The "bucolics" of Virgil are one of the most exquisite examples of pastoral Hellenistic poetry that have survived to this day. The great poet of ancient Rome, a born speaker, 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, reflecting them in his literary works and proposing ways to solve them .
Virgil
Publius Virgil Maron was born on October 15, 70 BC. e. in a well-to-do family, whose large incomes allowed the future poet to receive an excellent education. When the boy was 16 years old, he passed the ceremony of initiation into men and received the right to wear a toga instead of a youthful shirt. It so happened that the maturity of the young poet coincided with the death of the great Roman poet Lucretius, which immediately made Virgil his successor in the eyes of the creative elite of Roman society.
Enlisting the support of prominent personalities of the word of the time, Virgil went on a long journey with the aim of obtaining a complete 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 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 an ordinary person.
Creative concept
Inspired by the large-scale works of Homer, young Virgil considers it his duty to continue the tradition of the great poet and create a voluminous work that could be recognized by 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 in the characters of the story.
However, not having enough experience in creating poetic works, Virgil unwittingly copies his idol. This is manifested in the direct borrowing of not only some plot parallels, but also in the use of the paths characteristic of Homer, stylistic figures, metaphors, epithets and poetic sizes.
Despite the unwilling desire to largely copy Homer, Virgil still remains true to his 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 the creation of the famous Bukolik, he wrote just a few small poems that were not widely spread.
The “bucolics” of Virgil became his large-scale debut work, the second part of which - “Georgics” - did not take long to wait, becoming, by analogy with the works of Homer, a kind of “Odyssey” for the “Iliad”, the role of which was played by the first poem of Virgil.
Having finally completed work on the first two legends, the young poet begins work on a story about the god Aeneas, called “Aeneid”. The new work remained incomplete, but Virgil managed to write about 12 books of draft material, which in no way inferior to the expression of feelings and the use of stylistic figures is inferior to the first two poems.
"Bukoliki" Virgil
The very first voluminous work of the young poet - "Bukoliki" - is a collection of 10 pastoral poems describing the simplicity of rural life and the true feelings of the population of Ancient Rome.
Written for 43-37 years BC. e., "Bukoliki" are almost an exact reflection of life and ideological views of young Romans.
Initially, Virgil wanted to bring to the Roman poetic sphere the ease and simplicity of Greek versification. To do 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 expected.
Virgil’s analysis of Bukolik allows us to state with accuracy that the poet was not only unable to achieve his goal, but also largely 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 a 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.
A summary of the "Bucolic" of Virgil 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 by extensive commentaries that provide an explanation of each controversial, obscure, verse or fragment of this literary work.
Subdivision
The work of the poet can be divided into two independent parts. The first section includes the actual bucolic verses dedicated to the peaceful shepherd’s life, and the second - allegorical-bucolic verses, in which, with the help of metaphors and allegorical means, Virgil describes the political situation in Ancient Rome, as well as expresses the attitude of ordinary people to it.
Poetic Sizes
Despite inexperience and relatively little practice in versification, in his debut work the young man uses several types of poetry writing at once. If we consider the summary of the “Bucolic” of Virgil from the point of view of typology of versification, then we can get the following picture:
- III song - written by couplets, as it describes the poetic competitions of shepherds, therefore it practically does not contain exquisite speech turns or an informed selection of words in any particular poetic style.
- VII song - written in quatrains, decorated in a style similar to the third song 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 the poetic size and length of speech of each of the shepherds.
- Songs I, IV, IX and X - already refer to the more serious experiments of the young author in versification. Since these sections, consisting of Virgil’s political quotes (“Bukoliki”), relate to the author’s allegorical and bucolic experiences, the poetic size of these opuses and writing style, as well as filling with allegorical means, differs significantly from the above examples of “pastoral works”.
Influence
It is known that in the work of Virgil there is a huge number of references to the writers of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome that influenced him. In the "Bucolics" of Virgil, the direct influence of Theocritus, Catullus, Licinius Calva, Mark Fury Bibakul and many other learned men is clearly traced.
Virgil also combines several philosophical ideologies in his work, skillfully combining the theoretical principles 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 a serious academic Roman versification. Virgil also actively borrows the theoretical propositions of Theocritus philosophy.
Content
Besides the fact that the work has a political component and describes the historical reality of that period, Virgil's Bukoliki is a summary of the entire history of the Roman Empire through the eyes of a simple citizen. Many historians note an interesting fact - in the fourth song of the work contains information about the birth of an unknown baby who has a divine gift. The poet says that this child is able to rid the whole world of hostility, hatred and war and establish eternal grace on earth and in heaven. Many authoritative thinkers of the past argue that Virgil could theoretically predict the birth of Jesus Christ.
Criticism
Not only contemporaries of the brilliant poet, but also the descendants still have difficulty realizing that they depict the "Bucolics" of Virgil. Modern art historians and writers note the incredible perfection of the verse, completely uncharacteristic for other authors of the Hellenistic versification era. Even the masters of the word of Ancient Greece could not achieve such a piercing 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.