7 - Farmers and poets
from PART III - VIRGIL'S GEORGICS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
Summary
Lieber will noch der Mensch das Nichts wollen, als nicht wollen.
Man would rather will nothingness than not will.
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals 3.28Nor I, nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleas'd, till he be eas'd
With being nothing
Shakespeare, Richard II 5.5My underlying goal in showing how many of the Georgics' themes are anticipated by Xenophon and Varro is to highlight not how Virgil repeats their points but how he builds upon them and creates a new focus in the Georgics. This new focus is best examined via the last major theme from their works that is incorporated into the Georgics, namely the contrast between the active and the contemplative lives. Whereas Varro presented the contrast between these two modes of life primarily in the last book of his work through his discussion of aviaries, Virgil exploits the contrast at several key points in each book. His conceptualization of the active and contemplative lives, loosely represented by the figures of the farmer and the poet, undergoes several transformations throughout the work. In the first three books, the similarities between them are underscored more than the differences. It is only in Virgil's final formulation of the contrast between these modes of life, which takes place in the epyllion at the end of book 4, that Virgil makes an ultimate distinction between the farmer and the poet.
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- Allegories of Farming from Greece and RomePhilosophical Satire in Xenophon, Varro, and Virgil, pp. 156 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009