Notes to "Draft 53: Eclogue"

I used David Ferry, trans. The Eclogues of Virgil, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999; C. Day Lewis, trans., The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1964. Section 1. "the children of your children will gather up these pears," Virgil, Eclogue IX (David Ferry translation, modified slightly, 75). Section 2. two bowls of just-milked milk, modifying Eclogue V. Section 3. The typographical errors "the llittle girl" reproaches that the mother gave her no penis (p. 332) and "the phalllic phase," p. 335 of Freud on Women: A Reader, ed. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. NY: W. W. Norton, 1990. Section 5 "vulnerable to colds and bad social policies" was said by Michael Bérubé in a lecture, referring to one of his children; "cold war comforts" was said by Jonathan Arac in a lecture. Section 13: "Shepherds drift in and out; songs are heard and lost" said by Dick Newton, lecture, February 1984. Section 15, "the adults are greatly attracted" to blossoms of bramble referring to Limenitis camilla or White Admiral. Remarks about the "Silver-washed Fritillary" occur as well. Tom Tolman, Collins Field Guide Butterflies of Britain and Europe, Harper Collins, 1997, 146 and 155. Section 16: Etruscan frescoes in Tarquinia. Section 17. "Shepherds devise she hateth as the snake/ And laughes the songs, that Colin Clout doth make," Edmund Spenser, Eclogue 1: January, Shepherd's Calendar. Names of apple trees from the Medieval Garden of the University of Perugia, Department of Botany, the nearest supermarket, and local Pennsylvania farms. Section 18. Virgil's unsolved riddles, Eclogue III. Section 19, Thyrsis v. Corydon, Eclogue VII. Actually "fake oat" and the thistle are mentioned by Mospsus in Eclogue V in the context of the land's mourning for the dead Daphnis. Rendering the line "greges Corydon et Thyrsis in unum" C. Day Lewis translated "drove their flocks together," 51, and David Ferry translated "Corydon/ And Thyrsis, both nearby, were tending their flocks," 53. Also section 19. "Wrongs of the world, ruthlessness, servitudes and injustices" modified from Elio Vittorini, Conversations in Sicily, trans. Alane Salierno Mason, New York: New Directions, 2000, 122. Section 20. Already dyed sheep, Eclogue VI. Section 21. Lycidas says he "was told" poetry saved the land, Eclogue IX (David Ferry translation, 71). Ivy green and laurel, Eclogue VIII. What an eclogue might be is discussed in Eclogue VI. Final line modified from the famous penultimate line of Eclogue IV, "incipe, parve puer," "Begin, dear babe" (C. Day Lewis translation, 35).

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