Word: fitzgerald
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...debate was complicated and vitriolic, full of emotional arguments, thunderous Sunday sermons and Irish ironies. It split the medical and legal professions, divided the Republic of Ireland's political parties and prompted Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald to make a public apology for ever having started the fuss. But in a country of 3.1 million Roman Catholics, 96% of the population, the result was never in doubt: by a vote of 66% to 33%, the Irish electorate last week declared itself firmly in favor of a constitutional amendment that would ban abortions...
...notorious love affair with Dido, Queen of Carthage, is arranged by Venus, Aeneas' mother, who simply wants to guarantee her son's physical safety in a potentially hostile land. The goddess did not guess the damage her meddling would cause to Aeneas' reputation. But Fitzgerald's translation makes vivid the sufferings of both Dido and her anointed suitor: "Duty-bound,/ Aeneas, though he struggled with desire/ To calm and comfort her in all her pain." And he, "shaken still/ With love of her, yet took the course heaven gave him/ And went back to the fleet...
...Fitzgerald's language gives Aeneas his due as a man, without going beyond the character Virgil portrayed: a weapon of national purpose fired in the Homeric forge...
This English version of a cool but fascinating epic seems flawless. (Fitzgerald, 72, has already done superb modern translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey.) But such judgments are ephemeral...
...heroic couplet: "Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by Fate,/ And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate." During the Victorian era, Aeneas emerged in the English of William Morris and other writers as a Romantic brooder well versed in Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. Fitzgerald's version, a century hence, may seem equally dated. But if translations capture the essence of their culture, then this Aeneid, in its supple beauty and clarity, is the best news this age has had in a long time...