achieve such a poignant and rich, smooth style of presentation.

According to contemporaries, Virgil was considered a brilliant young poet of Ancient Rome, who was recognized even by eminent masters of versification.