BOOKS IN ORIGINAL LANGUAGES or TRANSLATED FROM ENGLISH
Storytelling is a human condition (and it is certainly used by non-human species, but translation is waiting on that). Literature is a world-wide manifestation of the condition. I think it is important to pay attention to what language is the home for the storytelling. Not only does Whistlestop carry hundreds of translations of world literature, but where we can we carry the originals, sometimes in dual-language format. For fun we also carry a few titles of contemporary books back-translated into Latin. Try it — you will amazed at how much your brain is fired up when you read a different language!
Aeneid Book VI
Aeneid Book VI
In a momentous publication, Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of the Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem composed sometime between 29 and 19 BC, follows the hero, Aeneas, on his descent into the underworld. In Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, Heaney acknowledged the significance of the poem to his writing, noting that "there's one Virgilian journey that has indeed been a constant presence, and that is Aeneas's venture into the underworld. The motifs in Book VI have been in my head for years--the golden bough, Charon's barge, the quest to meet the shade of the father."
In this new translation, Heaney employs the same deft handling of the original combined with the immediacy of language and sophisticated poetic voice as was on show in his translation of Beowulf, a reimagining which, in the words of James Wood, "created something imperishable and great that is stainless--stainless, because its force as poetry makes it untouchable by the claw of literalism: it lives singly, as an English language poem."