The Aeneid: Books 5-6
Book 5: In which nothing happens. No, really. The action completely stops for a while to allow them to have a party in which they have races and things. I realized while reading this that this was the place that defeated me last time I tried reading this. Fortunately, ricardienne assured me this was only a problem with Book 5 (and maybe 9, we'll see), so I was able to power through it. Still: boring as all heck.
Also, Juno is determined not to change my opinon of the gods being utterly useless and also much more lame than the humans, and so she sends Iris to set Aeneas' ships on fire. (Spoiler: they put out the fire.) This is apparently the best thing she, a GODDESS, can come up with. Seriously, I bet Dido could have come up with five better ideas without even trying, if she'd been thinking along those lines. Anyway, this has basically no effect except to leave some of the Trojans behind to form a settlement in what I assume is another origin-myth thingie.
And Aeneas' helmsman Palinurus dies in what is a surprisingly affecting scene, given that he's shown up maybe twice -- but he is so cool anyway! STUPID GODS. Have I mentioned that yet? It is not at all clear to me why he had to die, except that the gods decided this randomly.
Book 6: For reasons that seem pretty much entirely random and as far as I can tell only because Virgil wanted to show off how well he could write (which is by the way REALLY WELL), Aeneas decides to visit his dad in the Underworld and gets the thirty-cent tour of the whole thing. DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF ANYTHING? NOT THAT I AM DYING TO TALK ABOUT THIS OR ANYTHING. Ahem. First let me get everything else out of the way!
First: I AM STILL MAD AT THE GODS ABOUT PALINURUS, who apparently will never get to go over to the underworld proper, is that right? ALSO DIDO.
Questions:
Poor Theseus sits there, and will sit forever.
...I thought Theseus came back from the underworld?
One sold his country and imposed a tyrant;
One, for a price, made laws and then remade them.
One stormed his daughter's room -- a lawless marriage.
Does Virgil have actual people in mind, or is this just random?
And now for the SQUEE. First, to get it out of the way, there's totally a bit here that Diane Duane quotes in her Star Trek book My Enemy, My Ally (relevant to the Romulans (Rihannsu), naturally) and because I am a Philistine who has never read the Aeneid, I never knew it until now! That was totally cool! (Duane takes a great deal of liberties with her translation, mind, but I really like the beauty and power of it, if not, um, the accuracy. ETA 5-7-13: lignota informs me that Duane takes no more liberties than Ruden, thanks! Anyway, the Latin is below.) Also, I also had no idea that the gate of horn and ivory came from here. Yes, I am totally culturally illiterate.
Latin:
excudent alii spirantia mollius aera
(credo equidem), uiuos ducent de marmore uultus,
orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: 850
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
Ruden:
Others, I know, will beat out softer-breathing
Bronze shapes, or draw from marble living faces,
Excel in pleading cases, chart the sky's paths,
Predict the rising of the constellations.
But Romans, don't forget that world dominion
Is your great craft: peace, and then peaceful customs;
Sparing the conquered, striking down the haughty.
Duane:
Other peoples may yet
more skillfully teach bronze to breathe,
leading outward and loosing
the life lying hidden in marble;
Some may plead causes better,
or using the tools of science
better predict Heaven's moods
and chart the stars changing courses.
But Roman, remember you well
that your own arts are these others:
to govern the nations in power;
to dictate their rule in peace;
to raise up the peoples you have conquered,
and throw down the proud who resist.
And SO. It will surprise none of you who have known me for a while that the whole reason I was interested in reading the Aeneid in the first place is because I have been for years completely and utterly in love with Dante's Divina Commedia, and it seems a bit silly to carry a torch for the Divine Comedy without actually, y'know, having read Virgil.
So. I've been liking the Aeneid so far (except for Book 5 SO BORING WHY), and then I got to this book and, and, and. Oh. OH.
I'm not even sure I can talk about this in a way that will be at all coherent. Just, THIS WAS AMAZING. It's as if a dear friend you loved very much talked all the time about how awesome her mom was whom you'd never met, and one day you met the mom and you could totally see where your friend came from, you could totally see little tics and also big philosophical things they had in common, you could totally see how things the mom thought and believed shaped what your friend thought and believed even though of course they were two entirely different people, and then you just loved your friend more because of the insight into her character that meeting her mom gave you.
All manner of things are entirely clear now. The way that the Divine Comedy is structured, with the spirits of the dead telling Dante both their own stories and Dante's future to him; the way it gathers up and includes stories and senses and metaphysics and logic; all manner of images and idea. And, oh man, Dante basically completely and utterly stole so much of the layout of la città dolente from Virgil, so much so that the early cantos of Hell now read to me as Aeneid fanfic rather than original -- down to the details of the living man making Charon's boat sink a bit, the visualization of the sop to Cerberus. The Wood of the Suicides also clearly owes a lot to Virgil, though Dante gives it his own gloss. Dante: Gary Stu self-insert fanfic writer before it was cool!
So souls are disciplined and pay the price
Of old wrongdoing. Some are splayed, exposed
To hollow winds; a flood submerges some,
Washing out wickedness; fire scorches some pure.
Each bears his own ghosts, then a few are sent
To live in broad Elysium's happy fields,
Till time's great circle is completed, freeing
The hardened stain so the ethereal mind,
The fire of pure air, is left unsullied.
Right there you can see the germ of the seed that grew into both the Inferno and Purgatorio. (Paradiso, of course, is something else entirely, though in structure and form still bears the debt.) Dante's stress is different, of course, and some of this gets changed and/or transformed into something rich and strange (Elysium's happy fields, for instance, turn up both as a not unhappy but somber part of Hell and are transfigured into the glory of the Earthly Paradise at the end of Purgatory), but --
I love Dante in a way I will never love Virgil. (Sorry, Virgil! It's me, not you!) But for the first time I really understand, I really get it, the love and the debt Dante bore to Virgil, why it was Virgil who was Dante's guide, and friend, all through Hell and through Purgatory, why Dante wept for him. To me, Dante went further than Virgil: in the story, in the allegory, and in the writing all three. But he could not have gotten there if Virgil hadn't been there first; if Virgil hadn't showed him the way.
Also, Juno is determined not to change my opinon of the gods being utterly useless and also much more lame than the humans, and so she sends Iris to set Aeneas' ships on fire. (Spoiler: they put out the fire.) This is apparently the best thing she, a GODDESS, can come up with. Seriously, I bet Dido could have come up with five better ideas without even trying, if she'd been thinking along those lines. Anyway, this has basically no effect except to leave some of the Trojans behind to form a settlement in what I assume is another origin-myth thingie.
And Aeneas' helmsman Palinurus dies in what is a surprisingly affecting scene, given that he's shown up maybe twice -- but he is so cool anyway! STUPID GODS. Have I mentioned that yet? It is not at all clear to me why he had to die, except that the gods decided this randomly.
Book 6: For reasons that seem pretty much entirely random and as far as I can tell only because Virgil wanted to show off how well he could write (which is by the way REALLY WELL), Aeneas decides to visit his dad in the Underworld and gets the thirty-cent tour of the whole thing. DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF ANYTHING? NOT THAT I AM DYING TO TALK ABOUT THIS OR ANYTHING. Ahem. First let me get everything else out of the way!
First: I AM STILL MAD AT THE GODS ABOUT PALINURUS, who apparently will never get to go over to the underworld proper, is that right? ALSO DIDO.
Questions:
Poor Theseus sits there, and will sit forever.
...I thought Theseus came back from the underworld?
One sold his country and imposed a tyrant;
One, for a price, made laws and then remade them.
One stormed his daughter's room -- a lawless marriage.
Does Virgil have actual people in mind, or is this just random?
And now for the SQUEE. First, to get it out of the way, there's totally a bit here that Diane Duane quotes in her Star Trek book My Enemy, My Ally (relevant to the Romulans (Rihannsu), naturally) and because I am a Philistine who has never read the Aeneid, I never knew it until now! That was totally cool! (Duane takes a great deal of liberties with her translation, mind, but I really like the beauty and power of it, if not, um, the accuracy. ETA 5-7-13: lignota informs me that Duane takes no more liberties than Ruden, thanks! Anyway, the Latin is below.) Also, I also had no idea that the gate of horn and ivory came from here. Yes, I am totally culturally illiterate.
Latin:
excudent alii spirantia mollius aera
(credo equidem), uiuos ducent de marmore uultus,
orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus
describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent: 850
tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacique imponere morem,
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
Ruden:
Others, I know, will beat out softer-breathing
Bronze shapes, or draw from marble living faces,
Excel in pleading cases, chart the sky's paths,
Predict the rising of the constellations.
But Romans, don't forget that world dominion
Is your great craft: peace, and then peaceful customs;
Sparing the conquered, striking down the haughty.
Duane:
Other peoples may yet
more skillfully teach bronze to breathe,
leading outward and loosing
the life lying hidden in marble;
Some may plead causes better,
or using the tools of science
better predict Heaven's moods
and chart the stars changing courses.
But Roman, remember you well
that your own arts are these others:
to govern the nations in power;
to dictate their rule in peace;
to raise up the peoples you have conquered,
and throw down the proud who resist.
And SO. It will surprise none of you who have known me for a while that the whole reason I was interested in reading the Aeneid in the first place is because I have been for years completely and utterly in love with Dante's Divina Commedia, and it seems a bit silly to carry a torch for the Divine Comedy without actually, y'know, having read Virgil.
So. I've been liking the Aeneid so far (except for Book 5 SO BORING WHY), and then I got to this book and, and, and. Oh. OH.
I'm not even sure I can talk about this in a way that will be at all coherent. Just, THIS WAS AMAZING. It's as if a dear friend you loved very much talked all the time about how awesome her mom was whom you'd never met, and one day you met the mom and you could totally see where your friend came from, you could totally see little tics and also big philosophical things they had in common, you could totally see how things the mom thought and believed shaped what your friend thought and believed even though of course they were two entirely different people, and then you just loved your friend more because of the insight into her character that meeting her mom gave you.
All manner of things are entirely clear now. The way that the Divine Comedy is structured, with the spirits of the dead telling Dante both their own stories and Dante's future to him; the way it gathers up and includes stories and senses and metaphysics and logic; all manner of images and idea. And, oh man, Dante basically completely and utterly stole so much of the layout of la città dolente from Virgil, so much so that the early cantos of Hell now read to me as Aeneid fanfic rather than original -- down to the details of the living man making Charon's boat sink a bit, the visualization of the sop to Cerberus. The Wood of the Suicides also clearly owes a lot to Virgil, though Dante gives it his own gloss. Dante: Gary Stu self-insert fanfic writer before it was cool!
So souls are disciplined and pay the price
Of old wrongdoing. Some are splayed, exposed
To hollow winds; a flood submerges some,
Washing out wickedness; fire scorches some pure.
Each bears his own ghosts, then a few are sent
To live in broad Elysium's happy fields,
Till time's great circle is completed, freeing
The hardened stain so the ethereal mind,
The fire of pure air, is left unsullied.
Right there you can see the germ of the seed that grew into both the Inferno and Purgatorio. (Paradiso, of course, is something else entirely, though in structure and form still bears the debt.) Dante's stress is different, of course, and some of this gets changed and/or transformed into something rich and strange (Elysium's happy fields, for instance, turn up both as a not unhappy but somber part of Hell and are transfigured into the glory of the Earthly Paradise at the end of Purgatory), but --
I love Dante in a way I will never love Virgil. (Sorry, Virgil! It's me, not you!) But for the first time I really understand, I really get it, the love and the debt Dante bore to Virgil, why it was Virgil who was Dante's guide, and friend, all through Hell and through Purgatory, why Dante wept for him. To me, Dante went further than Virgil: in the story, in the allegory, and in the writing all three. But he could not have gotten there if Virgil hadn't been there first; if Virgil hadn't showed him the way.