Der Anspruch des Dichters in Vergils Georgika. Dichtertum und Heilsweg. - BUCHHEIT, V.,

Darmstadt, 1972. X,218p. Paperback. Name and date to inside front cover. Pages a bit yellowed. Series: Impulse der Forschung, Band 8.Antiquarian
?Professor Buchheits new monograph is devoted to a definition of Virgil?s self-consciousness as a poet. He watches in particular how the originality of Virgil?s claims and pretentious as imaginative writer is supported and affirmed by comparison with the Roman literary tradition from Ennius to Lucretius and Catullus. Virgil fuses for the first time in Latin letters awareness of his own unique accomplishment with confidence in the productive power of poetry. This union is most clearly seen, according to Buchheit, in the opening lines of the Third Georgic, especially when they are analysed with a close eye on the deservedly famous ?laudes agricolarum? which end ?Georgics? 2. B. marshals abundant evidence to support what most critics see in the opening lines of the Third Georgic - Virgil?s claims of a poetic ?triumph? over Greece. But the force of this evidence is largely utilised by B. to establish the intimacy of Virgil and Octavian, the thoughtful poet-hero and the soldier-statesman with his more realistic goals and intentions. The special poetic purpose behind this intimacy, as B. envisions it, is revealed by his book?s subtitle: ?Dichtertum und Heilsweg?. Octavian?s is the way of salvation and Virgil is his ?fates?. B. puts the matter bot generally and specifically. The basic idea of the ?Georgics? is the ?Wiedergewinnung und Verwirklichung der golden en Ziet?(p.170). (?) Under Octavian?s guidance (and the poet?s tutelage) Italy is to become both ?Heilslandschaft? and ?Kulturlandschaft und kulturelles Zentrum? (p.111 et al.). (?) Though this is scarcely a novel thesis, it is here argued with passion and wide-ranging erudition. (?) In brief, such a totally optimistic view of Virgil as Buchheit proposes was more the critical rule once, and scholars will benefit from its renaissance in such a provocative, diligently argued guise. I suspect, however, even as we realise their streak of idealism, we must also acknowledge that the intellectual concerns of Rome?s greatest poet are both more mysterious and enigmatic as well as more universal than Buchheit is willing to allow.? ((MICAHEL C.J. PUTNAM in Classical Philology, 1976, pp.279-282).