honors

Unfortunately the internet has given me a distorted idea of poetry. Instead of imagining long verses about nature and hard work I imagine cheap internet graphics and pink bolded letters saying the same thing as the poem did before it just in a different order. I have always enjoyed poetry, what I would call real poetry the type of poems that walk of the page and burn inside your mind. That is what impressed me the most with the georgic poem. The part about all of the animals, crops, and people dying made me cringe. This might not be the lasting effect of this poem.
While I was thinking of how this poem influenced me personally, I thought about how this poem has touched hundreds of people. Not only was it read during it’s time, but it is still read today. I found it interesting when Kim Johnson said that we still read it because we are intrigued by the conflict of idea in it. I wondered if this is so. Seeing as I have never actually read full poem I do not feel like I have a valid opinion in this debate, but from what I was able to gather during the lecture this does seem to be a dominating attraction to the poem.
The main idea was that we are all run by fate, and that we are walking down a road of life already laid out for us. One the other hand Virgil avidly states that the work be done “himself”, and that you might have to work to fulfill fate. This section reminded me of Voltaire’s Candide and the ending were Cadide goes and cultivates his garden. Was it fate driving him through all of his experiences, and did he contradict fate when he stopped and “cultivated his garden” instead of I don’t know “going with the flow.” Personally I am not a believer in fate, but in work. Yet, I think that exploring the ideal of fate controlling my life is just as Virgilian explains it, contradictory in every way. How could we be controlled by fate if we still have the choice to do something, but are the choices we make already anticipated. If our choices are already anticipated then why in the world do we worry about making choices so much?
I am encouraged to read this poem because I want to see for myself what Virgil’s contradictory opinion is.