In two versions of Virgil’s Georgics, one by John Dryden in the early 1700s, and one by Joseph Davidson in the late 1800s, Virgil’s depictions of fruit tree grafting and plant management are altered in the specific interests of each translator. Dryden offers an animation and glamorization of Virgil’s words and the process of resource management, specifically tree grafting, that is in sharp contrast to Davidson’s objective and informative translation of Virgil’s work. This is evident through the authors’ usage of form, tone, and word choice.

Firstly, the difference in form in each of the translations drastically impacts their subsequent meanings. Dryden’s translation and transformation of Virgil’s work into an epic poem in of itself frames the tree grafting process as one of grandeur, not even taking into account the alterations Dryden had to make to make the Georgics into an epic poem. The form of the poem immortalizes Virgil’s work and changes its purpose. The Georgics in poem form functions more like art than instruction; its purpose is more entertainment than informational. By contrast, Davison’s literal translation of the Georgics functions mostly to inform. The work is not broken up by poetic lines, rather it reads more like text. The information is written in paragraphs, and some parts of the work contain more explanation and detail than in Dryden’s translation. By choosing to form the Georgics into a poem, Dryden glamorizes the process of tree grafting and sustainability as a whole; he writes not to inform the audience how to do something, but to influence their emotions about doing said thing.

Tone and word choice in Dryden’s translation work in a very similar way. Dryden’s translation naturally offers a very poetic, evocative picture of tree grafting. He anthropomorphizes and reads into the feelings of the trees, writing that “happy fruit [advance] to the skies,” and that “the mother plant admires the leaves unknown / Of alien trees, and apples not her own.” He makes it seem like the plants graciously accept the grafting process even though the mother is growing “alien” limbs, and “apples not her own.” Grafting, and resource management as a whole, is framed in this way as a sort of taming of these plants, a necessary process to be done to resources by humans. By contrast, Davidson writes about the grafting process, “often we see the boughs of one tree transformed, with no disadvantage, into those of another, and a pear tree, being changed, bear ingrafted apples” (51). Though it is still framed in a positive light like Dryden’s translation, Davidson lacks the same anthropomorphism. Nature in Davidson’s poem is mostly self-determinant; humans are not the center of the grafting process like in Dryden’s translation. Again, in this instance Dryden glamorizes sustainability and informs the reader’s emotions, rather than focusing on providing informative, detailed descriptions of how to do something.

Works Cited

Virgil, and John Dryden. “Book II.” Virgil's Georgics , Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 483.

Virgil, and Joseph Davidson. “Book II.” The Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil , Handy Book Co., 1894, pp. 50–51, archive.org/details/bucolicsgeorgics00virguoft/page/50/mode/2up.