The Aeneid (51 page)
First, mindful of Virgil’s relationship with Homer, their kinship and their contrasts, I have drawn on my translations of the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
to suggest an Homeric echo here, an adaptation there, in the
Aeneid
. This, for example, is the simile that describes Achilles’ pursuit of Hector as he races to escape his mortal enemy. One pursuing, the other pursued, and both caught in a blur of perpetual motion——until Zeus with his golden scales decrees Hector’s death, and Apollo deserts the hero, and Achilles, aided by Athena, takes his life. However vivid the moment and the simile that keeps its pace, the situation is strangely removed from us at first. It occurs in the third person, and the action itself in the past tense, as if to stress how far beyond our reach is Hector’s fate, how remote and impersonal his doom.
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
to suggest an Homeric echo here, an adaptation there, in the
Aeneid
. This, for example, is the simile that describes Achilles’ pursuit of Hector as he races to escape his mortal enemy. One pursuing, the other pursued, and both caught in a blur of perpetual motion——until Zeus with his golden scales decrees Hector’s death, and Apollo deserts the hero, and Achilles, aided by Athena, takes his life. However vivid the moment and the simile that keeps its pace, the situation is strangely removed from us at first. It occurs in the third person, and the action itself in the past tense, as if to stress how far beyond our reach is Hector’s fate, how remote and impersonal his doom.
endless as in a dream . . .
when a man can’t catch another fleeing on ahead
and he can never escape nor his rival overtake him—
so the one could never run the other down in his speed
nor the other spring away. . . .(
Iliad
22.237-41)
But Virgil “translates” Homer’s simile to tell another story as Aeneas pursues his enemy Turnus to his death:
Just as in dreams
when the nightly spell of sleep falls heavy on our eyes
and we seem entranced by longing to keep on racing on,
no use, in the midst of one last burst of speed
we sink down, consumed, our tongue won’t work,
and tried and true, the power that filled our body
fails—we strain but the voice and words won’t follow.
So with Turnus. . . .(12.1053-60)
As Michael Putnam remarks, “Vergil humanizes this description in an extraordinary way. He turns third-person narrative—one man chases, one flees—into first-person. It is now we, the readers, who suffer the dream, we who follow” (Spence, p. 91). We are drawn into a sympathy for, and even an identification with, Turnus, until the Fury in Aeneas could kill us all in the same moment that it chokes off Turnus’ life. The more personal our involvement in his fate, the more inhuman it becomes. The two perspectives, Homeric and Virgilian, could hardly be more opposed, and their difference is underscored by Rossi, describing the recurrent immediacy of Virgil (pp. 148-49), and Andrew Ford, the far-off time and place of Homer’s actions (pp. 52-55). Yet the final impression that each poet presents is equally intense. The terror that Homer creates by turning us into spectators—struck by a life-or-death event that sweeps us back to an era older and yet more vivid than our own—Virgil creates through direct engagement: we are racers too, and like Turnus we are transfixed by Aeneas’ sword.
Central to the give-and-take between the two great poets, as this translator sees it (his vision largely shaped by Putnam and others), is Virgil’s cumulative, Homeric presentation of Aeneas. As with an Homeric hero—unlike some later heroes whose qualities are winnowed down to a few strong traits—by gradually enlarging Aeneas’ qualities, which multiply as his situations multiply about him, Virgil displays his hero in the round, not as the distillation but the sum of all his parts.
“What hero?” asked “the plain sailor man” whom Yeats befriended once, according to a famous anecdote mentioned in the Introduction and recorded in Ezra Pound’s
ABC of Reading
(p. 44):
ABC of Reading
(p. 44):
[the sailor] took a notion to study Latin, and his teacher [Yeats] tried him with Virgil; after many lessons he asked him something about the hero.Said the sailor: “What hero?”Said the teacher: “What hero, why, Aeneas, the hero.”Said the sailor: “Ach, a hero, him a hero? Bigob, I t’ought he waz a priest.”
So have others, impressed, perhaps, by Aeneas’ many acts of service to a higher power, which often seem performed at the price of his own self-assertion. But however faceless Aeneas may appear in the first half of the
Aeneid
—although that half includes his narrative of the fall of Troy, where he strives at first to be a headlong Iliadic hero, and his desperate grief at the loss of his wife, Creusa—throughout the second half of the poem he begins to be himself. The crux of his career, it seems, is his visit to the Underworld—“the dream center of the sixth book” as Arthur Hanson sees it (Luce, vol. 1, p. 697)—where Aeneas witnesses his father’s visionary pageant of the Roman chiefs to come. From that experience, no matter how frail Aeneas’ understanding or flawed his memory of it may be—and the Introduction clearly demonstrates his limits—he emerges from the Underworld as nothing more and nothing less than human. Moreover, bearing the mantle of his mission on his shoulders, which once had borne his father, he is “fired . . . with a love of glory still to come” (6.1025).
Aeneid
—although that half includes his narrative of the fall of Troy, where he strives at first to be a headlong Iliadic hero, and his desperate grief at the loss of his wife, Creusa—throughout the second half of the poem he begins to be himself. The crux of his career, it seems, is his visit to the Underworld—“the dream center of the sixth book” as Arthur Hanson sees it (Luce, vol. 1, p. 697)—where Aeneas witnesses his father’s visionary pageant of the Roman chiefs to come. From that experience, no matter how frail Aeneas’ understanding or flawed his memory of it may be—and the Introduction clearly demonstrates his limits—he emerges from the Underworld as nothing more and nothing less than human. Moreover, bearing the mantle of his mission on his shoulders, which once had borne his father, he is “fired . . . with a love of glory still to come” (6.1025).
So Aeneas prepares for the second half of the
Aeneid,
Virgil’s “greater labor” (7.50), which tells how the Trojans fight to found an Italian settlement where Rome will one day rise. That task requires of the hero, in addition to his growing prowess, a growing resolve to endure the hardships he must face, as his father’s ghost describes them (6.1024-29), and the dual fate that he must undertake. For if the gradual, cumulative growth of Aeneas is Homeric, his ultimate identity within the
Aeneid
is not. He is at last as far from Achilles—who will blaze out on the crest of battle, his tomb to be a beacon on a headland—as he is from Odysseus, “the man of twists and turns” (
Odyssey
1.1), the wily paterfamilias who wins home to reclaim his wife and son, his father and his kingdom here and now. But Aeneas, for all his potential, ends in a paradoxical position. He is both deprived and empowered, a lost and a latent hero, too late to impersonate Achilles or Odysseus fully, too early to live within Augustus’ promised reign. Aeneas will live, in fact, only three years after his marriage to Lavinia, and so he will die 330 years before the founding of Rome. Cut short as he is, however, it seems a hopeful sign that his arrival at the site should fall one calendar day before Augustus’ triumph a thousand years thereafter.
Aeneid,
Virgil’s “greater labor” (7.50), which tells how the Trojans fight to found an Italian settlement where Rome will one day rise. That task requires of the hero, in addition to his growing prowess, a growing resolve to endure the hardships he must face, as his father’s ghost describes them (6.1024-29), and the dual fate that he must undertake. For if the gradual, cumulative growth of Aeneas is Homeric, his ultimate identity within the
Aeneid
is not. He is at last as far from Achilles—who will blaze out on the crest of battle, his tomb to be a beacon on a headland—as he is from Odysseus, “the man of twists and turns” (
Odyssey
1.1), the wily paterfamilias who wins home to reclaim his wife and son, his father and his kingdom here and now. But Aeneas, for all his potential, ends in a paradoxical position. He is both deprived and empowered, a lost and a latent hero, too late to impersonate Achilles or Odysseus fully, too early to live within Augustus’ promised reign. Aeneas will live, in fact, only three years after his marriage to Lavinia, and so he will die 330 years before the founding of Rome. Cut short as he is, however, it seems a hopeful sign that his arrival at the site should fall one calendar day before Augustus’ triumph a thousand years thereafter.
For Aeneas may well be, particularly after Jupiter’s abdication from the workings of human history in Book 10, “the loneliest man in literature” (Gransden, 1996, p. xix), yet he is still the founder of his people. As C. S. Lewis sees him, he is “a ghost of Troy until he becomes the father of Rome” (p. 35). That consummation is incomplete. Even at the end of the poem, the hero remains a work in progress, and for Virgil to pretend otherwise would be too comforting, too pat and absolute. But Aeneas has made an impressive start. He has begun to unify his sense of duty and his sense of desire, and the two together will comprise his sense of destiny. In word and action both, he has begun to meet that destiny, for all its demands, with stoic endurance, a warrior’s readiness, and even Homeric ferocity when required: a range of strengths that marks his enlargement throughout the
Aeneid
and most visibly in its second half. His
aristeia
—his heroic demonstration of excellence—is proof not only of his martial prowess but also, especially in his compassion for a world at war, of his emerging moral awareness, his humanity and its powers.
Aeneid
and most visibly in its second half. His
aristeia
—his heroic demonstration of excellence—is proof not only of his martial prowess but also, especially in his compassion for a world at war, of his emerging moral awareness, his humanity and its powers.
Yet for all his progress, Aeneas has some way to go. His destiny, like his character, remains double-edged, a “yoking by violence together” of opposing tugs, of profit and loss, of gain and bitter grief. Indeed as Aeneas wrestles with his destiny, so his creator wrestles with the epic tradition, its gods and its heroes, its rigors and rewards. For Virgil, as we have known for long, thanks to Adam Parry, Putnam, and others, was a poet
agonistes,
one whose hardest struggle may have been to find his voice, or rather his two voices, as Parry heard them (1989, pp. 78-96), and to forge a bond between them. One voice is devoted to the emperor Augustus, who, to borrow from Wendell Clausen’s formulation (Introduction, Conington-Symonds trans., 1965, p. xv), may have urged, though he did not order the
Aeneid
. This voice is the public, “official” voice of imperial triumph, that sounds out the blare of the battle trumpets, the drumbeat of bronze squadrons marching in formation. The other voice is the muted, intimate voice of loss and suffering, the personal voice that bravely confronts, and unforgettably laments, “the burdens of mortality [that] touch the heart” (1.559) and the anguish that appears throughout the
Aeneid
in many haunting forms, the “Italian fields forever / receding on the horizon” (3.582-83), and the beloved ghosts that vanish, “sifting through [the] fingers, / light as wind, quick as a dream in flight” (2.985-86).
agonistes,
one whose hardest struggle may have been to find his voice, or rather his two voices, as Parry heard them (1989, pp. 78-96), and to forge a bond between them. One voice is devoted to the emperor Augustus, who, to borrow from Wendell Clausen’s formulation (Introduction, Conington-Symonds trans., 1965, p. xv), may have urged, though he did not order the
Aeneid
. This voice is the public, “official” voice of imperial triumph, that sounds out the blare of the battle trumpets, the drumbeat of bronze squadrons marching in formation. The other voice is the muted, intimate voice of loss and suffering, the personal voice that bravely confronts, and unforgettably laments, “the burdens of mortality [that] touch the heart” (1.559) and the anguish that appears throughout the
Aeneid
in many haunting forms, the “Italian fields forever / receding on the horizon” (3.582-83), and the beloved ghosts that vanish, “sifting through [the] fingers, / light as wind, quick as a dream in flight” (2.985-86).
Time and again one hears the two Virgilian voices at odds, echoing an opposition between action and reflection, patriotism and personal assertion, public exultation and wrenching private sorrow. Rather than hear the two voices clashing, in fact, it may be the modern preference, in re ponse to dubious, often shattered national hopes, to hear in Virgil’s lines the private voice to the exclusion of the public. His version of “the price of empire,” as it is often called, is very high indeed, and it extends from the deaths that end the majority of books in the
Aeneid,
to the poem’s grim, unforgiving perspective at the end, to the legacy of suffering it bequeaths to all of us. For it seems to be a price we keep on paying, in the loss of blood and treasure, time-worn faith and hard-won hope, down to the present day.
Aeneid,
to the poem’s grim, unforgiving perspective at the end, to the legacy of suffering it bequeaths to all of us. For it seems to be a price we keep on paying, in the loss of blood and treasure, time-worn faith and hard-won hope, down to the present day.
Yet both of Virgil’s voices ask to be heard, even though their relationship may remain ambiguous. That is one of the reasons the poem seems to stop but never end. Another is that much of the hero’s work, especially that of adjusting to a postwar era, is still to be performed, and there are prophecies—Creusa’s about her husband’s second wife (2.972), and Jupiter’s about the nationhood of Aeneas’ people (1.304-55)—still to be fulfilled. And yet another reason, as the Introduction recounts, is that Virgil left instructions at his death that the
Aeneid,
still unfinished, be destroyed. For he thought it needed three more years of licking into shape, time spent, perhaps, in harmonizing the voices he had sounded out. Or was he simply driven by his perfectionism as a poet? It is impossible to say, but fortunately, as we know, Augustus countermanded Virgil’s “final orders” and preserved the
Aeneid
as we have it now. And so, despite the conclusiveness of Turnus’ death, the poem still feels open-ended, its eventual outcome “‘something evermore about to be’” (Wordsworth, quoted by Gransden, 1984, p. 209)—an effect that owes a good deal to Virgil’s choice of the historical present as his favored tense. For it may enable his two voices, one devoted to Roman prowess, the other to its human costs, to be held in suspension, side by side, as opposites that share the Virgilian experience of power and pathos both. The saddest poem one may know may be among the strongest.
Aeneid,
still unfinished, be destroyed. For he thought it needed three more years of licking into shape, time spent, perhaps, in harmonizing the voices he had sounded out. Or was he simply driven by his perfectionism as a poet? It is impossible to say, but fortunately, as we know, Augustus countermanded Virgil’s “final orders” and preserved the
Aeneid
as we have it now. And so, despite the conclusiveness of Turnus’ death, the poem still feels open-ended, its eventual outcome “‘something evermore about to be’” (Wordsworth, quoted by Gransden, 1984, p. 209)—an effect that owes a good deal to Virgil’s choice of the historical present as his favored tense. For it may enable his two voices, one devoted to Roman prowess, the other to its human costs, to be held in suspension, side by side, as opposites that share the Virgilian experience of power and pathos both. The saddest poem one may know may be among the strongest.
So whether Aeneas is “the loneliest man in literature” or “the founder of his people,” or something of both, is a matter of prophecy, for it concerns a future still unfolding, even now. To recall the opening lines of Auden’s “Secondary Epic”——in the light of the historical present, hindsight may make a bit more sense as foresight than we thought. “Prophecy is really hard,” an American sage once said, “especially about the future.” But a few things may be ventured even so. One is Sara Mack’s conclusion: “The
Aeneid,
rooted in time, becomes itself timeless, for all time. It involves all its readers in Rome’s destiny; it makes us all Romans” (p. 87). That is the paradox of the historical present: it makes the eternal timely, the timely eternal. So since we are Romans all, their story still resounds within us, reading in private, and at times aloud, of Roman greatness or Roman grief, or both at once.
Aeneid,
rooted in time, becomes itself timeless, for all time. It involves all its readers in Rome’s destiny; it makes us all Romans” (p. 87). That is the paradox of the historical present: it makes the eternal timely, the timely eternal. So since we are Romans all, their story still resounds within us, reading in private, and at times aloud, of Roman greatness or Roman grief, or both at once.
No, Virgil, no:
Not even the first of the Romans can learn
His Roman history in the future tense,
Not even to serve your political turn;
Hindsight as foresight makes no sense.
What shall we hear when we read the
Aeneid
today? The story of Aeneas’ bleak reward as Eliot describes it? “Hardly more than a narrow beachhead and a political marriage in a weary middle age: his youth interred, its shadow moving with the shades the other side of Cumae” (1957, p. 70)? Or worse, as Hanson hears the
Aeneid,
a story that stops “suicidally where it began, without resolving the conflicts it so forcefully portrays” (Luce, vol. 1, p. 700). Or as Clausen hears it, more com plexly still, a story of affirmation as well as of regret, “a perception of Roman history as a long Pyrrhic victory of the human spirit that makes Virgil his country’s truest historian” (Commager, p. 86). And so he may speak, from a distance that seems to narrow every year, to our own history as well, particularly to the tug of war between “private life, public destiny,” as Garry Wills would phrase it, that Aeneas begins to reconcile within himself, but that tears apart the lives of many modern readers. As Auden says of Virgil, “Behind your verse so masterfully made / We hear the weeping of a Muse betrayed” (“Secondary Epic”). Yet we can also hear Augustus’ triumph over Antony at Actium, and the ghost of Anchises who foretells the power of Rome to place the world beneath the rule of law.
Aeneid
today? The story of Aeneas’ bleak reward as Eliot describes it? “Hardly more than a narrow beachhead and a political marriage in a weary middle age: his youth interred, its shadow moving with the shades the other side of Cumae” (1957, p. 70)? Or worse, as Hanson hears the
Aeneid,
a story that stops “suicidally where it began, without resolving the conflicts it so forcefully portrays” (Luce, vol. 1, p. 700). Or as Clausen hears it, more com plexly still, a story of affirmation as well as of regret, “a perception of Roman history as a long Pyrrhic victory of the human spirit that makes Virgil his country’s truest historian” (Commager, p. 86). And so he may speak, from a distance that seems to narrow every year, to our own history as well, particularly to the tug of war between “private life, public destiny,” as Garry Wills would phrase it, that Aeneas begins to reconcile within himself, but that tears apart the lives of many modern readers. As Auden says of Virgil, “Behind your verse so masterfully made / We hear the weeping of a Muse betrayed” (“Secondary Epic”). Yet we can also hear Augustus’ triumph over Antony at Actium, and the ghost of Anchises who foretells the power of Rome to place the world beneath the rule of law.
So, if the two voices are concurrent in Virgil’s time and ours, might they be dissonant yet moving, with proper encouragement, toward a state of harmony? Or might they work together even more effectively? Might one voice reinforce the other, conspiring to make the modern reader, like Aeneas, more complete, more accepting of uncertainties, and so perhaps more seasoned and humane, as Virgil calls us toward a future far beyond our ken and our control? His “ocean-roll of rhythm” may well serve, as another has suggested, quoting Arnold, to “bring / the eternal note of sadness in.” A note we cannot, should not avoid. For Virgil’s world of tears, like that of Keats, may become a “vale of soul-making” after all, a place to restore ourselves and our societies to wholeness, health, and peace.
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