Le Guin, Ursula K.: Lavinia
Lavinia
Writer: Ursula K. Le Guin
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 280
It's funny. I haven't read any fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin since 2005. I've read two books of her essays since then and have enjoyed them thoroughly, and even though I've been buying various fictional works of hers, I simply haven't read them.
But when I saw that Le Guin had a new, hardcover release this year, that was all the excuse I needed to go out and get it. And I saw no reason not to sit down to read it and get it under my belt.
The premise: in Vergil's The Aeneid, Aeneas is fated to fight for the Latin king's daughter, Lavinia. Lavinia is never given a voice in the poem, but in this book, Le Guin corrects that mistake. Here is Lavinia's tale, of her peaceful country, the war between her suitors, her greatest love and the short time she was fated to spend with him.
Spoilers ahead.
I'll be honest, I'm not all that familiar with Rome, its history, or its myth. Okay, okay, I'm a bit familiar with the myth (the stories of the gods and goddesses always did fascinate me). And as far as the Greeks go, well, I am familiar with Homer and his works (though I've read neither The Illiad nor The Odyssey in their entirety, I'm familiar with the mythologies, and for kicks, I am familiar with their art (thanks to my undergrad course in Ancient Art).
All of this is to preface my own connection and reactions to Le Guin's book. Yes, I'd heard of the name Aeneas, but never any details. That he played a role in the Trojan War surprised me, and I never knew that it was his destiny to found what would become Rome.
Which left me a little lost when I started reading. Granted, I'm getting this all from Lavinia's POV, but still, I found my attention wandering. I wasn't interested in the setting or cultural details, and often, especially at the beginning, I felt I was reading a rather familiar tale: a pivotal moment of history/myth told through the eyes of a woman. Marion Zimmer Bradley is famous for this, and she's not the only one. Even though the fact remains that I've read very few stories in this tradition, I feel like I've read the whole gambit from both published and unpublished authors.
What it took to get me grounded in this tale were two things: 1) the poet's arrival in the story and 2) skipping to the afterward (which really, for my money, should've been an introduction) and simply READING Le Guin's inspiration for this tale and what she set out to do. She states that Vergil's epic poem is so difficult to translate and still keep the music of it, but in a way, that's what she set out to do with this tale, only to translate it into another form, and to continue what Vergil himself did not finish.
Even as my interest was snagged, it was difficult to focus on the tale. Yes, Lavinia makes decisions and she does everything she can to be active in her fate, yet much of her role is the observer. No, I don't expect to have Lavinia dress up as a soldier and go fight with the men, not by any means, but it's a difficult thing to read when the real action of the tale, the pivotal moments of the story, are often off-stage, in the hands of the characters not narrating the tale. Again, this whole book felt all too familiar.
Yet, Le Guin is careful to reveal and stress the importance of womens' culture in these Latin times, and that I appreciated. The tension and conflict between Lavinia and her mother, Amata, was very well drawn, and I loved how the old king could not see the truth of things, despite the obvious. And while I found myself stewing in confusion at times over the threaded idea that Lavinia herself would not exist without the poet creating her, I did like how the poet, by giving her no voice nor any life save a name in his poem, granted her a kind of immortality. It took me until the end to realize the symbolism that theme that Le Guin was stressing through-out, and now that I've got it, it'll be fun on a re-read to see how that really threads through the book. The ending is a little odd though, and I'm not sure I can appreciate it WITHOUT that re-read, because again, the sense of immortality that Lavinia exists in is rather fuzzy, without lines or boundaries, and it makes it difficult to follow those sections.
Still, Le Guin's goal was to translate Vergil's poetry into the poetry of prose, and in that, I feel she succeeds. The book is a smooth read, even though my attention wandered. Le Guin poses such a beautiful dilemma for Lavinia herself, in choosing what it means to marry a man that will bring her country to war, and to love a man with whom she's only got three years. She cannot change fate, and yet, she does her best to try.
My Rating
Buy the Paperback: it's worth the money, no doubt, but I feel I'd almost rather waited for this in trade. I'm glad I've got it and I'm glad I've read it, but save for a serious collector of Le Guin's works (or hell, for the serious collector period), there's little about this book, to me, that inspires an immediate read, hence the curious could easily wait. Though for anyone who's a fan of Le Guin, or for anyone who's a fan of the feminist revisions of history and myth (like Zimmer Bradley), or anyone who's a fan of The Aeneid, you definitely should get your hands on this title, paperback or not. The writing is, in its own way, poetry, and after all, this IS Le Guin we're talking about, here.
Next up:
Book: The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
Graphic Novel: The Watchmen by Alan Moore