Daphnis and Chloe

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In 1831 Goethe called Daphnis and Chloe 'a masterpiece ... in which Understanding, Art, and Taste appear at their highest point, and beside which the good Virgil retreats somewhat into the background ... One would do well to read it every year, to be instructed by it again and again, and to receive anew the impression of its great beauty. 'Touching yet humorous, naive and at the same time highly sophisticated, Daphnis and Chloe is the story of a shepherd boy and girl who fall desperately in love yet find themselves facing great obstacles, because in their passion they behave, as the author says, even more awkwardly 'than rams and ewes.'. This sole surviving bucolic novel of ancient Greek origin was written by Longus, a poet about whom nothing else is known, and dates to about the mid third century A.D. The lyrical beauty and sensual frankness of the story have found admirers from Shakespeare to Jacob Burckhardt, and have exerted lasting influence on European literature. It was not until 1810 that the first complete manuscript of Daphnis and Chloe was discovered, in Florence. This provided the basis for the present, superb translation, done in 1956 by Paul Turner. Marc Chagall's illustrations to the pastoral tale, which is set on the island of Lesbos, were inspired by his first-hand experience of Greece. His lithographs combine the Mediterranean lushness of the realm of Pan and Eros with memories of Russian Jewish folktales, and celebrate the lovers in a setting whose marvels of colour evoke Eden with a sumptuousness that is inimitably Chagall. Art of the highest order united with poetry of timeless appeal - the result is an irresistibly delightful book.

Nothing is known about Longus. His name may indicate that he was a native of Italy who wrote in Greek.

Paul Turner was born in 1917, and educated at Winchester and King’s College, Cambridge. He served in the RNVR (air branch) during the war, and then taught English literature at London, Cambridge, and Ankara universities, before joining the Oxford English Faculty in 1964. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He has published a volume on the Victorians in the Oxford History of English Literature, and his translations from Greek, Latin, and German include Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, Lucian’s Satirical Sketches, and Ovid’s Art of Love. His critical biography of Thomas Hardy came out in 1998, and his edition of Robert Browning’s Aristophanes’ Apology in 2001. In 2002 he was made an MBE.