Works and Days (Penguin Classics)

This review is for the A.E. Stallings translation published March of 2018. Amazon, bizarrely, has all the ratings for previous editions on this page too. I read the kindle edition and found it great for jumping back and forth to notes (which, btw, are fun and informative; not stodgy or academic). The translation reads so smoothly in English one might think it an English original, something some translators think is wrong but is very much right. And the preface was fascinating for someone who's not at all a classicist to read. The only drawback is Hesiod's work. I would not be surprised if his brother (to whom this lecture on all things correct is addressed) stopped speaking to his brother for good.

The exposure I got to Hesiod in college was both too much and too little at the same time. There was a lot that I encountered in translation, but so little of it was absorbed. Old translations really made Hesiod an archaic poet. Stalling makes Hesiod a singer and lets some personality out of these old texts.I also highly recommend readers dig into the introduction and notes—where Stallings also lets her own personality and judgments and scholarship slip in. Being able to place Hesiod in a historical context helped me make sense of these poems.

I bought this book for research and found its content very helpful. The translation is interesting. However, the book itself fell apart very quickly (and I don't handle books roughly). The cover has fallen off and pages are coming loose. That aspect is very disappointing and does not reflect well on the publishers of Penguin Classics.

I can't judge how good of a translation this is, but it flows as poetry and it is a great way to enjoy Hesiod.

Good translation. This extraordinarily beautiful poem shows that the people who lived 2500 years ago were no different than us. Hesiod' commonsense, clearheaded, heartfelt, eloquence is true poetry as oppossed to the obscurantist scribble that passes for poetry in the 21st century. 'Works and Days' is a treasure of human civilization and we are blessed that it has been preserved for us.

Good translation

Most of the reviews listed here are for other translations of the same work. In some of these misplaced reviews it is obvious that they are for different books. In others, there is no internal evidence in the review itself that it is for something else, but I would say all the reviews are therefore suspect. What I would like to say is that A.E. Stallings is a wonderful poet and if a review is not five stars it is probably referring to some other book. I just checked the "look inside" feature that Amazon is offering for this book, the sample you can read for free and it is for a very mediocre prose translation that uses pseudo-antique diction. I can't believe how badly Amazon has botched this up. A.E. Stallings deserves better.

The vagaries of history are often quite interesting. That it has given us two home economics books separated by over two thousand years is even more delightful. Hesiod's "Works and Days" of the 700s BCE is quite simply one of the first complete and personal works of Western civilization. While "The Goodman of Paris" from 1393 is of unknown authorship, it is even more beautifully personal. Both books are guides to the proper maintenance of the homestead.Hesiod's writes from the perspective of the landed peasant emerging from the Grecian Dark Ages and aims directly to the heart of the struggle for survival in a changing world. The object of his pontification is his never-do-well brother who has managed to mismanage his land inheritance from his father's estate. Hesiod's home is also his agricultural estate and his only domestic means of survival. He is a frugal, gods-fearing, and pragmatic farmer with little regard or need for the sins of the city. But Hesiod is not a naive bumpkin - in times of need his has left his small village for the greater world in search of monies through the toil at oars of commerce and warfare.The Goodman of Paris on the other hand is a man of substance, an haute bourgeoisie in the capital of Medieval France balanced between High Gothic and the Black Death and social instability. His focus is directing his new and young wife in how to manage her domestic duties efficiently and effectively. Unlike Hesiod, his approach is not confrontational but loving. There is an overlying tenderness that is refreshing in our era of nuclear-exploding families and much wisdom to be considered for our own domestic tranquility.For anyone who wants to enter the world of the past both these works are as close as one can get. You will be enveloped in the thoughts and feelings of the men of these eras and discover how little in some ways the nature of man has changed despite the technologies surrounding us.