Werner Herzog continued…“This is what I learned”:
Part 2
That Werner Herzog is a lover of language and poetry. He speaks of the witnessing, the taxonomy of Virgil’s Georgics, a paean to the earth and all that grows and grazes there.
Herzog tells of the Icelandic Codex Regius, thought to have been written in the 1270’s. How he was allowed to actually hold the delicate document, made up of 45 vellum leaves, and of its return journey to Reykjavík in 1971 accompanied by the full Danish military escort. He further narrates on the oral traditions of Iceland preserved and reserved for vital consolation. Women whose husbands have been lost at sea, recite all 800 verses of the Codex to purge their grief.
And another note on a language lost, it’s last Aboriginal speaker, isolated in society, drops coins into a vending machine as if listening for the question only he can supply the answer to.
Here are Excerpts from Virgil’s Georgics: Tranlated by H. R. Fairclough
Georgics Book I [43] In the dawning spring, when icy streams trickle from snowy mountains, and the crumbling clod breaks at the Zephyr’s touch, even then would I have my bull groan over the deep-driven plough, and the share glisten when rubbed by the furrow. That field only answers the covetous farmer’s prayer which twice has felt the sun and twice the frost; from it boundless harvests burst the granaries. And ere our iron cleaves an unknown plain, be it first our care to learn the winds and the wavering moods of the sky, the wonted tillage and nature of the ground, what each clime yields and what each disowns. Here corn, there grapes spring more luxuriantly; elsewhere young trees shoot up, and grasses unbidden. See you not, how Tmolus sends us saffron fragrance, India her ivory, the soft Sabaeans their frankincense; but the naked Chalybes give us iron, Pontus the strong-smelling beaver’s oil, and Epirus the Olympian victories of her mares? From the first, Nature laid these laws and eternal covenants on certain lands, even from the day when Deucalion threw stones into the empty world, whence sprang men, a stony race. Come then, and where the earth’s soil is rich, let your stout oxen upturn it straightway, in the year’s first months, and let the clods lie for dusty summer to bake with her ripening suns; but should the land not be fruitful, it will suffice, on the eve of Arcturus’ rising, to raise it lightly with shallow furrow – in the one case, that weeds may not choke the gladsome corn; in the other, that the scant moisture may not desert the barren sand.
Georgics Book III [440] Diseases, too, their causes and tokens, I will teach you. Foul scab attacks sheep, when chilly rain and winter, bristling with hoar frost, have sunk deep into the quick, or when the sweat, unwashed, clings to the shorn flock, and prickly briars tear the flesh. Therefore the keepers bathe the whole flock in fresh streams; the ram is plunged in the pool with his dripping fleece, and let loose to float down the current. Or, after shearing, they smear the body with bitter oil lees, blending sliver scum and native sulphur with pitch from Ida and richly oiled wax, squill, strong hellebore, and black bitumen. Yet no help for their ills is of more avail than when one has dared to cut open with steel the ulcer’s head; the mischief thrives and lives by concealment, while the shepherd refuses to lay healing hands on the wounds, and sits idle, calling upon the gods for happier omens. Nay more, when the pain runs to the very marrow of the bleating victims, there to rage, and when the parching fever preys on the limbs, it is well to turn aside the fiery heat, and within the hoof to lance a vein, throbbing with blood, even as he Bisaltae are wont to do, and the keen Gelonian, when he flees to Rhodope and the wilds of the Getae, and there drinks milk curdled with horses’ blood. Should you see a sheep oft withdraw afar into the soft shade, or listlessly nibble the top of the grass, lagging in the rear, or sink while grazing in the midst of the field and retire, late and lonely, before night’s advance, straightway with the knife check the offence, ere the dread taint spreads through the unwary throng. Not so thick with driving gales sweeps a whirlwind from the sea, as scourges swarm among cattle. Not single victims do diseases seize, but a whole summer’s fold in one stroke, the flock and the hope of the flock, and the whole race, root and branch. Of this may one be witness, should he see – even now, so long after – the towering Alps and the forest of the Noric hills, and the fields of Illyrian Timavus and the shepherds’ realm derelict, and their glades far and wide untenanted.
Georgics Book III [515] But lo, the bull, smoking under the ploughshare’s weight, falls; from his mouth he spurts blood, mingled with foam, and heaves his dying groans. Sadly goes the ploughman, unyokes the steer that sorrows for his brother’s death, and amid its half-done task leaves the share rooted fast. No shades of deep woods, no soft meadows can touch his heart, no stream purer than amber, rolling over the rocks in its course towards the plain; but his flanks are unstrung throughout, numbness weighs upon his languid eyes, and his neck sinks with drooping weight to earth. Of what avail is his toil or his services? What avails it, that he turned with the share the heavy clod? And yet no Massic gifts of Bacchus, no feasts, oft renewed, did harm to him and his. They feed on leaves and simply grass; their cups are clear spring and rivers racing in their course, and no care breaks their healthful slumbers.
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