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Aeneid
Long a master of the crafts of Homeric translation and of rhapsodic performance, Stanley Lombardo now turns to the quintessential epic of Roman antiquity, a work with deep roots in the Homeric tradition. With characteristic virtuosity, he delivers a rendering of the Aeneid as compelling as his groundbreaking translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, yet one that��like the Aeneid itself��conveys a unique epic sensibility and a haunting artistry all its own.
W. R. Johnson��s Introduction makes an ideal companion to the translation, offering brilliant insight into the legend of Aeneas; the contrasting roles of the gods, fate, and fortune in Homeric versus Virgilian epic; the character of Aeneas as both wanderer and warrior; Aeneas�� relationship to both his enemy Turnus and his lover Dido; the theme of doomed youths in the epic; and Virgil��s relationship to the brutal history of Rome that he memorializes in his poem.
A map, a Glossary of Names, a Translator��s Preface, and Suggestions for Further Reading are also included.
355 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 20
6990 people are currently reading
137705 people want to read
About the author
Virgil
3,943 books1,930 followersborn 15 October 70 BC
died 21 September 19 BC
Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid , an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aeneas.
Work of Virgil greatly influenced on western literature; in most notably Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
died 21 September 19 BC
Roman poet Virgil, also Vergil, originally Publius Vergilius Maro, composed the Aeneid , an epic telling after the sack of Troy of the wanderings of Aeneas.
Work of Virgil greatly influenced on western literature; in most notably Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,708 reviews
August 31, 2024
welcome to...the A(UGUST)ENEID.
i know this is my worst title / month pun ever. i know it's actually not even really a pun. but in my defense, august does not lend itself to any of the classics i have interest in. so there.
anyway. welcome back to PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, in which i read an intimidating paragon of literature divvied up in nice little chunks over the course of a month in order to get through it.
this one is perfectly timed: it's summertime, and you know what that means. time to pick which impressive books i'll read outside so people think i'm smart.
BOOK ONE, PART ONE
the aeneid divides itself into 12 scary "books," so i'm going to divide those into less-scary halves. just as virgil intended i'm sure.
not dido gathering hateful men, loaded-up ships, and ancient treasure to strike out on her own...kinda the original girlboss.
BOOK ONE, PART TWO
aeneas living my dream here: overhearing a bunch of people talking about you and they're only saying really nice things.
BOOK TWO, PART ONE
damn. imagine opening up your whole hometown and throwing a huge party to celebrate your invitees only for them to spend the whole time trauma dumping. pretty bad vibes all around.
BOOK TWO, PART TWO
it's been said before, but...how cool to be so hot that your very existence causes a war among two great powers. helen was really innovating in the conflict space.
BOOK THREE, PART ONE
aeneas has been through some sh*t, but honestly nothing has rattled me as bad as him cutting a tree and the tree bleeding and then speaking in his dead friend's voice. that'll give you nightmares.
BOOK THREE, PART TWO
i'm going to go ahead and say it: this book has too many names in it. and more than that, too many of them start with A.
BOOK FOUR, PART ONE
loving that this one is titled dido. i'm ready to bow down and swear loyalty over one party planning description alone, so i can't wait for what this is all about.
BOOK FOUR, PART TWO
anna is so real for this. if my sister killed herself my first reaction would also be "without me?"
hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we are like a quarter of the way through this book and yet it holds nothing for me anymore.
BOOK FIVE, PART ONE
dido just set herself on fire and meanwhile aeneas and his friends are hanging out doing boat races.
men are trash.
BOOK FIVE, PART TWO
this morning i went for a run with my fiancé (i contain multitudes) and it started torrentially raining, so of course we both did our finest aeneas impression and beseeched the sky like "I HAVE DONE ALL YOU ASK! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, JUPITER?"
all of which is to say, i wish there were a group of meddling gods i could blame my every inconvenience on.
BOOK SIX, PART ONE
the events of this book are interesting because like...the death count is high and yet i wouldn't say much is happening.
thank you to virgil, who somehow sensed my complaint thousands of years in the future and therefore took us on a field trip to the underworld.
BOOK SIX, PART TWO
dante was a way better world-of-death hang than aeneas, i'll say that. all this guy ever wants to do is shout names in a state of great emotion and immediately move on.
BOOK SEVEN, PART ONE
even half-god war heroes with queen exes have to deal with meddling parents.
BOOK SEVEN, PART TWO
we interrupt this battle scene for virgil to describe someone as the second-hottest guy on record, and make a quick note that he therefore deserves a better father. sure!
BOOK EIGHT, PART ONE
this book is titled "aeneas in rome." as the saying goes. we can only hope for a mary kate and ashley-esque ride-on-the-back-of-a-vespa romance for our hero.
BOOK EIGHT, PART TWO
well, aeneas didn't get a whirlwind italian romance with a guy who makes homemade pasta, but he did acquire 400 horses. maybe that's comparable.
BOOK NINE, PART ONE
now we're getting into some iliad-esque gruesome and unforgettable violence montages.
BOOK NINE, PART TWO
i don't feel like i'm not enjoying this book, but also there has never been a single day that i've remembered to do this organically. which is the excuse i'm giving you for why i've taken 7 days off in total.
anyway, back to the important stuff: can you imagine how humiliating it would be to die by slingshot wound.
BOOK TEN, PART ONE
aeneas really has to learn to delegate. why is my guy staying up all night just to sail a ship.
ugh, now he's doing hand to hand combat. will he ever learn.
BOOK TEN, PART TWO
in this section, all of the bad guys are saying badass stuff like "no one else fight the scariest enemy. he's mine. my only regret is that his own father cannot witness me take him down," meanwhile aeneas is being a really bad sport in terms of killing. not loving that he's our main guy.
a lot of this just kind of drives home that aeneas/pallas is no achilles/patroclus.
BOOK ELEVEN, PART ONE
imagine you're fighting in aeneas' war and you die and your spirit is still lingering by the battlefront only to see him give his bff a full funeral and ignore all the other corpses. come on, dude. you're hurting countless ghost feelings.
BOOK ELEVEN, PART TWO
things are finally looking up. the amazonian girlbosses have arrived.
NOOOOO!!! NOT THE GIRLBOSSES!
BOOK TWELVE, PART ONE
the last chapter but the penultimate part of this project. it is actually electrifying how consistently the chapters of this book have been 24 pages long. come hell or high water or amazonian girl mob or ex-gf su*cide, i know i'm reading 12 pages a day.
at one point in this a guy says "i swear by this scepter" and virgil interrupts his dialogue to be like "(he was holding a scepter at that point)". virgil i swear to god. what are we even doing here.
BOOK TWELVE, PART TWO
why are all the bad b*tches killing themselves!!!
OVERALL
pray for my boy virgil. he's not sick or anything he'll just forever be known as a worse version of homer
in many ways this is a great book. it's stood the test of 2,000 years for a reason. and if it were being compared to anything except the odyssey and/or the iliad it would probably rock. but unfortunately for virgil, neither epic was lost to time, and they both put this one to shame. aeneas is no achilles, pallas no patroclus, turnus no hector, lavinia no helen. i had a fun time making jokes but i wish i chose to do "THE AUGDYSSEY" instead.
rating: 3
i know this is my worst title / month pun ever. i know it's actually not even really a pun. but in my defense, august does not lend itself to any of the classics i have interest in. so there.
anyway. welcome back to PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, in which i read an intimidating paragon of literature divvied up in nice little chunks over the course of a month in order to get through it.
this one is perfectly timed: it's summertime, and you know what that means. time to pick which impressive books i'll read outside so people think i'm smart.
BOOK ONE, PART ONE
the aeneid divides itself into 12 scary "books," so i'm going to divide those into less-scary halves. just as virgil intended i'm sure.
not dido gathering hateful men, loaded-up ships, and ancient treasure to strike out on her own...kinda the original girlboss.
BOOK ONE, PART TWO
aeneas living my dream here: overhearing a bunch of people talking about you and they're only saying really nice things.
BOOK TWO, PART ONE
damn. imagine opening up your whole hometown and throwing a huge party to celebrate your invitees only for them to spend the whole time trauma dumping. pretty bad vibes all around.
BOOK TWO, PART TWO
it's been said before, but...how cool to be so hot that your very existence causes a war among two great powers. helen was really innovating in the conflict space.
BOOK THREE, PART ONE
aeneas has been through some sh*t, but honestly nothing has rattled me as bad as him cutting a tree and the tree bleeding and then speaking in his dead friend's voice. that'll give you nightmares.
BOOK THREE, PART TWO
i'm going to go ahead and say it: this book has too many names in it. and more than that, too many of them start with A.
BOOK FOUR, PART ONE
loving that this one is titled dido. i'm ready to bow down and swear loyalty over one party planning description alone, so i can't wait for what this is all about.
BOOK FOUR, PART TWO
anna is so real for this. if my sister killed herself my first reaction would also be "without me?"
hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we are like a quarter of the way through this book and yet it holds nothing for me anymore.
BOOK FIVE, PART ONE
dido just set herself on fire and meanwhile aeneas and his friends are hanging out doing boat races.
men are trash.
BOOK FIVE, PART TWO
this morning i went for a run with my fiancé (i contain multitudes) and it started torrentially raining, so of course we both did our finest aeneas impression and beseeched the sky like "I HAVE DONE ALL YOU ASK! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME, JUPITER?"
all of which is to say, i wish there were a group of meddling gods i could blame my every inconvenience on.
BOOK SIX, PART ONE
the events of this book are interesting because like...the death count is high and yet i wouldn't say much is happening.
thank you to virgil, who somehow sensed my complaint thousands of years in the future and therefore took us on a field trip to the underworld.
BOOK SIX, PART TWO
dante was a way better world-of-death hang than aeneas, i'll say that. all this guy ever wants to do is shout names in a state of great emotion and immediately move on.
BOOK SEVEN, PART ONE
even half-god war heroes with queen exes have to deal with meddling parents.
BOOK SEVEN, PART TWO
we interrupt this battle scene for virgil to describe someone as the second-hottest guy on record, and make a quick note that he therefore deserves a better father. sure!
BOOK EIGHT, PART ONE
this book is titled "aeneas in rome." as the saying goes. we can only hope for a mary kate and ashley-esque ride-on-the-back-of-a-vespa romance for our hero.
BOOK EIGHT, PART TWO
well, aeneas didn't get a whirlwind italian romance with a guy who makes homemade pasta, but he did acquire 400 horses. maybe that's comparable.
BOOK NINE, PART ONE
now we're getting into some iliad-esque gruesome and unforgettable violence montages.
BOOK NINE, PART TWO
i don't feel like i'm not enjoying this book, but also there has never been a single day that i've remembered to do this organically. which is the excuse i'm giving you for why i've taken 7 days off in total.
anyway, back to the important stuff: can you imagine how humiliating it would be to die by slingshot wound.
BOOK TEN, PART ONE
aeneas really has to learn to delegate. why is my guy staying up all night just to sail a ship.
ugh, now he's doing hand to hand combat. will he ever learn.
BOOK TEN, PART TWO
in this section, all of the bad guys are saying badass stuff like "no one else fight the scariest enemy. he's mine. my only regret is that his own father cannot witness me take him down," meanwhile aeneas is being a really bad sport in terms of killing. not loving that he's our main guy.
a lot of this just kind of drives home that aeneas/pallas is no achilles/patroclus.
BOOK ELEVEN, PART ONE
imagine you're fighting in aeneas' war and you die and your spirit is still lingering by the battlefront only to see him give his bff a full funeral and ignore all the other corpses. come on, dude. you're hurting countless ghost feelings.
BOOK ELEVEN, PART TWO
things are finally looking up. the amazonian girlbosses have arrived.
NOOOOO!!! NOT THE GIRLBOSSES!
BOOK TWELVE, PART ONE
the last chapter but the penultimate part of this project. it is actually electrifying how consistently the chapters of this book have been 24 pages long. come hell or high water or amazonian girl mob or ex-gf su*cide, i know i'm reading 12 pages a day.
at one point in this a guy says "i swear by this scepter" and virgil interrupts his dialogue to be like "(he was holding a scepter at that point)". virgil i swear to god. what are we even doing here.
BOOK TWELVE, PART TWO
why are all the bad b*tches killing themselves!!!
OVERALL
pray for my boy virgil. he's not sick or anything he'll just forever be known as a worse version of homer
in many ways this is a great book. it's stood the test of 2,000 years for a reason. and if it were being compared to anything except the odyssey and/or the iliad it would probably rock. but unfortunately for virgil, neither epic was lost to time, and they both put this one to shame. aeneas is no achilles, pallas no patroclus, turnus no hector, lavinia no helen. i had a fun time making jokes but i wish i chose to do "THE AUGDYSSEY" instead.
rating: 3
June 15, 2025
TO CARTHAGE THEN I CAME, WHERE A CAULDRON OF UNHOLY LOVES
SANG IN MY EARS!
The Waste Land
THEY CONQUER WHO BELIEVE THEY CAN -
THEY CAN, BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY CAN!
The Aeneid
YOU can Conquer - now, isn’t that a nifty quick analysis of how faith works? That’s Virgil talking!
Faith in oneself... or Faith in a Higher Being?
Let’s take a closer look...
Virgil left off writing this masterpiece a mere twenty years before the Star appeared over ancient Bethlehem.
And, of course, the Aeneid gave the worldly Romans hope for a brighter future at the same time, when their history was beginning its long, slow decline into moral chaos. It inspired them to believe that a semi-divine Trojan named Aeneas had given them ideals worth dying for!
With not much respect due to Troy’s ancient conquerors - the Greeks.
Coincidence?
Sure, it was political propaganda commissioned by Augustus, through Virgil’s noble mentor Maecenas.
But don’t forget that many of the same Roman readers of this runaway bestseller were fathers of the first Italian Christian converts.
The domino effect was about to play its hand.
Early Christian apologists, looking for grist for their mills, would soon see in Virgil’s groundbreaking ideas about a blissful afterlife in the Elysian Fields - for ordinary good people, as well as Homer’s heroes - an announcement of the Lord’s freely-offered - and freely-withheld - salvation.
A salvation for which Aeneas must forsake the fleshpot of Carthage...
And did I say Homer? That’s another thing...
Approximately concurrent with all of this was the disastrous destruction by fire of Alexandria’s priceless library - the last detailed link with the pre-Roman Greek world.
So, now, books like this one were suddenly a prime source for imaginative myth-making.
It is hard to imagine such inspired living as the Knights of the Round Table, or early books of such high-mindedness as Piers Plowman or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight existing without the nobility of the Aeneid.
(But what about the loss of higher mathematics - and calculus - to the Ottoman Empire, against whom Europe Crusaded? Enemies don’t share secrets, alas.)
But how about the late medieval romances... and how much Latin magic is in the Holy Grail?
The Greeks - so sybaritic in their literature and such a springboard in their stories for the imagination - had little or no influence on our serious Medieval European ancestors.
The very dearth of Hellenic playfulness gave our ancestors their dour mindset. Perhaps in an age of starting from scratch again and rebuilding, that grim mindset was best.
So, the popular faith and imagination of the Middle Ages derived largely from books like this!
Even Aeneas’ triumphant victory over Turnus was seen by clerics as a divine allegory of the victory over evil.
And who’s to say they were so WRONG, though?
But, with that, Church censorship was also beginning, and Roman freedoms were eventually going to be curtailed.
But freedom has radically different restrictions as Age progresses to Age, and while we postmodernists seem to have fewer, we in fact have migrated to much less privacy.
Every age has its manner of dealing with anarchy. Ours is surveillance.
But to the Church, MORAL Anarchy was the most perilous type of chaos, thanks to Nero and Caligula. And for the future of European civilization the Church seems in hindsight to have been right.
It’s like your parents weeding out any bad influences on you as you grew up - can THAT be such a bad thing? Most good parents do it - or used to. It’s like pruning back your rose bushes, in the interests of their future health.
Sure, there’ll be some Major adjustments for the kids later on, but if they have an active intelligence, they’ll catch up in plenty of time, though the transition from naïve innocence to cosmic disappointment is vast.
And without the firm foothold of faith well nigh impossible.
And note well the conclusion to Book VI of the Aeneid, in which Virgil shows the only auspicious door out of the Underworld: the Gate of Horn, and NOT the Gate of Ivory... the former symbolizing Cosmic Disappointment.
Now, most people on this planet prefer a life of Ivory (physical riches and spiritual materialism) over a life of Horn (disappointment and penance). That’s our natural and very Fallen nature.
The origin of the ancient symbol of the Horn lies in its roots in the misfortune of being cuckolded. A young buck drives away his rivals with his horn. Ever notice than when a cuckold comes onstage in a Mozart opera, his musical genius symbolized that fact by having the French Horn play a sybaritic riff? His nascent disappointment becomes comic to the audience.
Similarly, could the seed of a great religion of love and compassion have taken root without the concurrent sowing of the nobility that the Aeneid has in men’s minds? And moral nobility is born in cosmic ethical disappointment.
Could Christianity have spread like wildfire throughout the fallen Empire... without it? For that’s what the spoiled, self-indulgent emperors were to believers - a cosmic disappointment. But that disappointment was to Virgil the RIGHT WAY to Heaven.
Sure, I know I’m REACHING a bit to make my points.
But whatever your own views, the Aeneid is the great Medieval Desert Island Book - one of the only great ancient imaginative yarns the serious, and violent, early Middle Ages really had.
A true oasis for the souls of those who were lost and confused in that scattered moral debris before the Fall of the Colossus that was the Roman Empire:
And an ethical bedrock!
All roads lead to ROME?
Not on your life, for this sententious-sounding old guy!
So I’ll just continue to walk the straight & narrow path with my old pal Virgil.
SANG IN MY EARS!
The Waste Land
THEY CONQUER WHO BELIEVE THEY CAN -
THEY CAN, BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY CAN!
The Aeneid
YOU can Conquer - now, isn’t that a nifty quick analysis of how faith works? That’s Virgil talking!
Faith in oneself... or Faith in a Higher Being?
Let’s take a closer look...
Virgil left off writing this masterpiece a mere twenty years before the Star appeared over ancient Bethlehem.
And, of course, the Aeneid gave the worldly Romans hope for a brighter future at the same time, when their history was beginning its long, slow decline into moral chaos. It inspired them to believe that a semi-divine Trojan named Aeneas had given them ideals worth dying for!
With not much respect due to Troy’s ancient conquerors - the Greeks.
Coincidence?
Sure, it was political propaganda commissioned by Augustus, through Virgil’s noble mentor Maecenas.
But don’t forget that many of the same Roman readers of this runaway bestseller were fathers of the first Italian Christian converts.
The domino effect was about to play its hand.
Early Christian apologists, looking for grist for their mills, would soon see in Virgil’s groundbreaking ideas about a blissful afterlife in the Elysian Fields - for ordinary good people, as well as Homer’s heroes - an announcement of the Lord’s freely-offered - and freely-withheld - salvation.
A salvation for which Aeneas must forsake the fleshpot of Carthage...
And did I say Homer? That’s another thing...
Approximately concurrent with all of this was the disastrous destruction by fire of Alexandria’s priceless library - the last detailed link with the pre-Roman Greek world.
So, now, books like this one were suddenly a prime source for imaginative myth-making.
It is hard to imagine such inspired living as the Knights of the Round Table, or early books of such high-mindedness as Piers Plowman or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight existing without the nobility of the Aeneid.
(But what about the loss of higher mathematics - and calculus - to the Ottoman Empire, against whom Europe Crusaded? Enemies don’t share secrets, alas.)
But how about the late medieval romances... and how much Latin magic is in the Holy Grail?
The Greeks - so sybaritic in their literature and such a springboard in their stories for the imagination - had little or no influence on our serious Medieval European ancestors.
The very dearth of Hellenic playfulness gave our ancestors their dour mindset. Perhaps in an age of starting from scratch again and rebuilding, that grim mindset was best.
So, the popular faith and imagination of the Middle Ages derived largely from books like this!
Even Aeneas’ triumphant victory over Turnus was seen by clerics as a divine allegory of the victory over evil.
And who’s to say they were so WRONG, though?
But, with that, Church censorship was also beginning, and Roman freedoms were eventually going to be curtailed.
But freedom has radically different restrictions as Age progresses to Age, and while we postmodernists seem to have fewer, we in fact have migrated to much less privacy.
Every age has its manner of dealing with anarchy. Ours is surveillance.
But to the Church, MORAL Anarchy was the most perilous type of chaos, thanks to Nero and Caligula. And for the future of European civilization the Church seems in hindsight to have been right.
It’s like your parents weeding out any bad influences on you as you grew up - can THAT be such a bad thing? Most good parents do it - or used to. It’s like pruning back your rose bushes, in the interests of their future health.
Sure, there’ll be some Major adjustments for the kids later on, but if they have an active intelligence, they’ll catch up in plenty of time, though the transition from naïve innocence to cosmic disappointment is vast.
And without the firm foothold of faith well nigh impossible.
And note well the conclusion to Book VI of the Aeneid, in which Virgil shows the only auspicious door out of the Underworld: the Gate of Horn, and NOT the Gate of Ivory... the former symbolizing Cosmic Disappointment.
Now, most people on this planet prefer a life of Ivory (physical riches and spiritual materialism) over a life of Horn (disappointment and penance). That’s our natural and very Fallen nature.
The origin of the ancient symbol of the Horn lies in its roots in the misfortune of being cuckolded. A young buck drives away his rivals with his horn. Ever notice than when a cuckold comes onstage in a Mozart opera, his musical genius symbolized that fact by having the French Horn play a sybaritic riff? His nascent disappointment becomes comic to the audience.
Similarly, could the seed of a great religion of love and compassion have taken root without the concurrent sowing of the nobility that the Aeneid has in men’s minds? And moral nobility is born in cosmic ethical disappointment.
Could Christianity have spread like wildfire throughout the fallen Empire... without it? For that’s what the spoiled, self-indulgent emperors were to believers - a cosmic disappointment. But that disappointment was to Virgil the RIGHT WAY to Heaven.
Sure, I know I’m REACHING a bit to make my points.
But whatever your own views, the Aeneid is the great Medieval Desert Island Book - one of the only great ancient imaginative yarns the serious, and violent, early Middle Ages really had.
A true oasis for the souls of those who were lost and confused in that scattered moral debris before the Fall of the Colossus that was the Roman Empire:
And an ethical bedrock!
All roads lead to ROME?
Not on your life, for this sententious-sounding old guy!
So I’ll just continue to walk the straight & narrow path with my old pal Virgil.
June 11, 2017
“What god can help me tell so dread a story?
Who could describe that carnage in a song - “
Well, the answer of course is Virgil, a poet of the era of Augustus’ Rome. Why does he write it? Many literary critics have condemned the Aeneid for being state propaganda. Of course it is. Openly, proudly so! Many others have condemned it for connecting strongly to other epic poems of the Ancient world, most notably of course Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Of course it does. Openly, proudly so!
The Aeneid is a perfect example of a change of imperial power and education from one dynasty or area in the world to another, a “translatio imperii et studii”. Whenever empires rise, and are in need of legitimacy, they make sure to incorporate literature, art and other cultural achievements of suppressed or defeated powers, thus creating a fictitious historical connection that justifies their claims to greatness and world dominance.
The Greek culture has been widely exploited to establish a tradition of unbroken rule and lawful power in Europe, and the Aeneid is an early example of fiction supporting the dynastic claims of a whole people.
Constructed as a sequel to the Iliad, and thus taking place at the same time as the Odyssey, it tells the story of Trojan refugee Aeneas and his family, who are on a quest to find a new home for themselves after surviving the destruction of Troy by the Greeks. After many adventures, mirroring Ulysses’ problematic navigation in the tricky waters of the Mediterranean, they land in the country where “fate” tells them to found a new empire based on Aeneas’ descendants. Here they turn from refugees to usurpers of power and fight a bloody war to finally declare themselves victors over the native peoples in the area which will become known as Rome, or Italy.
So far, so good. Translatio imperii, check!
Translatio studii?
Roman culture is in many ways a direct copy and paste of earlier Greek achievements, and their Olympus is mostly identical, just renamed. But there are peculiarities within the Aeneid that give it a specific flavour and make it enjoyable to read.
For example, Aeneas’ visit to the Underworld is hilarious, and he meets both past and future celebrities of his tribe. The modern reader may wonder how life in the Underworld works out practically, with Creusa, Dido, and eventually also Lavinia all joined together in their love for Aeneas? Is polygamy acceptable in the Underworld, if it is only practised as serial monogamy on earth? But those are amusing, theological reflections that the heroes do not dwell on.
Much more interesting are the godly powers that support or oppose Aeneas’ cause, with Venus, his mother, being his most ardent advocate in Olympus, and with Juno being his most hateful enemy. A combination that puts Jupiter in a pickle, of course.
Aeneas manages to have weapons of mass destruction delivered by the joint effort of Venus and Vulcan, and it is of peculiar interest to archaeologists that his shield carries the future of Rome written down for him: a prophetic text! Or a wonderfully amusing way to establish legitimacy through translatio historiae? Rewriting history when needed for political purposes is not an invention of Orwell’s 1984. Dante later added his own journey to the Underworld under the guidance of experienced traveller Virgil - translatio studii - as illustrated in The Divine Comedy, and beautifully painted by Delacroix, in another simultaneous leap forwards and backwards in history, creating connections between times and characters:
What made me read the ancient text, and stick it out until the end, despite being frustrated at times when the war turned into repetitive, graphically described slaughter, involving heads cut open so that brains are split in half, and any other imaginable mutilation of human bodies, over page after page?
There is the interesting question of heroic ideal, alive and terrifyingly deadly still in World War I and II, of “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, the famous line from Virgil’s contemporary Horace’s Odes. One young man in the Aeneid puts it quite bluntly: if I win, I will bring home lots of booty, and if I fall, I will be an immortal hero. Either way, my father will be proud.
There are the relationships between men and women, and the role of women in general. Camilla, the warrior virgin modelled on Amazons Hippolyta or Penthesilea, the mighty Carthaginian queen Dido, who has a strong mind of her own, and Lavinia, the booty for the winner in the war, are all different representatives of ancient women’s roles and status in society. For the modern reader, the goddesses in the Olympian council are more amusing types, playing the political advocates of the causes they support, fearlessly, adamantly, and in eternal frustration over the slow pace of the action, and over the cacophony of a polytheistic assembly, all with equal right to speak and lobby - and to which they add incessantly. Quite like international committees nowadays, weighing different claims, needs and justice against each other!
General verdict: if you love mythology, historical processes as mirrored in fiction, graphic war scenes, unhappy love, and stormy seas, as well as the neverending story of human fight for power and legitimacy, then the Aeneid is highly recommended.
I enjoyed it all, and will close with a bow to Dido, my favourite ancient, tragic heroine so far! She did not really get a chance, representing Carthage. Her suicide was a necessary construction to symbolise the wars to come:
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, said Cato, and Dido was just one of many to suffer from Roman power play. A mighty queen, nonetheless!
Who could describe that carnage in a song - “
Well, the answer of course is Virgil, a poet of the era of Augustus’ Rome. Why does he write it? Many literary critics have condemned the Aeneid for being state propaganda. Of course it is. Openly, proudly so! Many others have condemned it for connecting strongly to other epic poems of the Ancient world, most notably of course Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Of course it does. Openly, proudly so!
The Aeneid is a perfect example of a change of imperial power and education from one dynasty or area in the world to another, a “translatio imperii et studii”. Whenever empires rise, and are in need of legitimacy, they make sure to incorporate literature, art and other cultural achievements of suppressed or defeated powers, thus creating a fictitious historical connection that justifies their claims to greatness and world dominance.
The Greek culture has been widely exploited to establish a tradition of unbroken rule and lawful power in Europe, and the Aeneid is an early example of fiction supporting the dynastic claims of a whole people.
Constructed as a sequel to the Iliad, and thus taking place at the same time as the Odyssey, it tells the story of Trojan refugee Aeneas and his family, who are on a quest to find a new home for themselves after surviving the destruction of Troy by the Greeks. After many adventures, mirroring Ulysses’ problematic navigation in the tricky waters of the Mediterranean, they land in the country where “fate” tells them to found a new empire based on Aeneas’ descendants. Here they turn from refugees to usurpers of power and fight a bloody war to finally declare themselves victors over the native peoples in the area which will become known as Rome, or Italy.
So far, so good. Translatio imperii, check!
Translatio studii?
Roman culture is in many ways a direct copy and paste of earlier Greek achievements, and their Olympus is mostly identical, just renamed. But there are peculiarities within the Aeneid that give it a specific flavour and make it enjoyable to read.
For example, Aeneas’ visit to the Underworld is hilarious, and he meets both past and future celebrities of his tribe. The modern reader may wonder how life in the Underworld works out practically, with Creusa, Dido, and eventually also Lavinia all joined together in their love for Aeneas? Is polygamy acceptable in the Underworld, if it is only practised as serial monogamy on earth? But those are amusing, theological reflections that the heroes do not dwell on.
Much more interesting are the godly powers that support or oppose Aeneas’ cause, with Venus, his mother, being his most ardent advocate in Olympus, and with Juno being his most hateful enemy. A combination that puts Jupiter in a pickle, of course.
Aeneas manages to have weapons of mass destruction delivered by the joint effort of Venus and Vulcan, and it is of peculiar interest to archaeologists that his shield carries the future of Rome written down for him: a prophetic text! Or a wonderfully amusing way to establish legitimacy through translatio historiae? Rewriting history when needed for political purposes is not an invention of Orwell’s 1984. Dante later added his own journey to the Underworld under the guidance of experienced traveller Virgil - translatio studii - as illustrated in The Divine Comedy, and beautifully painted by Delacroix, in another simultaneous leap forwards and backwards in history, creating connections between times and characters:
What made me read the ancient text, and stick it out until the end, despite being frustrated at times when the war turned into repetitive, graphically described slaughter, involving heads cut open so that brains are split in half, and any other imaginable mutilation of human bodies, over page after page?
There is the interesting question of heroic ideal, alive and terrifyingly deadly still in World War I and II, of “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, the famous line from Virgil’s contemporary Horace’s Odes. One young man in the Aeneid puts it quite bluntly: if I win, I will bring home lots of booty, and if I fall, I will be an immortal hero. Either way, my father will be proud.
There are the relationships between men and women, and the role of women in general. Camilla, the warrior virgin modelled on Amazons Hippolyta or Penthesilea, the mighty Carthaginian queen Dido, who has a strong mind of her own, and Lavinia, the booty for the winner in the war, are all different representatives of ancient women’s roles and status in society. For the modern reader, the goddesses in the Olympian council are more amusing types, playing the political advocates of the causes they support, fearlessly, adamantly, and in eternal frustration over the slow pace of the action, and over the cacophony of a polytheistic assembly, all with equal right to speak and lobby - and to which they add incessantly. Quite like international committees nowadays, weighing different claims, needs and justice against each other!
General verdict: if you love mythology, historical processes as mirrored in fiction, graphic war scenes, unhappy love, and stormy seas, as well as the neverending story of human fight for power and legitimacy, then the Aeneid is highly recommended.
I enjoyed it all, and will close with a bow to Dido, my favourite ancient, tragic heroine so far! She did not really get a chance, representing Carthage. Her suicide was a necessary construction to symbolise the wars to come:
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, said Cato, and Dido was just one of many to suffer from Roman power play. A mighty queen, nonetheless!
July 10, 2011
I’m a huge fan of propaganda, but I think I may not be a fan of fan fic. I was going into this with the hope that it would be fun, extreme, Latin propaganda, but The Aeneid is really more Trojan War fan fic, IMO. It’s the Phantom Menace to The Iliad’s Empire Strikes Back. It is seriously lame. I think Akira Kurosawa could have made a pretty decent movie of it because he likes to have people frenzy. There’s a lot of frenzying here. The dudes are all chest pound, blooooood, and the chicks are all hair pull, frenzy, waaaaaail. And Aeneas is such a dweeb about the name-dropping. Like, “Oh, did I mention that Venus is my mom? Oh, did I tell you how freaking hot I am? Yeah, I was totally there when Odysseus scammed the Cyclops.” Give me a freaking break. Did you scam the Cyclops? No. Get over yourself.
This is what happens when you start a series, and then someone else wants to capitalize on your story. It’s the fifth season of The West Wing or the seventh season of The Gilmore Girls or all the Jane Austen / Jane Eyre sequels and prequels. It just doesn’t work. Find your own story! I’m looking at you, Virgil. Not that I’m against people using storylines that someone else has used. That’s almost inevitable (and, of course, Shakespeare is a good argument for being okay with stealing). But, there is a line. I’m not positive where it is. This story crossed it. And then don’t even get me started about Dante. WHY?! Virgil’s got his guys running into Homer’s guys, and then Dante’s running into Virgil? It’s just so presumptuous. I guess, it’s like, go ahead and steal a really wonderful storyline if you have something to add to it. But don’t think that your SUPER LAME storyline is going to suddenly turn wonderful because you drop a character from a good story into it.
And there are some seriously weird details to this story. For example, Venus is this guy’s mom, but she doesn’t raise him to know not to pull a George Costanza in running away from the Greeks? Dude. It just takes a second to wait for your wife, you loser. I mean, I’m no great fan of Venus to begin with, but that’s just weird. It seems like she would have taken a minute to say, "Don't trample people running away from your enemies." Maybe it never occurred to her he'd be so lame.
And then the business with Dido was just annoying. She’s the queen of all the land, has been through hell, wherein her eeeevil brother killed her seemingly pretty awesome husband, and then when Aeneas says to Dido, “btw, it was great sleeping with you, but I have a lot of heads to chop off for no particular reason, so I should prolly get going,” she goes all Kathy Bates in Misery all of a sudden. Except lamer because she’s wailing and self-mutilating instead of taking it out on him. It’s just awkward to watch. Girl needs a sassy gay friend. And none of these people are as cool as they think they are.
And the rest of the book is basically one long chest pound. I guess there’s the part where he goes to Hades, and lo, he knows folk there. I’m kind of bitter about the whole thing because Juno’s so funny and great in The Iliad and such a loser here. Again, Akira Kurosawa probably could have turned it into a pretty decent movie. I don’t really get the frenzying thing, but Kurosawa seemed to have liked it. And, if you like people to run around, chopping limbs off and then whining and blustering for a while, you might really click with this book. What I’m saying, though, is if you haven’t read The Iliad, that’s where it’s at. I recommend, for best results, reading it in a hammock.
This is what happens when you start a series, and then someone else wants to capitalize on your story. It’s the fifth season of The West Wing or the seventh season of The Gilmore Girls or all the Jane Austen / Jane Eyre sequels and prequels. It just doesn’t work. Find your own story! I’m looking at you, Virgil. Not that I’m against people using storylines that someone else has used. That’s almost inevitable (and, of course, Shakespeare is a good argument for being okay with stealing). But, there is a line. I’m not positive where it is. This story crossed it. And then don’t even get me started about Dante. WHY?! Virgil’s got his guys running into Homer’s guys, and then Dante’s running into Virgil? It’s just so presumptuous. I guess, it’s like, go ahead and steal a really wonderful storyline if you have something to add to it. But don’t think that your SUPER LAME storyline is going to suddenly turn wonderful because you drop a character from a good story into it.
And there are some seriously weird details to this story. For example, Venus is this guy’s mom, but she doesn’t raise him to know not to pull a George Costanza in running away from the Greeks? Dude. It just takes a second to wait for your wife, you loser. I mean, I’m no great fan of Venus to begin with, but that’s just weird. It seems like she would have taken a minute to say, "Don't trample people running away from your enemies." Maybe it never occurred to her he'd be so lame.
And then the business with Dido was just annoying. She’s the queen of all the land, has been through hell, wherein her eeeevil brother killed her seemingly pretty awesome husband, and then when Aeneas says to Dido, “btw, it was great sleeping with you, but I have a lot of heads to chop off for no particular reason, so I should prolly get going,” she goes all Kathy Bates in Misery all of a sudden. Except lamer because she’s wailing and self-mutilating instead of taking it out on him. It’s just awkward to watch. Girl needs a sassy gay friend. And none of these people are as cool as they think they are.
And the rest of the book is basically one long chest pound. I guess there’s the part where he goes to Hades, and lo, he knows folk there. I’m kind of bitter about the whole thing because Juno’s so funny and great in The Iliad and such a loser here. Again, Akira Kurosawa probably could have turned it into a pretty decent movie. I don’t really get the frenzying thing, but Kurosawa seemed to have liked it. And, if you like people to run around, chopping limbs off and then whining and blustering for a while, you might really click with this book. What I’m saying, though, is if you haven’t read The Iliad, that’s where it’s at. I recommend, for best results, reading it in a hammock.
July 17, 2020
Impossible to rank a book that is so important, that has so many problems, that holds moments of deep and beautiful simile and metaphor, that treats its lead with shocking inconsistency, whose ending is an eruption of modern plot that redeems the whole book.
The Ferry translation is quick and good and worth noting.
There is staggering overlap with The Iliad and the Odyssey throughout- Cyclops and Scylla and Charybdis were surprises here, as is the rip off of the in media res structure. We have storms (Poseidon as savior, instead of tormentor was an interesting twist), a separation of forces, a host. But everything seems condensed .
Dido, as you might hope, pops off the page. That amazing section on page 17 that scans over her dead husband was so unbelievably Hamlet, and there was something tragic about Cupid's bewitching her:
"And Cupid, to please his Acidalian mother,
Begins, little by little, to erase
From Dido's mind the image of Sychaeus,
And to substitute a living passion in
A heart and soul long unaccustomed to love." (33)
But as with the windmills in Don Quixote, she is too quickly gone.
The Roman propaganda is interesting throughout but in some ways, it is less pronounced than I would have thought, save for one outrageous description of a piece of armor. It put me in mind of just Grossman's Stalingrad (it's great). To get it by the Soviet censors he had to (among many other things) add a 40 page section about how heroic coal miners are - and I ended up fascinated by that section, in its lack of nuance and its propulsion, in how a talented writer operates in restrictive systems.
The second half, in Italy, is a more human-oriented text, and somewhat ridiculous. The book's supporting characters, especially the lovers Nisus and Euryalus, are stronger than the lead. The book is rarely a page turner, but it is incredibly worth your time. It is very, very different than you might expect.
Two things: The treatment of the underworld is gorgeous, in Book 6. It is, of course, Dantean pre Dante. Critic Madeline Miller points out that "when Aeneid is in hell, after he finishes admiring that same glorious pageant of future Roman heroes, he finds himself before two gates. One is made of horn and is, Virgil tells us, for “true shades.” The other, made of ivory, is for “false dreams.” And Aeneas, founder of the gleaming vision of Roman history we have just seen, leaves through the latter."
Borges was preoccupied by this distinction too, and I wonder if there are some hints here of the undermining that I feel is at work in The Aeneid some impulse to attack the very root of the project, of fiction, of the need for Roman propaganda in a poem, even of the need for empire and cultural assimilation.
Which brings me to the ending. I'll spoiler tag.
The Ferry translation is quick and good and worth noting.
There is staggering overlap with The Iliad and the Odyssey throughout- Cyclops and Scylla and Charybdis were surprises here, as is the rip off of the in media res structure. We have storms (Poseidon as savior, instead of tormentor was an interesting twist), a separation of forces, a host. But everything seems condensed .
Dido, as you might hope, pops off the page. That amazing section on page 17 that scans over her dead husband was so unbelievably Hamlet, and there was something tragic about Cupid's bewitching her:
"And Cupid, to please his Acidalian mother,
Begins, little by little, to erase
From Dido's mind the image of Sychaeus,
And to substitute a living passion in
A heart and soul long unaccustomed to love." (33)
But as with the windmills in Don Quixote, she is too quickly gone.
The Roman propaganda is interesting throughout but in some ways, it is less pronounced than I would have thought, save for one outrageous description of a piece of armor. It put me in mind of just Grossman's Stalingrad (it's great). To get it by the Soviet censors he had to (among many other things) add a 40 page section about how heroic coal miners are - and I ended up fascinated by that section, in its lack of nuance and its propulsion, in how a talented writer operates in restrictive systems.
The second half, in Italy, is a more human-oriented text, and somewhat ridiculous. The book's supporting characters, especially the lovers Nisus and Euryalus, are stronger than the lead. The book is rarely a page turner, but it is incredibly worth your time. It is very, very different than you might expect.
Two things: The treatment of the underworld is gorgeous, in Book 6. It is, of course, Dantean pre Dante. Critic Madeline Miller points out that "when Aeneid is in hell, after he finishes admiring that same glorious pageant of future Roman heroes, he finds himself before two gates. One is made of horn and is, Virgil tells us, for “true shades.” The other, made of ivory, is for “false dreams.” And Aeneas, founder of the gleaming vision of Roman history we have just seen, leaves through the latter."
Borges was preoccupied by this distinction too, and I wonder if there are some hints here of the undermining that I feel is at work in The Aeneid some impulse to attack the very root of the project, of fiction, of the need for Roman propaganda in a poem, even of the need for empire and cultural assimilation.
Which brings me to the ending. I'll spoiler tag.
December 20, 2022
"La fortuna favorece a los valientes."
La Eneida, este poema épico inmortal surgido de la genialidad de Publio Virgilio Marón, es considerado uno de las obras clásicas fundacionales de la literatura universal que lo relaciona directamente con los aedos griegos, especialmente Homero, pero que en como continuación histórica con la guerra de Troya tiene también conexiones con algunas de las tragedias de Esquilo y Sófocles.
Virgilio, este poeta incomparable, comparte dos detalles muy interesantes con el genio checo Franz Kafka. Esta, su obra cumbre está inacabada luego de once años de gestación a los que dedicara los últimos años de su vida, incluso ya muy enfermo, de la misma manera que Kafka, no termina sus novelas "El castillo" o "El proceso", Virgilio deja trunco el final de la Eneida que le arrebata la muerte cuando lo sorprende a los 51 años.
Por el otro lado, también comparte con Kafka una decisión que fue desoída: Kafka, ya gravemente enfermo de tuberculosis le pide a Max Brod, su amigo y albacea que queme toda su obra, orden que Brod desobedece para legarnos todo lo que hoy leemos de este autor.
Lo mismo hace Vario, amigo y también albacea de Virgilio quien ya en su lecho de muerte le pide que queme todo lo escrito sobre la Eneida, poema que el poeta acostumbraba a recitarle al emperador Augusto.
Cuando uno lee la Eneida sabe de antemano que si quiere realmente tener una idea global de lo que allí sucede, deberá, en lo posible leer previamente la Teogonía de Hesíodo que explica cómo se gestaron los distintos dioses del Olimpo y como éstos, luego de relacionarse con los mortales fueron engendrando a los distintos héroes de los poemas.
De esta forma, llegamos a saber que Eneas es fruto de la unión de la diosa Venus (o Afrodita para los griegos) con su padre Anquises como de la misma manera Aquiles nace de la unión de la diosa Tetis con el mortal Peleo, mientras que con Ulises esto no sucede aunque es importante aclarar la íntima relación que el héroe de la Odisea tiene con Palas Atenea.
Siempre los dioses interceden ante un destino posiblemente desafortunado para cambiar las cosas y esto también sucederá en la Eneida, ya que constantemente Eneas es protegido por Venus en distintos momentos, desde la huida de Troya hasta el arribo a las costas de Hesperia, como se denominaba antiguamente a Italia hasta cuando comienzan los combates contra los latinos bajo la orden del caudillo Turno, quien a su vez tendrá el apoyo de otra diosa, Juno, quien generará en él y en sus súbditos la constante violencia y ánimos para ir a la guerra, como lo hace también el dios Ares (Marte) con Héctor en la Ilíada.
Es que Juno, celosa de los troyanos hará lo imposible para impedir que Eneas funde una nueva Troya en Italia, además por haber sido desairada por el mortal Paris eligiendo a Venus y por el desaire amoroso que le propina Ganímedes con un príncipe troyano.
Pero Venus no es la única diosa que formará parte de todo este juego de traiciones, discordias y peleas. Otros dioses como Júpiter (Zeus) o Vulcano quien, de la misma manera que hizo con Ulises forjará la armadura y escudo de Eneas para la batalla con Turno tendrán incidencia directa.
Así, todo estará servido para la guerra. Pero primero debemos aclarar que la Eneida consta de dos partes bien marcadas.
En primer lugar, luego de la destrucción de Illión, como se conocía también a Troya, Eneas escapa con su padre Anquises a cuestas y su hijo Ascanio de la mano, perdiendo en ella a su esposa mortal, Creúsa. A partir de allí, arribará a Cartago donde tendrá un tormentoso affaire con la reina, Dido. Estos hechos tienen un trasfondo que le acarrearán más desgracias al héroe teucro.
Es que el escape de Eneas hacia Italia tiene el mismo tenor que el de Ulises volviendo a Ítaca en la Odisea. Recordemos que son varios los poemas y tragedias en donde se narran regresos odiseicos luego de la caída de Troya. Lo mismo sucede con el regreso de Agamenón en la tragedia de Esquilo y en la Orestíada, narrado por el mismo aedo.
Luego de vivir las peores vicisitudes, de la persecución de Juno, la muerte de muchos de sus guerreros, de estar sometidos a tempestades que destruyen sus naves llega a Italia y es aquí donde comienza la segunda parte, que tiene en el relato, una similitud muy cercana a la Ilíada, cuando los latinos entran en guerra con los teucros. Los cuatro libros finales de los doce que contiene la Eneida relatan estos hechos bélicos.
Es clave haber leído la Ilíada, ya que la descripción de las batallas serán prácticamente iguales a los del poema de Homero. Por momentos, las manera en que lo describe Virgilio es tan cruento que parece que uno como lector está viendo esa violencia con la que latinos y teucros se masacran en el campo de batalla. La sangre salpica por doquier a todos los que son muertos por su enemigo, las lanzas acribillan cuanto pecho se encuentran y se parten cabezas hasta el cuello o se degüellan hombres sin la menor compasión.
Parece que Nikolái Gógol se inspiró en la Ilíada y la Eneida para contarnos de manera tan explícita y tan parecida lo que sucede en el enfrentamiento entre los cosacos ucranianos y los polacos en su novela Tarás Bulba, lo que demuestra la inspiración que poetas como Homero o Virgilio generaban en los grandes escritores de la era moderna.
Otro aspecto muy importante a tener en cuenta es que el eje y el centro de la Eneida reside en el libro VI, cuando Eneas desciende a los Infiernos para encontrarse con Anquises, su padre fallecido. De la misma manera que cuando Ulises baja al Hades, Eneas debe atravesar los distintos lugares del Infierno como lo hace el inmenso Dante Alighieri quien durante gran parte de la Divina Comedia elige para esa travesía precisamente a... Virgilio. Nadie más indicado que el poeta latino para acompañarlo en ese oscuro camino.
A diferencia de lo narrado en La Divina Commedia, Virgilio nos explica cómo es el Infierno de una forma más reducida y como si todos los lugares estuvieran muy juntos unos de otro.
Eneas es acompañado por la profetiza Sibila, quien le muestra y explica qué es cada cosa en el Averno y que sucede con las almas que están allí.
Lo que Dante describirá con todo lujo de detalles es mostrado a Eneas rápidamente, tal es el caso de Caronte, el barquero que traslada las almas por el río Aqueronte, la laguna Estigia y el lago del Leteo, en donde Eneas también debe entrar para olvidar parte de lo vivido.
Ya en los libros XI y XII se desarrolla la batalla final y da la sensación de que Virgilio traza una comparación con la Ilíada para describir el enfrentamiento más importante de todos entre Eneas y Turno, como lo hiciera Homero con Aquiles y Héctor.
Es claro el sentimiento de homenaje a Homero como también la inspiración que el poeta griego le infundó para continuar la historia en su propio poema.
Comparando la Ilíada como la Odisea, tanto Eneas como Aquiles enfrentan a su adversario con el objeto de vengar la muerte de Patroclo en el caso de Aquiles contra Héctor como la muerte de Palante a manos de Turno en lo que respecta a Eneas.
Lamentablemente y al quedar inconclusa la Eneida, nunca sabremos que sucede después de este enfrentamiento del que no voy a revelar el ganador para resguardar a aquel lector que quiera embarcarse en la aventura del bravo y valiente guerrero Eneas, cuyas hazañas han quedado inmortalizadas en el oro de las letras universales gracias a Virgilio, uno de los padres de la literatura.
Quisieron los hados que así fuera…
La Eneida, este poema épico inmortal surgido de la genialidad de Publio Virgilio Marón, es considerado uno de las obras clásicas fundacionales de la literatura universal que lo relaciona directamente con los aedos griegos, especialmente Homero, pero que en como continuación histórica con la guerra de Troya tiene también conexiones con algunas de las tragedias de Esquilo y Sófocles.
Virgilio, este poeta incomparable, comparte dos detalles muy interesantes con el genio checo Franz Kafka. Esta, su obra cumbre está inacabada luego de once años de gestación a los que dedicara los últimos años de su vida, incluso ya muy enfermo, de la misma manera que Kafka, no termina sus novelas "El castillo" o "El proceso", Virgilio deja trunco el final de la Eneida que le arrebata la muerte cuando lo sorprende a los 51 años.
Por el otro lado, también comparte con Kafka una decisión que fue desoída: Kafka, ya gravemente enfermo de tuberculosis le pide a Max Brod, su amigo y albacea que queme toda su obra, orden que Brod desobedece para legarnos todo lo que hoy leemos de este autor.
Lo mismo hace Vario, amigo y también albacea de Virgilio quien ya en su lecho de muerte le pide que queme todo lo escrito sobre la Eneida, poema que el poeta acostumbraba a recitarle al emperador Augusto.
Cuando uno lee la Eneida sabe de antemano que si quiere realmente tener una idea global de lo que allí sucede, deberá, en lo posible leer previamente la Teogonía de Hesíodo que explica cómo se gestaron los distintos dioses del Olimpo y como éstos, luego de relacionarse con los mortales fueron engendrando a los distintos héroes de los poemas.
De esta forma, llegamos a saber que Eneas es fruto de la unión de la diosa Venus (o Afrodita para los griegos) con su padre Anquises como de la misma manera Aquiles nace de la unión de la diosa Tetis con el mortal Peleo, mientras que con Ulises esto no sucede aunque es importante aclarar la íntima relación que el héroe de la Odisea tiene con Palas Atenea.
Siempre los dioses interceden ante un destino posiblemente desafortunado para cambiar las cosas y esto también sucederá en la Eneida, ya que constantemente Eneas es protegido por Venus en distintos momentos, desde la huida de Troya hasta el arribo a las costas de Hesperia, como se denominaba antiguamente a Italia hasta cuando comienzan los combates contra los latinos bajo la orden del caudillo Turno, quien a su vez tendrá el apoyo de otra diosa, Juno, quien generará en él y en sus súbditos la constante violencia y ánimos para ir a la guerra, como lo hace también el dios Ares (Marte) con Héctor en la Ilíada.
Es que Juno, celosa de los troyanos hará lo imposible para impedir que Eneas funde una nueva Troya en Italia, además por haber sido desairada por el mortal Paris eligiendo a Venus y por el desaire amoroso que le propina Ganímedes con un príncipe troyano.
Pero Venus no es la única diosa que formará parte de todo este juego de traiciones, discordias y peleas. Otros dioses como Júpiter (Zeus) o Vulcano quien, de la misma manera que hizo con Ulises forjará la armadura y escudo de Eneas para la batalla con Turno tendrán incidencia directa.
Así, todo estará servido para la guerra. Pero primero debemos aclarar que la Eneida consta de dos partes bien marcadas.
En primer lugar, luego de la destrucción de Illión, como se conocía también a Troya, Eneas escapa con su padre Anquises a cuestas y su hijo Ascanio de la mano, perdiendo en ella a su esposa mortal, Creúsa. A partir de allí, arribará a Cartago donde tendrá un tormentoso affaire con la reina, Dido. Estos hechos tienen un trasfondo que le acarrearán más desgracias al héroe teucro.
Es que el escape de Eneas hacia Italia tiene el mismo tenor que el de Ulises volviendo a Ítaca en la Odisea. Recordemos que son varios los poemas y tragedias en donde se narran regresos odiseicos luego de la caída de Troya. Lo mismo sucede con el regreso de Agamenón en la tragedia de Esquilo y en la Orestíada, narrado por el mismo aedo.
Luego de vivir las peores vicisitudes, de la persecución de Juno, la muerte de muchos de sus guerreros, de estar sometidos a tempestades que destruyen sus naves llega a Italia y es aquí donde comienza la segunda parte, que tiene en el relato, una similitud muy cercana a la Ilíada, cuando los latinos entran en guerra con los teucros. Los cuatro libros finales de los doce que contiene la Eneida relatan estos hechos bélicos.
Es clave haber leído la Ilíada, ya que la descripción de las batallas serán prácticamente iguales a los del poema de Homero. Por momentos, las manera en que lo describe Virgilio es tan cruento que parece que uno como lector está viendo esa violencia con la que latinos y teucros se masacran en el campo de batalla. La sangre salpica por doquier a todos los que son muertos por su enemigo, las lanzas acribillan cuanto pecho se encuentran y se parten cabezas hasta el cuello o se degüellan hombres sin la menor compasión.
Parece que Nikolái Gógol se inspiró en la Ilíada y la Eneida para contarnos de manera tan explícita y tan parecida lo que sucede en el enfrentamiento entre los cosacos ucranianos y los polacos en su novela Tarás Bulba, lo que demuestra la inspiración que poetas como Homero o Virgilio generaban en los grandes escritores de la era moderna.
Otro aspecto muy importante a tener en cuenta es que el eje y el centro de la Eneida reside en el libro VI, cuando Eneas desciende a los Infiernos para encontrarse con Anquises, su padre fallecido. De la misma manera que cuando Ulises baja al Hades, Eneas debe atravesar los distintos lugares del Infierno como lo hace el inmenso Dante Alighieri quien durante gran parte de la Divina Comedia elige para esa travesía precisamente a... Virgilio. Nadie más indicado que el poeta latino para acompañarlo en ese oscuro camino.
A diferencia de lo narrado en La Divina Commedia, Virgilio nos explica cómo es el Infierno de una forma más reducida y como si todos los lugares estuvieran muy juntos unos de otro.
Eneas es acompañado por la profetiza Sibila, quien le muestra y explica qué es cada cosa en el Averno y que sucede con las almas que están allí.
Lo que Dante describirá con todo lujo de detalles es mostrado a Eneas rápidamente, tal es el caso de Caronte, el barquero que traslada las almas por el río Aqueronte, la laguna Estigia y el lago del Leteo, en donde Eneas también debe entrar para olvidar parte de lo vivido.
Ya en los libros XI y XII se desarrolla la batalla final y da la sensación de que Virgilio traza una comparación con la Ilíada para describir el enfrentamiento más importante de todos entre Eneas y Turno, como lo hiciera Homero con Aquiles y Héctor.
Es claro el sentimiento de homenaje a Homero como también la inspiración que el poeta griego le infundó para continuar la historia en su propio poema.
Comparando la Ilíada como la Odisea, tanto Eneas como Aquiles enfrentan a su adversario con el objeto de vengar la muerte de Patroclo en el caso de Aquiles contra Héctor como la muerte de Palante a manos de Turno en lo que respecta a Eneas.
Lamentablemente y al quedar inconclusa la Eneida, nunca sabremos que sucede después de este enfrentamiento del que no voy a revelar el ganador para resguardar a aquel lector que quiera embarcarse en la aventura del bravo y valiente guerrero Eneas, cuyas hazañas han quedado inmortalizadas en el oro de las letras universales gracias a Virgilio, uno de los padres de la literatura.
Quisieron los hados que así fuera…
January 24, 2026
As shattered legendary Troy fell the fires engulfs the edifices and smoke flows, the shocked survivors flee dodging lances, swords, stepping over a plethora of rubble, dismembered bodies but where to go? Aeneas a member of the royal family seeing his family butchered, gathers a few Trojans, quickly escaping to the nearby coast picking up stragglers there, if only they find boats. Thus we begins the definitive Roman epic , yes indeed influenced by Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, not in their class not many are to be honest and having read now all three. War and numerous wanderings from both previous poems are in Virgil's single book, the surprise it's excellent. Asia Minor, is modern day Turkey, the isles of Greece , North Africa, the sandy shores of Libya, to the spectacular harbor in mighty Carthage, then unknown Sicily, finally, the inevitable, barbaric future Rome. And the struggles start, where the blood red drenched grounds appear. Heads chopped off, stomachs pierced, dislodged, vomit eruptions, from full dead mouths, spraying the horses and the innocent, still carnage prevails the heroics must show. The glory their friends and families expect, cowards will not be tolerated. Death is cruel yet better than lack of bravery all must fight.... or be despised.. for the young , healthy. Strange though, reputation valued ahead of your own precious, dear skin. Women weep, fathers stunned, wives mourn, nothing changes, the slaughter continues.
No quarter given vicious battles occur, again and again, to the victor the supposed great spoils, they are the price of a new civilization?. If your heart beats faster as swords relentlessly slash through the air, the two battle leaders Aeneas for the Trojans, Turnus the Latins, the reader looks forward to the final match. The ancients writers knew how to entertain, not too interested in historical accuracy, since the myth of Rome founded on April 21, 753 B.C. is wrong and the fabled Trojan War happened circa 1200 B.C. Nearly a vast 500 years apart, nevertheless a very good story for anyone interested in what the few people who could read then found quite thrilling. In conclusion for those that seek knowledge even in quite fictional tales the subject will reveal aspects of truth not of history but their selves. Which to my state of mind gives flavor and understanding, the ambience of the author's trying sadly to communicate duty above well-being.
No quarter given vicious battles occur, again and again, to the victor the supposed great spoils, they are the price of a new civilization?. If your heart beats faster as swords relentlessly slash through the air, the two battle leaders Aeneas for the Trojans, Turnus the Latins, the reader looks forward to the final match. The ancients writers knew how to entertain, not too interested in historical accuracy, since the myth of Rome founded on April 21, 753 B.C. is wrong and the fabled Trojan War happened circa 1200 B.C. Nearly a vast 500 years apart, nevertheless a very good story for anyone interested in what the few people who could read then found quite thrilling. In conclusion for those that seek knowledge even in quite fictional tales the subject will reveal aspects of truth not of history but their selves. Which to my state of mind gives flavor and understanding, the ambience of the author's trying sadly to communicate duty above well-being.
July 8, 2008
There are plenty of reviews here telling you why you should or shouldn't read book X. This review of Virgil's "Aeneid," the largely-completed first century BC nationalist epic poem that recounts the Trojan War and Aeneas's role in the eventual founding of Rome, will tell you instead why you should read a copy of "Aeneid" from a university library. Simply put: student annotations.
Nearly every book in a university catalog has been checked out at one time or another by a student reading it as primary or supplemental material for class. Thus, many books have important passages underlined, major themes listed at the beginnings of chapters, and clarifications written in the margins. The copy of "Aeneid" that I read not only contained thematic annotations from one student, but also a number of unintentionally funny comments from another. This made reading the epic poem, the sort of which spends five pages describing Aeneas's shield, much more entertaining than it might have otherwise been.
For example, beside a section in which the longevity and glory of the Roman Empire was prophesied, the befuddled student wrote, "But Rome fell- did Virgil know this?" Ah yes, Virgil the time-traveling super-poet who cleverly peppered his verse with chronologically ironic statements. The same annotator observed that Dido's downfall is that she's "too nice" (apparently, feuding goddesses had nothing to do with it) and produced a mind-boggling series of rhetorical queries that demonstrate the importance of using context when deciphering pronouns in poetry (hint: the closest noun isn't always the antecedent).
Sadly, the annotator only made it about a third of the way through the poem before either realizing that he/she could glean the crucial bits from lecture/Wikipedia or dropping the class. As a result, I was forced to pencil in similar comments in order to make it through the rest of the poem. The moral of this story is that though you may get the occasional bonehead marking up your book, reading a book that others have commented on previously gives an undeniable sense of camraderie. As in any interaction with strangers, you may be happily surprised, disappointed, or surprised into laughter. I highly recommend the experience to all.
Nearly every book in a university catalog has been checked out at one time or another by a student reading it as primary or supplemental material for class. Thus, many books have important passages underlined, major themes listed at the beginnings of chapters, and clarifications written in the margins. The copy of "Aeneid" that I read not only contained thematic annotations from one student, but also a number of unintentionally funny comments from another. This made reading the epic poem, the sort of which spends five pages describing Aeneas's shield, much more entertaining than it might have otherwise been.
For example, beside a section in which the longevity and glory of the Roman Empire was prophesied, the befuddled student wrote, "But Rome fell- did Virgil know this?" Ah yes, Virgil the time-traveling super-poet who cleverly peppered his verse with chronologically ironic statements. The same annotator observed that Dido's downfall is that she's "too nice" (apparently, feuding goddesses had nothing to do with it) and produced a mind-boggling series of rhetorical queries that demonstrate the importance of using context when deciphering pronouns in poetry (hint: the closest noun isn't always the antecedent).
Sadly, the annotator only made it about a third of the way through the poem before either realizing that he/she could glean the crucial bits from lecture/Wikipedia or dropping the class. As a result, I was forced to pencil in similar comments in order to make it through the rest of the poem. The moral of this story is that though you may get the occasional bonehead marking up your book, reading a book that others have commented on previously gives an undeniable sense of camraderie. As in any interaction with strangers, you may be happily surprised, disappointed, or surprised into laughter. I highly recommend the experience to all.
October 5, 2022
History records that Virgil wrote his epic poem The Aeneid to fulfill two purposes. One is to restore the faith among Romans in the "Greatness of Rome" at a time such faith was hard tried. The second reason is to legitimize the Caesar line to the Roman throne. To achieve this end, Virgil picks up a Trojan hero by the name of Aeneas, who is a mythical legend in Homer's epic poem The Iliad , and weaves a tale of how he became the founding father of future Roman rulers.
Having drawn his hero from Homer, Virgil also draws his influence from Homer. The Aeneid in all sense is a structural mixture of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Out of the twelve books, the first six tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings and the many obstacles he faces in his voyage to Italy thus imitating the pattern of The Odyssey . The next six books hold the story of warfare: the war between the Trojans and the Rutulians for the throne of Italy and the royal bride. This part imitates Homer's The Iliad. However, after this second reading, I felt that Virgil, while imitating Homer, has also surpassed him in a different aspect. Virgil's portrayal of this legendary story is more passionate and expressive than either of Homer's classics. Even the hero Aeneas, is portrayed more like a human than the superheroes Hector, Achilles, and Odysseus, so as to make the human connection to the ruling Caser line more plausible.
The reading experience of The Aeneid was quite pleasant this time. The translation I read is commendable. It has kept the feel of the time period of this legendary tale while making it more readable at the same time. The story was engaging, and it went quite smoothly through the twelve books. I enjoyed the story and very much enjoyed the dramatic effect with which it was portrayed.
One particular thing struck me after this read. According to this tale, the Trojans, representing the east, are to become the founding fathers of the western Roman line, mixing them with the native Italians. But here Virgil says that Jupiter, in order to satisfy his wife, Juno, promises that the new mixed race emerging from the Trojan-Italian union will keep the customs, speech, dress, values, and lifestyle of the native Italians, and not of the Trojans. I couldn't help wondering whether this was Virgil's way of expressing the triumph of the West over the East.
However, from a modern reader’s perspective, this epic poem is a literary justice to the Trojans who are finally rescued from their humiliation and restored to their dignity. For the sympathizers of Troy and Trojans, Virgil has furnished a good antidote.
Having drawn his hero from Homer, Virgil also draws his influence from Homer. The Aeneid in all sense is a structural mixture of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Out of the twelve books, the first six tell the story of Aeneas's wanderings and the many obstacles he faces in his voyage to Italy thus imitating the pattern of The Odyssey . The next six books hold the story of warfare: the war between the Trojans and the Rutulians for the throne of Italy and the royal bride. This part imitates Homer's The Iliad. However, after this second reading, I felt that Virgil, while imitating Homer, has also surpassed him in a different aspect. Virgil's portrayal of this legendary story is more passionate and expressive than either of Homer's classics. Even the hero Aeneas, is portrayed more like a human than the superheroes Hector, Achilles, and Odysseus, so as to make the human connection to the ruling Caser line more plausible.
The reading experience of The Aeneid was quite pleasant this time. The translation I read is commendable. It has kept the feel of the time period of this legendary tale while making it more readable at the same time. The story was engaging, and it went quite smoothly through the twelve books. I enjoyed the story and very much enjoyed the dramatic effect with which it was portrayed.
One particular thing struck me after this read. According to this tale, the Trojans, representing the east, are to become the founding fathers of the western Roman line, mixing them with the native Italians. But here Virgil says that Jupiter, in order to satisfy his wife, Juno, promises that the new mixed race emerging from the Trojan-Italian union will keep the customs, speech, dress, values, and lifestyle of the native Italians, and not of the Trojans. I couldn't help wondering whether this was Virgil's way of expressing the triumph of the West over the East.
However, from a modern reader’s perspective, this epic poem is a literary justice to the Trojans who are finally rescued from their humiliation and restored to their dignity. For the sympathizers of Troy and Trojans, Virgil has furnished a good antidote.
May 5, 2017
انه ايد و مختارنامه!
مختارنامه رو ديديد؟ ديديد چقدر جنگ هاش تصنعیه؟ پر از حركات خشك و نمايشى، انگار نه انگار كه اون جا جنگه و دو نفر دارن با خشم و وحشت به قصد كشت تيغ تيز روانه ى سينه و گلوى هم مى كنن. نه وحشتى، نه عرقى، نه به نفس نفس افتادنى، نه تيرى كه توى گوشت گير مى كنه و بيرون نمياد، نه لخته خون كف كرده ى جارى از گلويى...
فكر مى كنم بخشى اين ها به خاطر اينه كه عوامل اثر نه خودشون در جنگى حضور داشتن تا واقعيتش رو ببينن (طبيعتاً) و نه تخيل قدرتمندى داشتن كه بتونن جنون آشوبناك يه جنگ رو پيش خودشون تصوير كنن. و ويرژيل قطعاً يكى از اين دو رو داشته: يا تجربه ى مستقيم جنگ، يا تخيل قدرتمندى كه جايگزين تمام عيارى براى تجربه شده. اين حرف خيلى بيشتر در مورد هومر صادقه، كه ويرژيل پيروش محسوب ميشه.
انه ايد و ايلياد
هومر شاعر يونانى حدود سه هزار سال قبل، ماجراى جنگ ده ساله ى يونان و تروى رو كه به نابودى تروى انجاميد، به شعر سرود. حدود هزار سال بعد، ويرژيل شاعر رومى دنباله اى براى ايلياد سرود و تعريف كرد كه چطور مهاجران جنگ زده ى تروى، در جستجوى خونه اى جديد، تمدن روم رو در ايتاليا بنياد گذاشتن.
حماسه ى هومر اون قدرها عناصر ملّى نداره، و هومر به يك اندازه از تروجان ها و يونانى ها جانبدارى مى كنه، همون طور كه خدايان بعضى طرفدار اين گروهن و بعضى طرفدار اون گروه. اما حماسه ى ويرژيل شايد به تبع شكل حكومت روم، رن��ى شديداً ملّى گرايانه پيدا كرده، جداى از موضوع (ماجراى بنيانگذاران روم) در توصيف ها و شخصيت پردازى ها و ماجراها و پيشگويى ها و رفتار خدايان، جانبدارى مطلقى به نفع تروجان ها (بنيانگذاران روم) ديده ميشه و به ندرت خصوصيت مثبتى از دشمناشون نشون داده ميشه.
اين خصوصيت، و نداشتن خط داستانى پيوسته و جذاب، باعث ميشه كه حماسه ى رومى انه ايد چند مرتبه پايين تر از همتاى يونانى ش قرار بگيره، هر چند هنوز در اوج مى درخشه.
خلاصه کتاب برای یادآوری شخصی
مختارنامه رو ديديد؟ ديديد چقدر جنگ هاش تصنعیه؟ پر از حركات خشك و نمايشى، انگار نه انگار كه اون جا جنگه و دو نفر دارن با خشم و وحشت به قصد كشت تيغ تيز روانه ى سينه و گلوى هم مى كنن. نه وحشتى، نه عرقى، نه به نفس نفس افتادنى، نه تيرى كه توى گوشت گير مى كنه و بيرون نمياد، نه لخته خون كف كرده ى جارى از گلويى...
فكر مى كنم بخشى اين ها به خاطر اينه كه عوامل اثر نه خودشون در جنگى حضور داشتن تا واقعيتش رو ببينن (طبيعتاً) و نه تخيل قدرتمندى داشتن كه بتونن جنون آشوبناك يه جنگ رو پيش خودشون تصوير كنن. و ويرژيل قطعاً يكى از اين دو رو داشته: يا تجربه ى مستقيم جنگ، يا تخيل قدرتمندى كه جايگزين تمام عيارى براى تجربه شده. اين حرف خيلى بيشتر در مورد هومر صادقه، كه ويرژيل پيروش محسوب ميشه.
انه ايد و ايلياد
هومر شاعر يونانى حدود سه هزار سال قبل، ماجراى جنگ ده ساله ى يونان و تروى رو كه به نابودى تروى انجاميد، به شعر سرود. حدود هزار سال بعد، ويرژيل شاعر رومى دنباله اى براى ايلياد سرود و تعريف كرد كه چطور مهاجران جنگ زده ى تروى، در جستجوى خونه اى جديد، تمدن روم رو در ايتاليا بنياد گذاشتن.
حماسه ى هومر اون قدرها عناصر ملّى نداره، و هومر به يك اندازه از تروجان ها و يونانى ها جانبدارى مى كنه، همون طور كه خدايان بعضى طرفدار اين گروهن و بعضى طرفدار اون گروه. اما حماسه ى ويرژيل شايد به تبع شكل حكومت روم، رن��ى شديداً ملّى گرايانه پيدا كرده، جداى از موضوع (ماجراى بنيانگذاران روم) در توصيف ها و شخصيت پردازى ها و ماجراها و پيشگويى ها و رفتار خدايان، جانبدارى مطلقى به نفع تروجان ها (بنيانگذاران روم) ديده ميشه و به ندرت خصوصيت مثبتى از دشمناشون نشون داده ميشه.
اين خصوصيت، و نداشتن خط داستانى پيوسته و جذاب، باعث ميشه كه حماسه ى رومى انه ايد چند مرتبه پايين تر از همتاى يونانى ش قرار بگيره، هر چند هنوز در اوج مى درخشه.
خلاصه کتاب برای یادآوری شخصی
March 3, 2020
Book Review
3 out of 5 stars to The Aeneid, a classic work written in 17 BC by Virgil.
In The Aeneid, Virgil creates two vastly different archetypal heroes named Turnus and Aeneas. Aeneas is a Trojan prince who has hopes of finding a new Troy in the land of Latium, but he runs into an angered Turnus, a Rutulian prince that does not welcome Aeneas. Both men are equally strong, equally determined, and have equal and rightful claim to the land. However, Virgil creates this distinct difference and hatred between the men that leads to the profound greatness of Rome.
Turnus is a Rutulian prince who is planning on marrying Lavinia, the princess of Latium. He is courageous when he defends his people in the war against the Trojans (Book IX and X), brilliant in his plans to attack the Trojan camp (p.207), yet motivated to win for purely personal goals. Turnus sacrifices public welfare and the good of the state just to defeat Aeneas and win the battle and Lavinia. Aeneas is also a prince who is planning on marrying Lavinia. He is caring when he looks back for his late wife Creusa (p.57), respectful and loving when his father dies (p.80), and driven when he continues his journey to find a new Troy (p.103). However, unlike Turnus, Aeneas is truly unselfish in his reasons for wanting Latium. Aeneas wants to settle the land for his people and their families, to find a new Troy. Aeneas does not want the land to be selfish. Both Turnus and Aeneas have determination behind them, physical and mental strength behind them, yet most of all the gods behind them.
With the help of Juno, Turnus fights till the end avoiding several near deaths such as Pallas’ arrow and his jump into the Tiber River fully armored. Similar to Turnus, Aeneas’ mother helps Aeneas by giving him protection with the creation of the shield (p.198), and when she heals Aeneas’ wound with the special potion (p. 302). Turnus and Aeneas up until this point have no differences. They are identical in their strengths, weaknesses, and support. However, the one major difference between them is that Aeneas has destiny behind him. He is fated to take care of his Trojan people, find a new Troy, marry Lavinia, and bear descendants to establish the great city of Rome. Aeneas has no choice but to win the war and Lavinia’s hand in marriage. Turnus must lose and somehow suffer; He cannot escape his fate. Virgil makes use of the difference between the two heroes using antagonism, hatred and most of all the superiority of Aeneas to show the greatness of Rome.
At the time The Aeneid was written Augustus Caesar was in power and the Pax Romana was beginning. Rome was in a state of absolute reign and greatness. Virgil makes use of the character Aeneas to show the greatness of his friend Octavian or Augustus Caesar. He uses the difference between the two heroes to show that by destiny via Aeneas (an ancestor of Octavian Caesar) Rome will lead the world in philosophy, art, and intelligence, etc. Turnus is good, but Aeneas is better and so is the new emperor Caesar. With Octavian Caesar in control, Rome will become even greater than it is. Virgil accomplishes his goal of glorifying Rome and its leader Augustus Caesar.
Virgil creates a strong similarity between Turnus and Aeneas, however the major characteristic of these two heroes is that Aeneas is destined to win and Turnus to lose. This difference greatly surpasses the likeness between the two men and leads to the exaltation and glorification of Rome. If Augustus Caesar is anywhere similar to Aeneas, which he is as Virgil points out, he will lead Rome to the tops. And that is just what happens!
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3 out of 5 stars to The Aeneid, a classic work written in 17 BC by Virgil.
In The Aeneid, Virgil creates two vastly different archetypal heroes named Turnus and Aeneas. Aeneas is a Trojan prince who has hopes of finding a new Troy in the land of Latium, but he runs into an angered Turnus, a Rutulian prince that does not welcome Aeneas. Both men are equally strong, equally determined, and have equal and rightful claim to the land. However, Virgil creates this distinct difference and hatred between the men that leads to the profound greatness of Rome.
Turnus is a Rutulian prince who is planning on marrying Lavinia, the princess of Latium. He is courageous when he defends his people in the war against the Trojans (Book IX and X), brilliant in his plans to attack the Trojan camp (p.207), yet motivated to win for purely personal goals. Turnus sacrifices public welfare and the good of the state just to defeat Aeneas and win the battle and Lavinia. Aeneas is also a prince who is planning on marrying Lavinia. He is caring when he looks back for his late wife Creusa (p.57), respectful and loving when his father dies (p.80), and driven when he continues his journey to find a new Troy (p.103). However, unlike Turnus, Aeneas is truly unselfish in his reasons for wanting Latium. Aeneas wants to settle the land for his people and their families, to find a new Troy. Aeneas does not want the land to be selfish. Both Turnus and Aeneas have determination behind them, physical and mental strength behind them, yet most of all the gods behind them.
With the help of Juno, Turnus fights till the end avoiding several near deaths such as Pallas’ arrow and his jump into the Tiber River fully armored. Similar to Turnus, Aeneas’ mother helps Aeneas by giving him protection with the creation of the shield (p.198), and when she heals Aeneas’ wound with the special potion (p. 302). Turnus and Aeneas up until this point have no differences. They are identical in their strengths, weaknesses, and support. However, the one major difference between them is that Aeneas has destiny behind him. He is fated to take care of his Trojan people, find a new Troy, marry Lavinia, and bear descendants to establish the great city of Rome. Aeneas has no choice but to win the war and Lavinia’s hand in marriage. Turnus must lose and somehow suffer; He cannot escape his fate. Virgil makes use of the difference between the two heroes using antagonism, hatred and most of all the superiority of Aeneas to show the greatness of Rome.
At the time The Aeneid was written Augustus Caesar was in power and the Pax Romana was beginning. Rome was in a state of absolute reign and greatness. Virgil makes use of the character Aeneas to show the greatness of his friend Octavian or Augustus Caesar. He uses the difference between the two heroes to show that by destiny via Aeneas (an ancestor of Octavian Caesar) Rome will lead the world in philosophy, art, and intelligence, etc. Turnus is good, but Aeneas is better and so is the new emperor Caesar. With Octavian Caesar in control, Rome will become even greater than it is. Virgil accomplishes his goal of glorifying Rome and its leader Augustus Caesar.
Virgil creates a strong similarity between Turnus and Aeneas, however the major characteristic of these two heroes is that Aeneas is destined to win and Turnus to lose. This difference greatly surpasses the likeness between the two men and leads to the exaltation and glorification of Rome. If Augustus Caesar is anywhere similar to Aeneas, which he is as Virgil points out, he will lead Rome to the tops. And that is just what happens!
About Me
For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.
May 27, 2018
some funny reviews as to my opinions on this
1) this is filled with purple prose and instalove, complete with a hot sexy bad boy for the main character
2) hello my name is Aeneas Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. I have long ebony black hair and some people say I look like Aphrodite (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!) I was sailing through the ever-mindful anger of the savage Juno. It was raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of gods stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
3) this doesn't really deserve one star but my latin class definitely does
1) this is filled with purple prose and instalove, complete with a hot sexy bad boy for the main character
2) hello my name is Aeneas Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. I have long ebony black hair and some people say I look like Aphrodite (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!) I was sailing through the ever-mindful anger of the savage Juno. It was raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of gods stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
3) this doesn't really deserve one star but my latin class definitely does
November 8, 2017
Read as part of my A Levels.
Thoroughly enjoyed the first half of The Aeneid (mainly because its the half influenced by The Odyssey and so more mythological and fantastical) less enthralled by the second half (more influenced by The Iliad - with war and politics.)
Will go back for a reread at some point I imagine.
Thoroughly enjoyed the first half of The Aeneid (mainly because its the half influenced by The Odyssey and so more mythological and fantastical) less enthralled by the second half (more influenced by The Iliad - with war and politics.)
Will go back for a reread at some point I imagine.
February 8, 2018
"I sing of warfare and a man at war.
From the sea-coast of Troy in early days
He came to Italy by destiny,
To our Lavinian western shore,
A fugitive, this captain, buffeted
Cruelly on land as on the sea
By blows from powers of the air - behind them
Baleful Juno in her sleepless rage.
And cruel losses were his lot in war,
Till he could found a city and bring home
His gods to Latium, land of the Latin race,
The Alban lords, and the high walls of Rome.
Tell me the cause now, O Muse, how galled
In her divine pride, and how sore at heart
From her old wound, the queen of gods compelled him-
A man apart, devoted to his mission-
To undergo so many perilous days
And enter on so many trials."
Years after finally reading The Illiad and The Odyssey (one of my high school classes went over the important bits of The Odyssey, but that was pretty much the beginning and end of my classical education), I got around to reading the Roman side of the story, at last.
Is it blasphemy to say that I like Virgil's version more? Granted, Odysseus is probably a more compelling character, since he's at least morally complex in comparison to Aeneas's bland nobility and piety, but I kind of preferred reading the adventures of a guy who manages to be a hero without also having to be a self-centered, cheating dickbag. Even though I prefer the Greeks to the Romans overall, I'm Team Aeneas on this one, because man, Odysseus sucks. (I have this whole theory that everything that happens in the Odyssey is actually one huge lie concocted by Odysseus to explain why he didn't come home for ten years after the Trojan War)
As in Homer's epics, some of the best parts of this book are the battle descriptions, which are exciting, detailed, and appropriately gory. There's also a lengthy description of the armor that the gods give one of the characters, and even though that sounds boring, it's actually beautiful. And I liked the supporting characters a lot more than I liked Homer's, especially Queen Dido and Camilla the warrior girl. Also Aeneas travels to the Underworld, which is always a fun time.
From the sea-coast of Troy in early days
He came to Italy by destiny,
To our Lavinian western shore,
A fugitive, this captain, buffeted
Cruelly on land as on the sea
By blows from powers of the air - behind them
Baleful Juno in her sleepless rage.
And cruel losses were his lot in war,
Till he could found a city and bring home
His gods to Latium, land of the Latin race,
The Alban lords, and the high walls of Rome.
Tell me the cause now, O Muse, how galled
In her divine pride, and how sore at heart
From her old wound, the queen of gods compelled him-
A man apart, devoted to his mission-
To undergo so many perilous days
And enter on so many trials."
Years after finally reading The Illiad and The Odyssey (one of my high school classes went over the important bits of The Odyssey, but that was pretty much the beginning and end of my classical education), I got around to reading the Roman side of the story, at last.
Is it blasphemy to say that I like Virgil's version more? Granted, Odysseus is probably a more compelling character, since he's at least morally complex in comparison to Aeneas's bland nobility and piety, but I kind of preferred reading the adventures of a guy who manages to be a hero without also having to be a self-centered, cheating dickbag. Even though I prefer the Greeks to the Romans overall, I'm Team Aeneas on this one, because man, Odysseus sucks. (I have this whole theory that everything that happens in the Odyssey is actually one huge lie concocted by Odysseus to explain why he didn't come home for ten years after the Trojan War)
As in Homer's epics, some of the best parts of this book are the battle descriptions, which are exciting, detailed, and appropriately gory. There's also a lengthy description of the armor that the gods give one of the characters, and even though that sounds boring, it's actually beautiful. And I liked the supporting characters a lot more than I liked Homer's, especially Queen Dido and Camilla the warrior girl. Also Aeneas travels to the Underworld, which is always a fun time.
December 26, 2024
قهرمان؟ خیر. مامورم و معذور.
در دنیای ادبیات — همانند دنیاهای دیگر — متنها در ارتباطی همیشگی و تنگاتنگ باهمند. این همنشینیها زمانی جذابترند که نویسنده اشارهی واضحی به آنها نکرده باشد یا بهتر، حتا خودش هم از آن بیخبر باشد؛ اینجاست که لذت کشف و درک متن به یک بازی کارآگاهی تبدیل میشود. اما خیلی وقتها نویسنده کار را ساده میکند و آنقدر سرنخهای ریز و درشت در ساختار و روایت و پیرنگ و موتیف و سبک به شما میدهد که شک میکنید واقعن همهی اینها با برنامهریزیِ آگاهانه بوده یا نشانهای از ضعف قریحه و اندیشهی او.
مورد انهاید و رابطهاش با ایلیاد و ادیسه احتمالن معروفترین نمونهی این قضیه است. انهاید را که شروع کنید، از شباهت پررنگ آن به حماسههای هومری شگفتزده میشوید و شاید پس از مدتی دلزده. اگر به خودم اجازهی اغراق بدهم، انگار که با نسخهی دستِ دومی طرفیم که نویسندهای جاهطلب اما نهچندان چیرهدست، در آن تلاش کرده ایلیاد و ادیسه را با اسامی لاتین بازنویسی کند. این شباهت، چه اسم آن را بازآفرینی بگذاریم، چه تقلید یا چه الهام — که به نظر من ترکیبی از همهی اینهاست — اتهامی نیست که ویرژیل تلاشی فعالانه برای زدودنش کرده باشد. مهمترین نقدهای نوشتهشده بر انهاید در این دو هزار سال یا از این ارتباط جنجالی شروع میکنند، یا در آن پایان میگیرند و یا به هر حال گریزی به آن میزنند.
داستان از این قرار است که اِنِه (به تلفظ فرانسوی/انیاس به انگلیسی/آینهآس به لاتین کلاسیک) قهرمانی تروایی اما حاشیهای در جنگ تروا بود که خدایان، بهویژه مادرش آفرودیت و پوسیدون، نظری خاص به او داشتند و بعد از هر بار زخمی شدن او را نجات میدادند، تا جایی که بار آخر ناپدید شد و برای هومر هم چندان مهم نبود که کجاست. ویرژیل اما به این نظرکرده برمیگردد. در انهاید که نزدیک به هفت قرن پس از ایلیاد نوشته شده، میبینیم که انه دوباره به جنگ برگشته و تا انتهای کار در تروا میماند و وقتی که کاری از او برنمیآید مجبور به ترک شهر میشود، البته با ماموریتی تاریخی: بنا نهادن امپراتوری روم.
شش کتاب اول انهاید داستان سفر پرپیچوخم انه و همراهانش است برای رسیدن به لاتیوم [منطقهای تاریخی در ایتالیا که شهر رم در آنجا ساخته میشود.] چیزی شبیه به سفر اولیس در جستوجوی خانه. و نیمهی دوم کتاب هم ایلیادِ ویرژیل است، یعنی داستان جنگهایی که انه باید برای تثبیت این قلمرو بکند. در این میان هم رومنس داریم، هم سفر به دنیای مردگان و هم جدال بین المپیهایی که هر کدام طرفدار یک طرف داستاناند. با این همه اما شکافی بزرگ بین انهاید و حماسههای هومری هست. اینجا افتخار فردی از نوع ایلیاد چندان مهم نیست، داستانگویی و نیرنگبازی اولیس هم خیلی به کار نمیآیند. مسأله اصلی فراتر از نبرد با خدایان یا بازگشت به خانه است و آن چیزی است از جنس وظیفهگرایی (ترجمهای دمِ دستی از عبارت لاتین pietas) و انسان رنجبری که حس مسئولیتش نسبت به فرزند/ملت/تاریخ را بالاتر از هر گونه افتخار فردی میداند. به عبارت دیگر، انه مامور است و معذور. او نه میتواند با افتخار مثل هکتور و آشیل در جنگ کشته شود، نه خانهای برای خودش داشته باشد و نه اجازه دارد از مواهب عشق بهرهمند شود. [اپرای هنری پورسل با نام Dido and Aeneas را بشنوید.] سرنوشت (و ویرژیل) برای او نقشهای دیگر دارند: او باید رنج این مسیر دشوار را بر خود هموار کند تا قدرتمندترین امپراتوری دنیا را پدید بیاورد.
ویرژیل کتاب را سه دهه قبل از میلاد مسیح نوشته. زمانی که روم دوران پادشاهی (قرون ۸ تا ۶ قبل از میلاد) و جمهوری (قرن ۶ تا زمان نوشته شدن کتاب) را پشت سر گذاشته و آگوستوس جنگهای داخلی و جمهوریخواهان را سرکوب کرده و حالا به عنوان اولین دیکتاتور امپراتوری، سودای بزرگی در سر میپروراند. البته برخلاف تصوری که از امپراتورهای خونریز و بعضن دیوانهی روم داریم، آگوستوس مردی آرمانگرا و صلحطلب بود — البته بعد از این که به اندازهی کافی خون ریخت — و ایدهآلش جامعهای سادهزیست، تلاشگر و وظیفهگرا. ویرژیل در انهاید نه تنها تاریخ امپراتوری را به افسانه و خدایان پیوند میزند و مشروعیتساز میشود، بلکه تا حد امکان این ایدهآلها میپرورد. [البته رابطهی ویرژیل با آگوستوس و امپراتوری چندلایه و پیچیدهتر از این بود.]
طبیعی بود که قهرمان چنین حماسهای ضدقهرمان از آب دربیاید. کسی که نه بسیار نیرومند است و نه بسیار زیرک و نه حتا آنقدر محکم و استوار که هیچ وقت خم به ابرو نیاورد. انه نهتنها هیچ کدام از اینها نیست، بلکه احساساتی بسیار عمیق دارد. به هر بهانهای از شهر و خانه و همرزمانش یاد میکند، بر دشمنانش دل میسوزاند و بهدنبال کمترین حد از خونریزیست. اطرافیان و سربازان کنار و مقابلش هم اغلب آدمهایی معمولیاند، کشاورزان و روستاییانی که داس و تبر را از کنار زمین بر میدارند و به جنگ میآیند. حتا در دربار شاهان ایتالیایی هم خبری از زرقوبرق نیست. به بیان دیگر، در دنیای ویرژیل آدمهای ساده هم میتوانند قهرمان باشند، به این شرط که وظیفهشان نسبت به خانه و میهن را از یاد نبرند. البته همین آدمهای ساده هم بیشترین رنج را تحمل میکنند. انهاید در هر لحظه این را به یاد ما میآورد که موفقیت بزرگ، فداکاریهای بزرگی را هم طلب میکند.
دو هزار سال برویم جلوتر. ویرژیل با هر کس بهگونهای سخن میگوید. برای هیتلر، روزولت یا ابوبکر البغدادی راه پیروزی بر دشمنان و داشتن دولتی قدرتمند که مایهی افتخار باشد از گوش دادن انهها به ندای وظیفه میگذرد. برای بسیاری از دیگران انه نمادی از نوعدوستی و صلحطلبیِ است که میتواند اروپای متحد را رقم بزند. بالاتر از همه اما انهای قرار دارد که شمایلیست از انسانی جاکنشده و محکوم به تحمل رنجی ابدی، چه نوع مسیحی و چه کافکایی. به هر حال هر قدر هم مدافع قدرت اراده و اختیار باشیم، همه تا حدی مثل انهایم: مامور و معذور.
پ.ن: خواندهشده با ترجمهی خوب رابرت فیگلز و مقدمهی عالی برنارد ناکس. مثل ایلیاد و ادیسه، کزازی به فارسی ترجمه کرده اما با وجود تجربهی خوب قبلی این بار ترجمهی انگلیسی را ترجیح دادم.
پ.پ.ن: دربارهی ایلیاد و ادیسه قبلتر چیزکی نوشته بودم.
پ.پ.پ.ن: با تشکر زیاد از همخوانان عزیز.
در دنیای ادبیات — همانند دنیاهای دیگر — متنها در ارتباطی همیشگی و تنگاتنگ باهمند. این همنشینیها زمانی جذابترند که نویسنده اشارهی واضحی به آنها نکرده باشد یا بهتر، حتا خودش هم از آن بیخبر باشد؛ اینجاست که لذت کشف و درک متن به یک بازی کارآگاهی تبدیل میشود. اما خیلی وقتها نویسنده کار را ساده میکند و آنقدر سرنخهای ریز و درشت در ساختار و روایت و پیرنگ و موتیف و سبک به شما میدهد که شک میکنید واقعن همهی اینها با برنامهریزیِ آگاهانه بوده یا نشانهای از ضعف قریحه و اندیشهی او.
مورد انهاید و رابطهاش با ایلیاد و ادیسه احتمالن معروفترین نمونهی این قضیه است. انهاید را که شروع کنید، از شباهت پررنگ آن به حماسههای هومری شگفتزده میشوید و شاید پس از مدتی دلزده. اگر به خودم اجازهی اغراق بدهم، انگار که با نسخهی دستِ دومی طرفیم که نویسندهای جاهطلب اما نهچندان چیرهدست، در آن تلاش کرده ایلیاد و ادیسه را با اسامی لاتین بازنویسی کند. این شباهت، چه اسم آن را بازآفرینی بگذاریم، چه تقلید یا چه الهام — که به نظر من ترکیبی از همهی اینهاست — اتهامی نیست که ویرژیل تلاشی فعالانه برای زدودنش کرده باشد. مهمترین نقدهای نوشتهشده بر انهاید در این دو هزار سال یا از این ارتباط جنجالی شروع میکنند، یا در آن پایان میگیرند و یا به هر حال گریزی به آن میزنند.
داستان از این قرار است که اِنِه (به تلفظ فرانسوی/انیاس به انگلیسی/آینهآس به لاتین کلاسیک) قهرمانی تروایی اما حاشیهای در جنگ تروا بود که خدایان، بهویژه مادرش آفرودیت و پوسیدون، نظری خاص به او داشتند و بعد از هر بار زخمی شدن او را نجات میدادند، تا جایی که بار آخر ناپدید شد و برای هومر هم چندان مهم نبود که کجاست. ویرژیل اما به این نظرکرده برمیگردد. در انهاید که نزدیک به هفت قرن پس از ایلیاد نوشته شده، میبینیم که انه دوباره به جنگ برگشته و تا انتهای کار در تروا میماند و وقتی که کاری از او برنمیآید مجبور به ترک شهر میشود، البته با ماموریتی تاریخی: بنا نهادن امپراتوری روم.
شش کتاب اول انهاید داستان سفر پرپیچوخم انه و همراهانش است برای رسیدن به لاتیوم [منطقهای تاریخی در ایتالیا که شهر رم در آنجا ساخته میشود.] چیزی شبیه به سفر اولیس در جستوجوی خانه. و نیمهی دوم کتاب هم ایلیادِ ویرژیل است، یعنی داستان جنگهایی که انه باید برای تثبیت این قلمرو بکند. در این میان هم رومنس داریم، هم سفر به دنیای مردگان و هم جدال بین المپیهایی که هر کدام طرفدار یک طرف داستاناند. با این همه اما شکافی بزرگ بین انهاید و حماسههای هومری هست. اینجا افتخار فردی از نوع ایلیاد چندان مهم نیست، داستانگویی و نیرنگبازی اولیس هم خیلی به کار نمیآیند. مسأله اصلی فراتر از نبرد با خدایان یا بازگشت به خانه است و آن چیزی است از جنس وظیفهگرایی (ترجمهای دمِ دستی از عبارت لاتین pietas) و انسان رنجبری که حس مسئولیتش نسبت به فرزند/ملت/تاریخ را بالاتر از هر گونه افتخار فردی میداند. به عبارت دیگر، انه مامور است و معذور. او نه میتواند با افتخار مثل هکتور و آشیل در جنگ کشته شود، نه خانهای برای خودش داشته باشد و نه اجازه دارد از مواهب عشق بهرهمند شود. [اپرای هنری پورسل با نام Dido and Aeneas را بشنوید.] سرنوشت (و ویرژیل) برای او نقشهای دیگر دارند: او باید رنج این مسیر دشوار را بر خود هموار کند تا قدرتمندترین امپراتوری دنیا را پدید بیاورد.
ویرژیل کتاب را سه دهه قبل از میلاد مسیح نوشته. زمانی که روم دوران پادشاهی (قرون ۸ تا ۶ قبل از میلاد) و جمهوری (قرن ۶ تا زمان نوشته شدن کتاب) را پشت سر گذاشته و آگوستوس جنگهای داخلی و جمهوریخواهان را سرکوب کرده و حالا به عنوان اولین دیکتاتور امپراتوری، سودای بزرگی در سر میپروراند. البته برخلاف تصوری که از امپراتورهای خونریز و بعضن دیوانهی روم داریم، آگوستوس مردی آرمانگرا و صلحطلب بود — البته بعد از این که به اندازهی کافی خون ریخت — و ایدهآلش جامعهای سادهزیست، تلاشگر و وظیفهگرا. ویرژیل در انهاید نه تنها تاریخ امپراتوری را به افسانه و خدایان پیوند میزند و مشروعیتساز میشود، بلکه تا حد امکان این ایدهآلها میپرورد. [البته رابطهی ویرژیل با آگوستوس و امپراتوری چندلایه و پیچیدهتر از این بود.]
طبیعی بود که قهرمان چنین حماسهای ضدقهرمان از آب دربیاید. کسی که نه بسیار نیرومند است و نه بسیار زیرک و نه حتا آنقدر محکم و استوار که هیچ وقت خم به ابرو نیاورد. انه نهتنها هیچ کدام از اینها نیست، بلکه احساساتی بسیار عمیق دارد. به هر بهانهای از شهر و خانه و همرزمانش یاد میکند، بر دشمنانش دل میسوزاند و بهدنبال کمترین حد از خونریزیست. اطرافیان و سربازان کنار و مقابلش هم اغلب آدمهایی معمولیاند، کشاورزان و روستاییانی که داس و تبر را از کنار زمین بر میدارند و به جنگ میآیند. حتا در دربار شاهان ایتالیایی هم خبری از زرقوبرق نیست. به بیان دیگر، در دنیای ویرژیل آدمهای ساده هم میتوانند قهرمان باشند، به این شرط که وظیفهشان نسبت به خانه و میهن را از یاد نبرند. البته همین آدمهای ساده هم بیشترین رنج را تحمل میکنند. انهاید در هر لحظه این را به یاد ما میآورد که موفقیت بزرگ، فداکاریهای بزرگی را هم طلب میکند.
دو هزار سال برویم جلوتر. ویرژیل با هر کس بهگونهای سخن میگوید. برای هیتلر، روزولت یا ابوبکر البغدادی راه پیروزی بر دشمنان و داشتن دولتی قدرتمند که مایهی افتخار باشد از گوش دادن انهها به ندای وظیفه میگذرد. برای بسیاری از دیگران انه نمادی از نوعدوستی و صلحطلبیِ است که میتواند اروپای متحد را رقم بزند. بالاتر از همه اما انهای قرار دارد که شمایلیست از انسانی جاکنشده و محکوم به تحمل رنجی ابدی، چه نوع مسیحی و چه کافکایی. به هر حال هر قدر هم مدافع قدرت اراده و اختیار باشیم، همه تا حدی مثل انهایم: مامور و معذور.
پ.ن: خواندهشده با ترجمهی خوب رابرت فیگلز و مقدمهی عالی برنارد ناکس. مثل ایلیاد و ادیسه، کزازی به فارسی ترجمه کرده اما با وجود تجربهی خوب قبلی این بار ترجمهی انگلیسی را ترجیح دادم.
پ.پ.ن: دربارهی ایلیاد و ادیسه قبلتر چیزکی نوشته بودم.
پ.پ.پ.ن: با تشکر زیاد از همخوانان عزیز.
March 11, 2008
I’ve been meaning to read the Aeneid for years. The Armorial Bearings of the City of Melbourne have the motto: Vires Acquirit Eundo which is taken from book four of the Aeneid. It translates as, “It gathers strength as it goes”. Melbourne’s first judge gave the young town the motto – but I’ve often wondered if those he gave it to had any idea that the reference is to sexual rumours spreading about Dido and Aeneas. Rumour being the swiftest of the Gods.
Anyway, there is a pop star who is called Dido too, which is an odd name to call a child, I’d have thought. Given Dido’s fate in this book – to commit suicide as Aeneas leaves her to fulfil his destiny and found Rome – it seems an even stranger name to call a child.
I had no idea that Aeneas was from Troy. That Helen one has a lot to answer for – but then, what would the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid be without her? And while we are on troublesome women – what’s that Juno like? But then, if you are going to marry your brother, well…
The religion in this book is utterly remarkable. I quite like it, as it does more or less accord with my experience of the world. One of the problems Christianity faces is the problem of evil – how can an all powerful, all loving God allow such terrible things to happen? But the ancients had no such worries – basically the Gods are all total nutcases and totally dysfunctional. They don’t just engage in incest, but every vice imaginable and they all basically hate each other. So they go out of their way to make life a misery for each other and, in the process, make life a complete misery for people.
I mean, imagine that not only the destruction of Troy, but also of Carthage (two of the major cities of the ancient world) can be more or less explained as resulting from a guy called Paris judging a beauty contest. This is religion for the third millennium. This is religion for a generation raised on Big Brother and American Idol.
And when Virgil wants to be violent, we are talking squelchingly so. You know the sort of thing – thrice the two edged sword hacked into his flesh until huge welts… Yes, boy’s own adventure stuff, possibly even with capital letters. Lots of blood, quite a bit of mashed brains and the words ‘up to the hilt’ used at least twice that I can remember without checking.
All the same there are moments of aching humanity and a perceptiveness that catches the breath. The scene in hell with Dido is very moving, the stuff with the king of Arcadia and Pallas is heart wrenching. A constant theme throughout is how your greatest victory can become your greatest defeat – as Turnus proves at the end.
I really loved this, I loved the extended metaphors (some that went to the very edge of being over extended – like a rubber band that suddenly snaps and slaps the extender on the hand when all he wanted to do was shoot the band at a friend across the room, or knock down some paper targets now forever just out of reach). There is one – which I’ve forgotten what it was seeking to illuminate now – where a lion is being baited and has a spear stuck into it and the spear is broken off flush with its wound. I think all this was basically to say how loudly some guy was roaring – you know, as loud as a lion, wasn’t quite enough. But the metaphors really are quite something. You’d never get away with building metaphors like that today.
I don’t know if it is as good as the Odyssey, but like the Odyssey it starts as a Classical Road movie and ends up one of those Epic Theatre battles that used to be on telly after the wrestling on Sunday mornings when I was growing up.
You have to say one thing for these Mediterranean types , they sure know how to put on a good fight. The thing that is hardest to understand is that the Romans gave up all this to become Christians – hard to imagine.
Anyway, there is a pop star who is called Dido too, which is an odd name to call a child, I’d have thought. Given Dido’s fate in this book – to commit suicide as Aeneas leaves her to fulfil his destiny and found Rome – it seems an even stranger name to call a child.
I had no idea that Aeneas was from Troy. That Helen one has a lot to answer for – but then, what would the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid be without her? And while we are on troublesome women – what’s that Juno like? But then, if you are going to marry your brother, well…
The religion in this book is utterly remarkable. I quite like it, as it does more or less accord with my experience of the world. One of the problems Christianity faces is the problem of evil – how can an all powerful, all loving God allow such terrible things to happen? But the ancients had no such worries – basically the Gods are all total nutcases and totally dysfunctional. They don’t just engage in incest, but every vice imaginable and they all basically hate each other. So they go out of their way to make life a misery for each other and, in the process, make life a complete misery for people.
I mean, imagine that not only the destruction of Troy, but also of Carthage (two of the major cities of the ancient world) can be more or less explained as resulting from a guy called Paris judging a beauty contest. This is religion for the third millennium. This is religion for a generation raised on Big Brother and American Idol.
And when Virgil wants to be violent, we are talking squelchingly so. You know the sort of thing – thrice the two edged sword hacked into his flesh until huge welts… Yes, boy’s own adventure stuff, possibly even with capital letters. Lots of blood, quite a bit of mashed brains and the words ‘up to the hilt’ used at least twice that I can remember without checking.
All the same there are moments of aching humanity and a perceptiveness that catches the breath. The scene in hell with Dido is very moving, the stuff with the king of Arcadia and Pallas is heart wrenching. A constant theme throughout is how your greatest victory can become your greatest defeat – as Turnus proves at the end.
I really loved this, I loved the extended metaphors (some that went to the very edge of being over extended – like a rubber band that suddenly snaps and slaps the extender on the hand when all he wanted to do was shoot the band at a friend across the room, or knock down some paper targets now forever just out of reach). There is one – which I’ve forgotten what it was seeking to illuminate now – where a lion is being baited and has a spear stuck into it and the spear is broken off flush with its wound. I think all this was basically to say how loudly some guy was roaring – you know, as loud as a lion, wasn’t quite enough. But the metaphors really are quite something. You’d never get away with building metaphors like that today.
I don’t know if it is as good as the Odyssey, but like the Odyssey it starts as a Classical Road movie and ends up one of those Epic Theatre battles that used to be on telly after the wrestling on Sunday mornings when I was growing up.
You have to say one thing for these Mediterranean types , they sure know how to put on a good fight. The thing that is hardest to understand is that the Romans gave up all this to become Christians – hard to imagine.
October 18, 2020
A pesar que el relato en sí no es tan interesante o épico como los de Homero, Virgilio logra un relato bien logrado y muy interesante.
Es bueno también conocer cómo explican los romanos el desenlace de algunos griegos, adaptado claro está a su realidad.
Es una de las pocas obras épicas en Roma que conozco por lo que el valor que tiene aún se eleva más, todo para dotar a Augusto de un origen divino.
Lamentablemente esta obra fue inconclusa.
Es bueno también conocer cómo explican los romanos el desenlace de algunos griegos, adaptado claro está a su realidad.
Es una de las pocas obras épicas en Roma que conozco por lo que el valor que tiene aún se eleva más, todo para dotar a Augusto de un origen divino.
Lamentablemente esta obra fue inconclusa.
January 2, 2026
It is hard for me to rate his book because I know so much of it went over my head. One of the hardest books I have ever read...but I can see that Virgil is one of the greatest poets of all time. I would have to know much more about the references made throughout this work; makes me realize how much more I need to learn.
March 21, 2010
Oh, Aeneid, it isn't you... it's me!
I tried to like you, Aeneid, I really did. And we had some good times, didn't we? But I have to admit that I think I was still a bit hung up on Iliad, and I was trying to make you something you aren't. That isn't fair to you, and it isn't fair to me.
You've got such nice language in you. Such poetry! I'm sure that someone will come along soon who can appreciate you for what you are. You deserve it. Really. You're a wonderful story; you're just not for me.
I finally had to accept it when you kept going on and on about those STUPID BOAT RACES. Oh! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! No, really, that wasn't fair of me. No, no, you should absolutely enjoy your boat races. No, they're great, and I'm sure that they're interesting to a lot of people, and they're part of what makes you you -- which is great -- but I just can't get interested. My mind kept wandering.
Oh, of course I realize you've got other interests. I realize that you were just finishing up with the boat races when I said this, but it isn't just that. I'd been thinking about this for awhile. And I think I should spend my time with a book that I enjoy more. And you'll find a reader who's interested in you. I really wish you all the best, and I'm sorry I had to stop reading you so early.
I tried to like you, Aeneid, I really did. And we had some good times, didn't we? But I have to admit that I think I was still a bit hung up on Iliad, and I was trying to make you something you aren't. That isn't fair to you, and it isn't fair to me.
You've got such nice language in you. Such poetry! I'm sure that someone will come along soon who can appreciate you for what you are. You deserve it. Really. You're a wonderful story; you're just not for me.
I finally had to accept it when you kept going on and on about those STUPID BOAT RACES. Oh! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! No, really, that wasn't fair of me. No, no, you should absolutely enjoy your boat races. No, they're great, and I'm sure that they're interesting to a lot of people, and they're part of what makes you you -- which is great -- but I just can't get interested. My mind kept wandering.
Oh, of course I realize you've got other interests. I realize that you were just finishing up with the boat races when I said this, but it isn't just that. I'd been thinking about this for awhile. And I think I should spend my time with a book that I enjoy more. And you'll find a reader who's interested in you. I really wish you all the best, and I'm sorry I had to stop reading you so early.
November 19, 2021
La Eneida es una grandiosa mezcla entre la Ilíada y la Odisea.
Los elementos, los tópicos, las figuras literarias para darle potencia y profundidad a lo contado y los personajes que la protagonizan son un fuerte indicio de que Virgilio quiso que así fuera narrada la historia; como un recordatorio a esos poemas tan importantes. Y eso es una razón más que suficiente para querer leerlo ya que en mi opinión se me hizo un relato bastante entretenido y digerible, incluso mucho más que los mencionados anteriormente.
La historia sigue a Eneas, un troyano al que luego de la pérdida de Troya contra el ejército aqueo se ha visto empujado a buscar un lugar en el cual refugiarse junto con gran parte del pueblo que lo sigue. En el camino, que será bastante largo y difícil contará con la ayuda de una diosa que lo guiará, pero a su misma vez habrá otra que hará lo que esté en sus manos para que este no logre su cometido. Sin duda alguna los dioses tomarán el protagonismo que siempre han tenido en los terribles sucesos que acompañan a los personajes, al igual que el destino, los presagios y las intervenciones divinas, habrá mucha violencia, conflictos civiles/afectivos y también el futuro de una ciudad prometida en medio de guerras y conquistas; hasta la llegada al mismísimo infierno.
La primera parte, que va desde los libros I al VI son una clara referencia a la Odisea con el viaje del héroe hacia el lugar deseado, rodeado de peripecias y forjando un relato en el que se nos nutrirá de detalles en torno a cómo se desarrolló el triunfo de los aqueos sobre los troyanos y gran parte del destino de los implicados. Y la segunda parte, que va desde los libros VII al XII se narran la llegada y conquista de Eneas en Italia, lugar que más adelante sería conocido como Roma. También el tono trágico y violento envuelto en muertes y conflictos tensos y sangrientos es una buena referencia a la Ilíada.
En fin, a lo que quiero llegar es que si has leído la Ilíada y la Odisea y ambas te han gustado muchísimo este es un relato que merece la pena ser leído, ya que bebe en gran parte de estos poemas homéricos y se nota la influencia por parte de estos en la Eneida, una epopeya igual épica que sus antecesoras. O incluso más, ya que tiene varias escenas intensas y conmovedoras como pocas.
Los elementos, los tópicos, las figuras literarias para darle potencia y profundidad a lo contado y los personajes que la protagonizan son un fuerte indicio de que Virgilio quiso que así fuera narrada la historia; como un recordatorio a esos poemas tan importantes. Y eso es una razón más que suficiente para querer leerlo ya que en mi opinión se me hizo un relato bastante entretenido y digerible, incluso mucho más que los mencionados anteriormente.
La historia sigue a Eneas, un troyano al que luego de la pérdida de Troya contra el ejército aqueo se ha visto empujado a buscar un lugar en el cual refugiarse junto con gran parte del pueblo que lo sigue. En el camino, que será bastante largo y difícil contará con la ayuda de una diosa que lo guiará, pero a su misma vez habrá otra que hará lo que esté en sus manos para que este no logre su cometido. Sin duda alguna los dioses tomarán el protagonismo que siempre han tenido en los terribles sucesos que acompañan a los personajes, al igual que el destino, los presagios y las intervenciones divinas, habrá mucha violencia, conflictos civiles/afectivos y también el futuro de una ciudad prometida en medio de guerras y conquistas; hasta la llegada al mismísimo infierno.
La primera parte, que va desde los libros I al VI son una clara referencia a la Odisea con el viaje del héroe hacia el lugar deseado, rodeado de peripecias y forjando un relato en el que se nos nutrirá de detalles en torno a cómo se desarrolló el triunfo de los aqueos sobre los troyanos y gran parte del destino de los implicados. Y la segunda parte, que va desde los libros VII al XII se narran la llegada y conquista de Eneas en Italia, lugar que más adelante sería conocido como Roma. También el tono trágico y violento envuelto en muertes y conflictos tensos y sangrientos es una buena referencia a la Ilíada.
En fin, a lo que quiero llegar es que si has leído la Ilíada y la Odisea y ambas te han gustado muchísimo este es un relato que merece la pena ser leído, ya que bebe en gran parte de estos poemas homéricos y se nota la influencia por parte de estos en la Eneida, una epopeya igual épica que sus antecesoras. O incluso más, ya que tiene varias escenas intensas y conmovedoras como pocas.
September 19, 2020
1η δημοσίευση Book Press:
https://bookpress.gr/kritikes/poiisi/...
Η γενεαλογία, η αναζήτηση της προέλευσης, όπως μας δίδαξε ο Φουκώ, δεν είναι απαραίτητο να νοείται ως θεμελίωση στερεοτύπων, αλλά κι ως αναψηλάφηση του παρελθόντος, ως κατακερματισμός της όποιας ενότητας. Τούτο προϋποθέτει, εντούτοις, την εις βάθος γνώση του παρελθόντος, όχι ως στατικού και άπαξ σμιλευμένου όγκου που επικάθεται ως άχθος στις αντιλήψεις και την αισθητική των μελλουσών γενεών, όσο ως συνέχεια, εμβαπτισμένη στην ιστορικότητα.
Μπορεί να μην υπάρχει μία και μοναδική πηγή, γνωστή αποκλειστικά στους μύστες, εκ της οποίας αρδεύονται οι υδάτινες εκτάσεις της γνώσης – πλην όμως, δεν είναι διόλου τυχαίο το γεγονός πως εκείνοι που εντρυφούν στην τέχνη του λόγου, συν τω χρόνω, υποπίπτουν στο άλγος του Νόστου. Κι ο Νόστος εδώ, αναπόδραστα, συγκλίνει με την επιστροφή στο παρελθόν. Ουδείς, ποτέ δεν νοστάλγησε το μέλλον. Και τούτο αποτελεί απλά διαπίστωση – δεν το προσημαίνω θετικά ή αρνητικά.
Εν πάση περιπτώσει, για να έρθουμε στα καθ’ ημάς λογοτεχνικά δρώμενα, παρατηρείται σε αρκετούς αναγνώστες η ανάγκη αναζήτησης των απαρχών. Έχοντας πρώτα τρυγήσει τους καρπούς της συγκαιρινής τους παραγωγής, ο δρόμος τούς οδηγεί σε κάποια θεμελιακά κείμενα, των οποίων η αξία δεν είναι απλώς μουσειακή (εξ αποστάσεως θαυμασμός) για πάσης φύσεως παρελθοντολάγνους, αλλά ζώσα, ακμάζουσα και διαρκής. Η αιχμή της τέχνης των κειμένων αυτών παραμένει κοφτερή κι η επαφή μαζί τους προκαλεί στον αείποτε αναγνώστη εντάσεις και υποδόριες εκρήξεις αμιγούς αισθητικής απόλαυσης.
Σε κάποιο από τα σταυροδρόμια της πορείας αυτής, της οποίας ο χάρτης έχει μεν δημιουργηθεί στο παρελθόν, υφίσταται δε μικρές αλλαγές στην πορεία των αιώνων, ο φίλεργος αναγνώστης θα συναντήσει τον Βιργίλιο και την Αινειάδα του. Επική ποίηση, έμμετρη φανταστική μυθοπλασία, πρόκειται για την ιστορία του Αινεία που φεύγοντας διωκόμενος από την Τροία αναζητά, όπως του όρισαν οι θεοί, μια νέα πατρίδα στην Ιταλία. Η πορεία ετούτη θα έχει διάρκεια, περιπέτειες, πολεμικές αναμετρήσεις, έρωτες και φιλίες, μεγαλείο και πόνο, ζωή και θάνατο. Ο Βιργίλιος θα επιχειρήσει να περιγράψει την ανθρώπινη κατάσταση σε 12 βιβλία και θα το επιτύχει στον μέγιστο βαθμό.
Δεν έχει νόημα να σταθώ εδώ στα όποια επιμέρους, δεδομένου ότι η εισαγωγή των περίπου 130 σελίδων του ανυπέρβλητου μεταφραστή / σχολιαστή Παπαγγελή καλύπτει ολοκληρωτικά τον αναγνώστη. Θεωρώ πως θα μπορούσε (σε έναν άλλο ιδεατό κόσμο που δεν υποτιμούσε εξόφθαλμα την πνευματική αριστεία) να αποτελέσει από μόνη της πανεπιστημιακό μάθημα. Τούτου δοθέντος, το μόνο που μένει σε έναν απλό αναγνώστη (πάντα για μένα ομιλώ) είναι να μοιραστεί με τους ομοιοπαθείς τον αντίκτυπο που ένα τέτοιο έργο μπορεί να έχει στην πνευματική του διαμόρφωση.
Δεν είναι απλό για κάποιον που εδώ και καιρό έχει ξεκόψει από τον έμμετρο λόγο να συντονιστεί με το εν λόγω κείμενο. Το έπος έχει παραδώσει ανεπιστρεπτί τη σκυτάλη στο μυθιστόρημα και τούτο καθιστά σαφώς πιο απαιτητική τη διαδικασία κατά την οποία οι συνηθισμένοι στα αλμυρά ύδατα της λογοτεχνίας καλούνται να βουτήξουν στο γλυκό νερό της επικής ποίησης, να προσαρμοστούν παρευθύς στην απουσία άνωσης (μεγάλη ευκολία ετούτη) και να απολαύσουν τις χάρες της.
Ο δάσκαλος Μπλουμ έρχεται (τώρα και πάντα) αρωγός στην προσπάθεια: η ποίηση πάσης μορφής αναμέλπεται, εκφωνείται δυνατά (από στήθους, ακόμα καλύτερα), ούτως ώστε να αποτελεί μια ολοκληρωμένη οπτικοακουστική εμπειρία που μετατρέπει τον λόγο σε αίσθηση, σε βίωμα. Μολονότι θα ψευδόμουν αν έλεγα πως ακολούθησα πιστά τη συμβουλή καθ’ όλη τη διάρκεια της μακράς ανάγνωσης, όταν επιλεκτικά το έπραξα υπήρξαν όντως παράγραφοι / στίχοι οι οποίοι κυριολεκτικά υλοποιήθηκαν εμπρός μου, απέκτησαν ουσία και βάρος, διέρρηξαν τον χρόνο και τον τόπο και με ρούφηξαν στη δίνη τους.
Δεδομένου πως ο Παπαγγελής στην εισαγωγή του αναλύει ενδελεχώς τα ζητήματα διακειμενικότητας, εκλεκτικής συγγένειας της Αινειάδας με τα προηγηθέντα ομηρικά έπη, θα καταθέσω την προσωπική μου αίσθηση. Το εναρκτήριο λάκτισμα είναι ξεκάθαρο. Ο Βιργίλιος δεν φείδεται πλείστες όσες αναφορές, δεν αποκρύπτει επιρροές και τα οφειλόμενα στον Όμηρο. Ταυτόχρονα όμως διαθέτει την απαιτούμενη από μια μεγαλοφυία οίηση, ώστε να δοκιμάσει την αιχμή του ποιητικού του ξίφους απέναντι σε έναν ογκόλιθο. Μην ξεχνάμε ότι έχουν μεσολαβήσει αιώνες στο μεταξύ, και πως στη σκευή του ο Βιργίλιος φέρει το απόθεμα του δραματικού λόγου όπως το παρέδωσαν οι μεγάλοι τραγικοί ποιητές.
Θα λέγαμε πως ο Βιργίλιος είναι ένας επίγονος, κάτι που εν προκειμένω δεν έχει την αρνητική χροιά που προσέδιδε ο Στάινερ στην έννοια. Ο Λατίνος ποιητής είναι ο ευτυχής κληρονόμος μιας παράδοσης την οποία τίμησε με τρόπο θαυμαστό, εισαγάγοντας το δραματικό ύφος στην επική αφήγηση. Καίτοι το έργο του αποτελεί συνέχεια, δεν καταφεύγει στην ανούσια μίμηση, βορά στις σκιαμαχίες του αδηφάγου χρόνου. Η Αινειάδα εντάσσεται στη νεωτερικότητα, καθώς στο επικό στοιχείο εμφιλοχωρούν θραύσματα υπαρξιακού προβληματισμού. Ο Αινείας, σε αντίθεση με τους αδαμάντινους και κάπως δισδιάστατους ομηρικούς ήρωες, αμφιβάλλει, άγεται και φέρεται από όλα εκείνα τα ηθικά διλήμματα που συνιστούν εν τέλει την τραγικότητα. Εκεί που το ομηρικό έπος, όπως θαυμαστά τονίζει ο μεταφραστής, παρουσιάζεται «ως ευθύγραμμο, άμεσο, μια συμπαγής αναπαράσταση, όχι αυτοστοχαστική…», το νεότερο έπος λοξοκοιτά προς τα πίσω, ώστε να οδηγηθεί πλησίστιο εμπρός. Για να επανέλθουμε στην εισαγωγική παράγραφο περί Φουκώ, ο ποιητής κατακερματίζει την ενότητα του παρελθόντος, αναψηλαφώντας το παραδεδομένο, εγκυμονώντας το μέλλον όπως αυτός το οραματίστηκε.
Η θεϊκή παρουσία –εσαεί παρούσα, ουδέποτε αμφισβητούμενη– κατευθύνει τις πράξεις των ηρώων, προφητεύοντας τα μελλούμενα, δικαιώνοντας τις πράξεις των τραγικών ηρώων που προσπίπτουν σε εκείνη διαρκώς για καθοδήγηση και αιτιολόγηση πράξεων (δικαίων και αδίκων). Τούτο όμως δεν εμποδίζει τους ήρωες (τον Αινεία πρώτιστα) να υποφέρουν, να αισθάνονται το άχθος της ύπαρξής τους, να αμφιβάλλουν και να συγκρούονται με τη συνείδησή τους και εκείνη των άλλων.
Όπως έχουμε διδαχθεί από το Αρχαίο δράμα, μεταξύ των στοιχείων που ορίζουν την τραγικότητα ενός προσώπου συμπεριλαμβάνονται τα αισθήματα ενοχής, η σύγκρουσή του με υπέρτερες δυνάμεις, η απότομη μεταστροφή της τύχης, αλλά και η επικράτηση μιας αναπόφευκτης μοίρας. Ο Αινείας είναι ο κατ’ εξοχήν τραγικός ήρωας, αλλά εν τινι μέτρω αυτό ισχύει και για τα άλλα dramatis personae του έπους. Από τις πλέον χαρακτηριστικές περιπτώσεις η Διδώ, η οποία περιθάλπει τον Αινεία, τον ερωτεύεται για να τον χάσει στη συνέχεια, καθώς εκείνος ακολουθεί την προδιαγεγραμμένη από τους θεούς μοίρα του. Ο διάλογός τους πριν από τον χωρισμό (και τη συνακόλουθη αυτοκτονία της) είναι συγκλονιστικός και παραπέμπει στις ομορφότερες στιγμές της δραματικής ποίησης: «Το δάκρυ μου και ο λόγος σου, αυτά και τίποτα άλλο η άμοιρη δεν έχω. Αναβολή και χρόνο σου ζητώ, για να παραδοθώ στη μοίρα μου, να μάθω να πονάω». Και σε αυτή την έκκληση, ο αμετάπειστος Αινείας θα απαντήσει: «Αν ήταν στο δικό μου ριζικό, να ορίζω τη ζωή μου όπως τη θέλω».
Όταν στη συνέχεια η Αφροδίτη ζητά από τον Ήφαιστο να φτιάξει μια νέα αρματωσιά για τον γιό της (όπως έπραξε η Θέτις για τον Αχιλλέα), είναι σαν να είμαστε παρόντες στην ίδια τη διαδικασία της ποιητικής δημιουργίας. Ο Βιργίλιος μετατρέπεται αυτοστιγμεί σε θεό Ήφαιστο: Στο βαθύ σκοτάδι της νύχτας, στα υπόγεια, απομονωμένος συνδαυλίζει το πυρ, ακονίζει την πένα, λιώνει το ατσάλι της έμπνευσης και σκαρώνει πανοπλία τρομακτική, απόκοσμης έμπνευσης, μεγαλειώδη. Το φυσερό της δημιουργίας ασθμαίνει ακάματα, οι στίχοι ρέουν, λιώνουν και παίρνουν το σχήμα τους αργά και σταθερά, υπό το άγρυπνο βλέμμα του δημιουργού. Όταν προβάλει το πρωί (χωλός, συχνά καταγέλαστος – τι σημασία όμως έχει το δέμας και η όψη του δημιουργού;) φέρνει στους θνητούς και τους αθανάτους που παρακολουθούν κραταιοί πλην όμως ανέμπνευστοι, το δημιούργημά του: την ποιητική του πανοπλία – καλύτερα, την πανοπλία για τον Αινεία και το έπος για εμάς τους βροτούς.
Τα παραδείγματα υψηλής αφηγηματικής τέχνης αφθονούν. Ενδεικτικά μόνον αναφέρω κάποια. Συγκλονιστική η περιγραφή της εξόδου όπου ο Νίσος και ο Ευρύαλος επιχειρούν ανεπιτυχώς να κατασκοπεύσουν τους αντιπάλους στον πόλεμο κατά των Ρουτούλων. Μάταιη όμως η έξοδός τους και ο επακόλουθος θάνατός τους: «Ένα μονάχα μπόρεσε: πολύ τον δυστυχή του φίλο να αγαπήσει». Και ο ποιητής συνεχίζει: «Μακάριοι και οι δυο σας! Μερτικό στη δύναμη ας έχουν τούτοι οι στίχοι, ποτέ για εσάς δεν θα έρθει ο καιρός που λησμονιά θα σβήσει το όνομά σας».
Για να ακολουθήσει στη συνέχεια ο σπαραγμός της μάνας του Ευρύαλου. Ποια ψυχή σύγχρονη, μέλλουσα δεν θα συγκλονιστεί από του ποιητή τους στίχους, τον τρόπο με τον οποίο μεταφέρει τον πόνο της απώλειας; Τι μπορεί να είναι εκείνο που έχει δραστικά αλλάξει ανά τους αιώνες, ώστε κάποιος να ισχυριστεί πως οι στίχοι έχουν ατονήσει και ο αντίκτυπος που προκαλούν είναι αδρανής και αφλεγής; Το ερώτημα είναι προφανώς ρητορικό.
Στη συνέχεια, ο Αινείας σκοτώνει τον νεαρό Λαύσο που επιχειρεί να σώσει τον πατέρα του από βέβαιο θάνατο. Τον φόνο ακολουθεί η θλίψη για τον άδικο χαμό. Παραδίδει το σώμα στους συντρόφους του: «το κορμί ο ίδιος το σηκώνει από το χώμα – ασχήμιζε το αίμα τα μαλλιά που ήταν πάντα καλοχτενισμένα». Το κάλλος δεν εγκαταλείπει τον νεκρό, σε αντίθεση με την ψυχή που κατεβαίνει στον Άδη. Είναι η παρακαταθήκη στην αιωνιότητα, ο τρόπος του ποιητή για να δοξάσει το εφήμερο, τη νεότητα που υποκύπτει στον αδήριτο θάνατο, αλλά ταυτόχρονα γίνεται στίχος, αιώνιο παρόν, γίνεται ομορφιά προς τέρψιν των συγκαιρινών και των μελλοντικών αναγνωστών.
Το έπος βρίθει πολεμικών συγκρούσεων. Ο αναγνώστης βέβαια ανακαλύπτει σταδιακά πως υπάρχει τάξη, ισορροπία, αισθητική, ακόμα και στις βιαιότερες περιγραφές. Το φονικό έχει τους κανόνες του, την τελετουργία του. Οι άνδρες πεθαίνουν διότι καταρχάς είναι θνητοί. Διότι είναι έρμαια των βουλών των θεών, μα και των δικών τους επιθυμιών. Διότι επιζητούν το κλέος, την υστεροφημία. Διότι είναι αψήφιστα γενναίοι, αλλά και ασυλλόγιστα δειλοί. Ποτέ όμως δεν πεθαίνουν ακατονόμαστοι (σε συμφωνία με την ομηρική παράδοση). Ο άνδρας που συναντά τον θάνατο σε μάχη ονοματίζεται, ενίοτε παρατίθεται σύντομη αναφορά στην οικογένεια ή τη φυλή του. Ετούτο τον καθιστά άνθρωπο, υποκείμενο άξιο αναφοράς, όχι απλώς έναν άγνωστο στρατιώτη, αναπληρωματικό πολεμιστή που η ύπαρξή του συνεισφέρει στη δόξα του βασιλιά του. Κάτι τέτοιο δεν υφίσταται στον Όμηρο ούτε προφανώς στον Βιργίλιο. Ο ηττημένος κερδίζει από την αξία του νικητή, με συνέπεια να αναφέρεται στους αιώνες.
Ο θάνατος για τον Βιργίλιο είναι ηρωικός μεν, πένθιμος δε. Οι ψυχορραγούντες αφήνουν με θλίψη τον κόσμο, αναπολούν την πατρίδα και τους αγαπημένους τους προτού ενωθούν με τις σκιές. Ο ποιητής αποδίδει τιμή στους πεσόντες σε δίκαιο ή άδικο αγώνα, τυλίγοντάς τους με το πέπλο των στίχων του, το οποίο θα τους συνοδεύσει στο φριχτό ταξίδι τους στον κάτω κόσμο. Εκείνη τη στιγμή αίρει τον εαυτό του πάνω από τα ανθρώπινα, μετατρέπεται σε Θεό που επιχειρεί να επανορθώσει κατάφωρη αδικία (τι πιο άδικο από την ανελέητη σφαγή νέων και μη ανθρώπων στο πεδίο της μάχης), παρεμβάλλοντας την πένα του ως ασπίδα: «Κι αν η μοίρα σας οδήγησε πρόωρα στον θάνατο, οι στίχοι μου θα σας προσφέρουν ανάπαυση, αναγνώριση, την παρηγοριά της αιωνιότητας» μοιάζει να λέει. Ο θάνατος ποτέ δεν είναι οριστικός όσο υπάρχει η τέχνη. Ομοίως, ο άνθρωπος που δημιουργεί παραμένει αθάνατος, χτίζει για τον εαυτό του και τους γύρω του μια τάφρο στην οποία ρυθμικά χυμάνε τα κύματα του χρόνου και του αναπόφευκτου.
Αντί επιλόγου
«Τι είναι τελικά η Αινειάδα;» θα αναρωτηθεί ο σύγχρονος αναγνώστης, ο οποίος εθισμένος στην ταχεία αναλγητική επίδραση των λογοτεχνικών συμπληρωμάτων βλέπει με περισσή δυσπιστία ένα μεγάλης έκτασης κείμενο που μέσα από τους αιώνες παρατηρεί αφ’ υψηλού το ψηφιακό μας παρόν, απαιτώντας σιωπή, στάση, περισυλλογή, υπομονή. Η Αινειάδα είναι, αποφαντικά, το όνειρο του δημιουργού της, ένα κύημα (και κύμα) αστείρευτης έμπνευσης, η θαλερή όψη της ζωής κάθε φορά που μιμείται –ατυχώς– την τέχνη. Ο Βιργίλιος συμπλέκει το μυθικό με το ρεαλιστικό, υπακούει και προσεύχεται σε δυνάμεις ανώτερες από αυτόν (στο ομηρικό παρελθόν και στο Δωδεκάθεο). Ταυτόχρονα όμως, ως γνήσιος καλλιτέχνης, αποδομεί, εξεγείρεται, επαίρεται και πλάθει στα κρυφά πηλό με βλάσφημα υλικά. Αυτή είναι η διττή φύση, η κατάρα του καλλιτέχνη: εκεί που προσπίπτει σε προγόνους, εξουσίες και θεούς, την ίδια στιγμή να ενίσταται, να λοιδορεί και να «εμφαίνει καταγωγικούς δεσμούς» με όλα όσα θεωρεί συγγενικά στην τέχνη του.
Ο σύγχρονος αναγνώστης καλείται να μοιραστεί το όνειρο της δημιουργίας αυτής, να εμβαπτιστεί στην ποιητική ουσία, να δοξάσει τους θεούς της και να γιορτάσει το ταπεινό και το υψηλό της ύπαρξής του δίπλα στον ποιητή. Τίποτε λιγότερο!
https://fotiskblog.home.blog/2020/09/...
https://bookpress.gr/kritikes/poiisi/...
Η γενεαλογία, η αναζήτηση της προέλευσης, όπως μας δίδαξε ο Φουκώ, δεν είναι απαραίτητο να νοείται ως θεμελίωση στερεοτύπων, αλλά κι ως αναψηλάφηση του παρελθόντος, ως κατακερματισμός της όποιας ενότητας. Τούτο προϋποθέτει, εντούτοις, την εις βάθος γνώση του παρελθόντος, όχι ως στατικού και άπαξ σμιλευμένου όγκου που επικάθεται ως άχθος στις αντιλήψεις και την αισθητική των μελλουσών γενεών, όσο ως συνέχεια, εμβαπτισμένη στην ιστορικότητα.
Μπορεί να μην υπάρχει μία και μοναδική πηγή, γνωστή αποκλειστικά στους μύστες, εκ της οποίας αρδεύονται οι υδάτινες εκτάσεις της γνώσης – πλην όμως, δεν είναι διόλου τυχαίο το γεγονός πως εκείνοι που εντρυφούν στην τέχνη του λόγου, συν τω χρόνω, υποπίπτουν στο άλγος του Νόστου. Κι ο Νόστος εδώ, αναπόδραστα, συγκλίνει με την επιστροφή στο παρελθόν. Ουδείς, ποτέ δεν νοστάλγησε το μέλλον. Και τούτο αποτελεί απλά διαπίστωση – δεν το προσημαίνω θετικά ή αρνητικά.
Εν πάση περιπτώσει, για να έρθουμε στα καθ’ ημάς λογοτεχνικά δρώμενα, παρατηρείται σε αρκετούς αναγνώστες η ανάγκη αναζήτησης των απαρχών. Έχοντας πρώτα τρυγήσει τους καρπούς της συγκαιρινής τους παραγωγής, ο δρόμος τούς οδηγεί σε κάποια θεμελιακά κείμενα, των οποίων η αξία δεν είναι απλώς μουσειακή (εξ αποστάσεως θαυμασμός) για πάσης φύσεως παρελθοντολάγνους, αλλά ζώσα, ακμάζουσα και διαρκής. Η αιχμή της τέχνης των κειμένων αυτών παραμένει κοφτερή κι η επαφή μαζί τους προκαλεί στον αείποτε αναγνώστη εντάσεις και υποδόριες εκρήξεις αμιγούς αισθητικής απόλαυσης.
Σε κάποιο από τα σταυροδρόμια της πορείας αυτής, της οποίας ο χάρτης έχει μεν δημιουργηθεί στο παρελθόν, υφίσταται δε μικρές αλλαγές στην πορεία των αιώνων, ο φίλεργος αναγνώστης θα συναντήσει τον Βιργίλιο και την Αινειάδα του. Επική ποίηση, έμμετρη φανταστική μυθοπλασία, πρόκειται για την ιστορία του Αινεία που φεύγοντας διωκόμενος από την Τροία αναζητά, όπως του όρισαν οι θεοί, μια νέα πατρίδα στην Ιταλία. Η πορεία ετούτη θα έχει διάρκεια, περιπέτειες, πολεμικές αναμετρήσεις, έρωτες και φιλίες, μεγαλείο και πόνο, ζωή και θάνατο. Ο Βιργίλιος θα επιχειρήσει να περιγράψει την ανθρώπινη κατάσταση σε 12 βιβλία και θα το επιτύχει στον μέγιστο βαθμό.
Δεν έχει νόημα να σταθώ εδώ στα όποια επιμέρους, δεδομένου ότι η εισαγωγή των περίπου 130 σελίδων του ανυπέρβλητου μεταφραστή / σχολιαστή Παπαγγελή καλύπτει ολοκληρωτικά τον αναγνώστη. Θεωρώ πως θα μπορούσε (σε έναν άλλο ιδεατό κόσμο που δεν υποτιμούσε εξόφθαλμα την πνευματική αριστεία) να αποτελέσει από μόνη της πανεπιστημιακό μάθημα. Τούτου δοθέντος, το μόνο που μένει σε έναν απλό αναγνώστη (πάντα για μένα ομιλώ) είναι να μοιραστεί με τους ομοιοπαθείς τον αντίκτυπο που ένα τέτοιο έργο μπορεί να έχει στην πνευματική του διαμόρφωση.
Δεν είναι απλό για κάποιον που εδώ και καιρό έχει ξεκόψει από τον έμμετρο λόγο να συντονιστεί με το εν λόγω κείμενο. Το έπος έχει παραδώσει ανεπιστρεπτί τη σκυτάλη στο μυθιστόρημα και τούτο καθιστά σαφώς πιο απαιτητική τη διαδικασία κατά την οποία οι συνηθισμένοι στα αλμυρά ύδατα της λογοτεχνίας καλούνται να βουτήξουν στο γλυκό νερό της επικής ποίησης, να προσαρμοστούν παρευθύς στην απουσία άνωσης (μεγάλη ευκολία ετούτη) και να απολαύσουν τις χάρες της.
Ο δάσκαλος Μπλουμ έρχεται (τώρα και πάντα) αρωγός στην προσπάθεια: η ποίηση πάσης μορφής αναμέλπεται, εκφωνείται δυνατά (από στήθους, ακόμα καλύτερα), ούτως ώστε να αποτελεί μια ολοκληρωμένη οπτικοακουστική εμπειρία που μετατρέπει τον λόγο σε αίσθηση, σε βίωμα. Μολονότι θα ψευδόμουν αν έλεγα πως ακολούθησα πιστά τη συμβουλή καθ’ όλη τη διάρκεια της μακράς ανάγνωσης, όταν επιλεκτικά το έπραξα υπήρξαν όντως παράγραφοι / στίχοι οι οποίοι κυριολεκτικά υλοποιήθηκαν εμπρός μου, απέκτησαν ουσία και βάρος, διέρρηξαν τον χρόνο και τον τόπο και με ρούφηξαν στη δίνη τους.
Δεδομένου πως ο Παπαγγελής στην εισαγωγή του αναλύει ενδελεχώς τα ζητήματα διακειμενικότητας, εκλεκτικής συγγένειας της Αινειάδας με τα προηγηθέντα ομηρικά έπη, θα καταθέσω την προσωπική μου αίσθηση. Το εναρκτήριο λάκτισμα είναι ξεκάθαρο. Ο Βιργίλιος δεν φείδεται πλείστες όσες αναφορές, δεν αποκρύπτει επιρροές και τα οφειλόμενα στον Όμηρο. Ταυτόχρονα όμως διαθέτει την απαιτούμενη από μια μεγαλοφυία οίηση, ώστε να δοκιμάσει την αιχμή του ποιητικού του ξίφους απέναντι σε έναν ογκόλιθο. Μην ξεχνάμε ότι έχουν μεσολαβήσει αιώνες στο μεταξύ, και πως στη σκευή του ο Βιργίλιος φέρει το απόθεμα του δραματικού λόγου όπως το παρέδωσαν οι μεγάλοι τραγικοί ποιητές.
Θα λέγαμε πως ο Βιργίλιος είναι ένας επίγονος, κάτι που εν προκειμένω δεν έχει την αρνητική χροιά που προσέδιδε ο Στάινερ στην έννοια. Ο Λατίνος ποιητής είναι ο ευτυχής κληρονόμος μιας παράδοσης την οποία τίμησε με τρόπο θαυμαστό, εισαγάγοντας το δραματικό ύφος στην επική αφήγηση. Καίτοι το έργο του αποτελεί συνέχεια, δεν καταφεύγει στην ανούσια μίμηση, βορά στις σκιαμαχίες του αδηφάγου χρόνου. Η Αινειάδα εντάσσεται στη νεωτερικότητα, καθώς στο επικό στοιχείο εμφιλοχωρούν θραύσματα υπαρξιακού προβληματισμού. Ο Αινείας, σε αντίθεση με τους αδαμάντινους και κάπως δισδιάστατους ομηρικούς ήρωες, αμφιβάλλει, άγεται και φέρεται από όλα εκείνα τα ηθικά διλήμματα που συνιστούν εν τέλει την τραγικότητα. Εκεί που το ομηρικό έπος, όπως θαυμαστά τονίζει ο μεταφραστής, παρουσιάζεται «ως ευθύγραμμο, άμεσο, μια συμπαγής αναπαράσταση, όχι αυτοστοχαστική…», το νεότερο έπος λοξοκοιτά προς τα πίσω, ώστε να οδηγηθεί πλησίστιο εμπρός. Για να επανέλθουμε στην εισαγωγική παράγραφο περί Φουκώ, ο ποιητής κατακερματίζει την ενότητα του παρελθόντος, αναψηλαφώντας το παραδεδομένο, εγκυμονώντας το μέλλον όπως αυτός το οραματίστηκε.
Η θεϊκή παρουσία –εσαεί παρούσα, ουδέποτε αμφισβητούμενη– κατευθύνει τις πράξεις των ηρώων, προφητεύοντας τα μελλούμενα, δικαιώνοντας τις πράξεις των τραγικών ηρώων που προσπίπτουν σε εκείνη διαρκώς για καθοδήγηση και αιτιολόγηση πράξεων (δικαίων και αδίκων). Τούτο όμως δεν εμποδίζει τους ήρωες (τον Αινεία πρώτιστα) να υποφέρουν, να αισθάνονται το άχθος της ύπαρξής τους, να αμφιβάλλουν και να συγκρούονται με τη συνείδησή τους και εκείνη των άλλων.
Όπως έχουμε διδαχθεί από το Αρχαίο δράμα, μεταξύ των στοιχείων που ορίζουν την τραγικότητα ενός προσώπου συμπεριλαμβάνονται τα αισθήματα ενοχής, η σύγκρουσή του με υπέρτερες δυνάμεις, η απότομη μεταστροφή της τύχης, αλλά και η επικράτηση μιας αναπόφευκτης μοίρας. Ο Αινείας είναι ο κατ’ εξοχήν τραγικός ήρωας, αλλά εν τινι μέτρω αυτό ισχύει και για τα άλλα dramatis personae του έπους. Από τις πλέον χαρακτηριστικές περιπτώσεις η Διδώ, η οποία περιθάλπει τον Αινεία, τον ερωτεύεται για να τον χάσει στη συνέχεια, καθώς εκείνος ακολουθεί την προδιαγεγραμμένη από τους θεούς μοίρα του. Ο διάλογός τους πριν από τον χωρισμό (και τη συνακόλουθη αυτοκτονία της) είναι συγκλονιστικός και παραπέμπει στις ομορφότερες στιγμές της δραματικής ποίησης: «Το δάκρυ μου και ο λόγος σου, αυτά και τίποτα άλλο η άμοιρη δεν έχω. Αναβολή και χρόνο σου ζητώ, για να παραδοθώ στη μοίρα μου, να μάθω να πονάω». Και σε αυτή την έκκληση, ο αμετάπειστος Αινείας θα απαντήσει: «Αν ήταν στο δικό μου ριζικό, να ορίζω τη ζωή μου όπως τη θέλω».
Όταν στη συνέχεια η Αφροδίτη ζητά από τον Ήφαιστο να φτιάξει μια νέα αρματωσιά για τον γιό της (όπως έπραξε η Θέτις για τον Αχιλλέα), είναι σαν να είμαστε παρόντες στην ίδια τη διαδικασία της ποιητικής δημιουργίας. Ο Βιργίλιος μετατρέπεται αυτοστιγμεί σε θεό Ήφαιστο: Στο βαθύ σκοτάδι της νύχτας, στα υπόγεια, απομονωμένος συνδαυλίζει το πυρ, ακονίζει την πένα, λιώνει το ατσάλι της έμπνευσης και σκαρώνει πανοπλία τρομακτική, απόκοσμης έμπνευσης, μεγαλειώδη. Το φυσερό της δημιουργίας ασθμαίνει ακάματα, οι στίχοι ρέουν, λιώνουν και παίρνουν το σχήμα τους αργά και σταθερά, υπό το άγρυπνο βλέμμα του δημιουργού. Όταν προβάλει το πρωί (χωλός, συχνά καταγέλαστος – τι σημασία όμως έχει το δέμας και η όψη του δημιουργού;) φέρνει στους θνητούς και τους αθανάτους που παρακολουθούν κραταιοί πλην όμως ανέμπνευστοι, το δημιούργημά του: την ποιητική του πανοπλία – καλύτερα, την πανοπλία για τον Αινεία και το έπος για εμάς τους βροτούς.
Τα παραδείγματα υψηλής αφηγηματικής τέχνης αφθονούν. Ενδεικτικά μόνον αναφέρω κάποια. Συγκλονιστική η περιγραφή της εξόδου όπου ο Νίσος και ο Ευρύαλος επιχειρούν ανεπιτυχώς να κατασκοπεύσουν τους αντιπάλους στον πόλεμο κατά των Ρουτούλων. Μάταιη όμως η έξοδός τους και ο επακόλουθος θάνατός τους: «Ένα μονάχα μπόρεσε: πολύ τον δυστυχή του φίλο να αγαπήσει». Και ο ποιητής συνεχίζει: «Μακάριοι και οι δυο σας! Μερτικό στη δύναμη ας έχουν τούτοι οι στίχοι, ποτέ για εσάς δεν θα έρθει ο καιρός που λησμονιά θα σβήσει το όνομά σας».
Για να ακολουθήσει στη συνέχεια ο σπαραγμός της μάνας του Ευρύαλου. Ποια ψυχή σύγχρονη, μέλλουσα δεν θα συγκλονιστεί από του ποιητή τους στίχους, τον τρόπο με τον οποίο μεταφέρει τον πόνο της απώλειας; Τι μπορεί να είναι εκείνο που έχει δραστικά αλλάξει ανά τους αιώνες, ώστε κάποιος να ισχυριστεί πως οι στίχοι έχουν ατονήσει και ο αντίκτυπος που προκαλούν είναι αδρανής και αφλεγής; Το ερώτημα είναι προφανώς ρητορικό.
Στη συνέχεια, ο Αινείας σκοτώνει τον νεαρό Λαύσο που επιχειρεί να σώσει τον πατέρα του από βέβαιο θάνατο. Τον φόνο ακολουθεί η θλίψη για τον άδικο χαμό. Παραδίδει το σώμα στους συντρόφους του: «το κορμί ο ίδιος το σηκώνει από το χώμα – ασχήμιζε το αίμα τα μαλλιά που ήταν πάντα καλοχτενισμένα». Το κάλλος δεν εγκαταλείπει τον νεκρό, σε αντίθεση με την ψυχή που κατεβαίνει στον Άδη. Είναι η παρακαταθήκη στην αιωνιότητα, ο τρόπος του ποιητή για να δοξάσει το εφήμερο, τη νεότητα που υποκύπτει στον αδήριτο θάνατο, αλλά ταυτόχρονα γίνεται στίχος, αιώνιο παρόν, γίνεται ομορφιά προς τέρψιν των συγκαιρινών και των μελλοντικών αναγνωστών.
Το έπος βρίθει πολεμικών συγκρούσεων. Ο αναγνώστης βέβαια ανακαλύπτει σταδιακά πως υπάρχει τάξη, ισορροπία, αισθητική, ακόμα και στις βιαιότερες περιγραφές. Το φονικό έχει τους κανόνες του, την τελετουργία του. Οι άνδρες πεθαίνουν διότι καταρχάς είναι θνητοί. Διότι είναι έρμαια των βουλών των θεών, μα και των δικών τους επιθυμιών. Διότι επιζητούν το κλέος, την υστεροφημία. Διότι είναι αψήφιστα γενναίοι, αλλά και ασυλλόγιστα δειλοί. Ποτέ όμως δεν πεθαίνουν ακατονόμαστοι (σε συμφωνία με την ομηρική παράδοση). Ο άνδρας που συναντά τον θάνατο σε μάχη ονοματίζεται, ενίοτε παρατίθεται σύντομη αναφορά στην οικογένεια ή τη φυλή του. Ετούτο τον καθιστά άνθρωπο, υποκείμενο άξιο αναφοράς, όχι απλώς έναν άγνωστο στρατιώτη, αναπληρωματικό πολεμιστή που η ύπαρξή του συνεισφέρει στη δόξα του βασιλιά του. Κάτι τέτοιο δεν υφίσταται στον Όμηρο ούτε προφανώς στον Βιργίλιο. Ο ηττημένος κερδίζει από την αξία του νικητή, με συνέπεια να αναφέρεται στους αιώνες.
Ο θάνατος για τον Βιργίλιο είναι ηρωικός μεν, πένθιμος δε. Οι ψυχορραγούντες αφήνουν με θλίψη τον κόσμο, αναπολούν την πατρίδα και τους αγαπημένους τους προτού ενωθούν με τις σκιές. Ο ποιητής αποδίδει τιμή στους πεσόντες σε δίκαιο ή άδικο αγώνα, τυλίγοντάς τους με το πέπλο των στίχων του, το οποίο θα τους συνοδεύσει στο φριχτό ταξίδι τους στον κάτω κόσμο. Εκείνη τη στιγμή αίρει τον εαυτό του πάνω από τα ανθρώπινα, μετατρέπεται σε Θεό που επιχειρεί να επανορθώσει κατάφωρη αδικία (τι πιο άδικο από την ανελέητη σφαγή νέων και μη ανθρώπων στο πεδίο της μάχης), παρεμβάλλοντας την πένα του ως ασπίδα: «Κι αν η μοίρα σας οδήγησε πρόωρα στον θάνατο, οι στίχοι μου θα σας προσφέρουν ανάπαυση, αναγνώριση, την παρηγοριά της αιωνιότητας» μοιάζει να λέει. Ο θάνατος ποτέ δεν είναι οριστικός όσο υπάρχει η τέχνη. Ομοίως, ο άνθρωπος που δημιουργεί παραμένει αθάνατος, χτίζει για τον εαυτό του και τους γύρω του μια τάφρο στην οποία ρυθμικά χυμάνε τα κύματα του χρόνου και του αναπόφευκτου.
Αντί επιλόγου
«Τι είναι τελικά η Αινειάδα;» θα αναρωτηθεί ο σύγχρονος αναγνώστης, ο οποίος εθισμένος στην ταχεία αναλγητική επίδραση των λογοτεχνικών συμπληρωμάτων βλέπει με περισσή δυσπιστία ένα μεγάλης έκτασης κείμενο που μέσα από τους αιώνες παρατηρεί αφ’ υψηλού το ψηφιακό μας παρόν, απαιτώντας σιωπή, στάση, περισυλλογή, υπομονή. Η Αινειάδα είναι, αποφαντικά, το όνειρο του δημιουργού της, ένα κύημα (και κύμα) αστείρευτης έμπνευσης, η θαλερή όψη της ζωής κάθε φορά που μιμείται –ατυχώς– την τέχνη. Ο Βιργίλιος συμπλέκει το μυθικό με το ρεαλιστικό, υπακούει και προσεύχεται σε δυνάμεις ανώτερες από αυτόν (στο ομηρικό παρελθόν και στο Δωδεκάθεο). Ταυτόχρονα όμως, ως γνήσιος καλλιτέχνης, αποδομεί, εξεγείρεται, επαίρεται και πλάθει στα κρυφά πηλό με βλάσφημα υλικά. Αυτή είναι η διττή φύση, η κατάρα του καλλιτέχνη: εκεί που προσπίπτει σε προγόνους, εξουσίες και θεούς, την ίδια στιγμή να ενίσταται, να λοιδορεί και να «εμφαίνει καταγωγικούς δεσμούς» με όλα όσα θεωρεί συγγενικά στην τέχνη του.
Ο σύγχρονος αναγνώστης καλείται να μοιραστεί το όνειρο της δημιουργίας αυτής, να εμβαπτιστεί στην ποιητική ουσία, να δοξάσει τους θεούς της και να γιορτάσει το ταπεινό και το υψηλό της ύπαρξής του δίπλα στον ποιητή. Τίποτε λιγότερο!
https://fotiskblog.home.blog/2020/09/...
August 26, 2024
Mandelbaum’s translation is beautiful. After the fall of Troy, Aeneas and his Trojans strive through tremendous pain and hardship to find their way home. Destiny and fate are always in view behind the suffering and the endless journey, and a beauty that is rich and deep emerges everywhere. It is the blending of destiny with heroic epic poetry that gives meaning and beauty to life, no matter how hard it can become.
Though Aeneas wanders through many lands, the great women of the book emerge as landmarks on his journey home. This begins with the loss of his wife Creusa, whom Aeneas loses when they are escaping the Greeks and the burning ruin of Troy; he turns, much like Orpheus when Eurydike is following him out of the underworld, and discovers that she is gone. Rushing back to find her Aeneas encounters Creusa's ghost; it is too late, but she tells him that another wife awaits him in Italy, and Creusa submits to fate. There follows the tragedy of Dido, who falls in love with Aeneas when he is shipwrecked in Carthage. He (in submission to the ordained fates) abandons her cruelly, and continues on his journey. Halfway through the book Aeneas will descend into the underworld following the Sybil, priestess of Apollo (as Theseus entered the Labyrinth with the help of Ariadne’s thread).
In the second half of the book the great heroine is Camilla, whose tragic death (like that of Dido) can move deep currents of pity in the reader. Foreshadowed from the very beginning of the poem, Lavinia, the promised bride awaits for him at the end of his journies; she is betrothed to another, and this will cause another war before the foundations of Rome can be laid.
Some examples of the happy success of Mandelbaum’s English translation: near the end of Book I, the scene is set thus for a great story, just before Dido asks Aeneas to tell the tale of his trials and wanderings:
And at the first pause in the feast the tables
are cleared away. They fetch enormous bowls
and crown the wine with wreaths. The uproar grows;
it swells through all the palace; voices roll
across the ample halls; the lamps are kindled––
they hang from ceilings rich with golden panels––
and flaming torches overcome the night.
And then the queen called for a golden cup,
massive with jewels, that Belus once had used,
Belus and all the Tyrian line; she filled
that golden cup with wine. The hall fell still. (I. 1008 - 1018)
Late in the poem, the young hero Pallas exhorts his men, who are being routed, thus:
“Where are you running, comrades? By your valor
and by the name of your own King Evander,
by victories you have won and by my hope
that now would match my father’s fame, you cannot
trust to your feet. The sword must hack a passage
through Latin ranks. And where their mass is thickest,
there, there is where your noble homeland asks
that you and your chief, Pallas, find a path.
There are no gods against us: mortals, we
are driven back by mortal enemies;
we have as many hands and lives as they.
Just see, the waters hem us in with their
great sea wall; there is no retreat by land.
Then shall we seek the deep or Troy’s new camp?”
This said, he charged against the crowding Latins. (X. 510 - 524)
He saves the battle here, but it costs him everything.
Perhaps the most amazing scene, full of wonder, is when Aeneas begins to weep, beholding the relief sculpture that decorates Juno’s temple in Carthage; this depicts scenes from the Trojan war in which he took part; he sees himself therein, his friends, his former king, his famous enemies. Here in this strange new land, Troy gone, he weeps, feeding "his soul on what is nothing but a picture” (I. 659), discovering that there is nowhere that the story of Troy is not known.
But there are so many rich, deep, meaningful, and wonderful passages that to tell them all is to rewrite the whole Aeneid. I will look forward to reading it again and again; it gets better every time.
Though Aeneas wanders through many lands, the great women of the book emerge as landmarks on his journey home. This begins with the loss of his wife Creusa, whom Aeneas loses when they are escaping the Greeks and the burning ruin of Troy; he turns, much like Orpheus when Eurydike is following him out of the underworld, and discovers that she is gone. Rushing back to find her Aeneas encounters Creusa's ghost; it is too late, but she tells him that another wife awaits him in Italy, and Creusa submits to fate. There follows the tragedy of Dido, who falls in love with Aeneas when he is shipwrecked in Carthage. He (in submission to the ordained fates) abandons her cruelly, and continues on his journey. Halfway through the book Aeneas will descend into the underworld following the Sybil, priestess of Apollo (as Theseus entered the Labyrinth with the help of Ariadne’s thread).
In the second half of the book the great heroine is Camilla, whose tragic death (like that of Dido) can move deep currents of pity in the reader. Foreshadowed from the very beginning of the poem, Lavinia, the promised bride awaits for him at the end of his journies; she is betrothed to another, and this will cause another war before the foundations of Rome can be laid.
Some examples of the happy success of Mandelbaum’s English translation: near the end of Book I, the scene is set thus for a great story, just before Dido asks Aeneas to tell the tale of his trials and wanderings:
And at the first pause in the feast the tables
are cleared away. They fetch enormous bowls
and crown the wine with wreaths. The uproar grows;
it swells through all the palace; voices roll
across the ample halls; the lamps are kindled––
they hang from ceilings rich with golden panels––
and flaming torches overcome the night.
And then the queen called for a golden cup,
massive with jewels, that Belus once had used,
Belus and all the Tyrian line; she filled
that golden cup with wine. The hall fell still. (I. 1008 - 1018)
Late in the poem, the young hero Pallas exhorts his men, who are being routed, thus:
“Where are you running, comrades? By your valor
and by the name of your own King Evander,
by victories you have won and by my hope
that now would match my father’s fame, you cannot
trust to your feet. The sword must hack a passage
through Latin ranks. And where their mass is thickest,
there, there is where your noble homeland asks
that you and your chief, Pallas, find a path.
There are no gods against us: mortals, we
are driven back by mortal enemies;
we have as many hands and lives as they.
Just see, the waters hem us in with their
great sea wall; there is no retreat by land.
Then shall we seek the deep or Troy’s new camp?”
This said, he charged against the crowding Latins. (X. 510 - 524)
He saves the battle here, but it costs him everything.
Perhaps the most amazing scene, full of wonder, is when Aeneas begins to weep, beholding the relief sculpture that decorates Juno’s temple in Carthage; this depicts scenes from the Trojan war in which he took part; he sees himself therein, his friends, his former king, his famous enemies. Here in this strange new land, Troy gone, he weeps, feeding "his soul on what is nothing but a picture” (I. 659), discovering that there is nowhere that the story of Troy is not known.
But there are so many rich, deep, meaningful, and wonderful passages that to tell them all is to rewrite the whole Aeneid. I will look forward to reading it again and again; it gets better every time.
March 8, 2025
انئید انقدر کتاب قدیمیایه و انقدر براش ریویوی خوب نوشته شده که من ترجیح میدم به جای این کار در این ریویو به سادگی توضیح بدم که اصلا این کتاب که خیلی از ما فقط اسمش رو در کتاب ادبیات خواندیم در مورد چیه و چطور و با چه پیشنیازهایی (از نظر من) باید خواندش
ماجرا
انئید در واقع اسم کاراکتر اصلی این داستانه. مردی که در لحظات آخر سقوط شهر تروی همراه با گروهی، از شهر فرار میکنه و همگی راهی سفری طولانی میشن تا خانهی جدیدی برای خودشون پیدا کنند. سرزمینی که توسط خدایان به انئید وعده داده شده و همان ایتالیاست. انئید و همراهانش باید از چالشهای مختلفی عبور کنند تا به سرزمین موعود برسند. این داستان در اصل افسانهی پایهگذاری رُم محسوب میشه و یک پروپاگاندای ادبیه
پیشنیازهای مطالعه
اگر بخوایم با ترتیب خط زمانی پیش بریم، باید اول سراغ آثار هومر رفت. ایلیاد داستان بخشی از جنگ رو مطرح میکنه و در اون از شخصیت انئید هم نام برده میشه. اما نه داستان دلیل جنگ یونانیان با تروجانها رو کامل توضیح میده و نه به بخش فتح تروی میپردازه. برای دانستن این بخشها باید از کتابهای دیگه کمک گرفت که در ریویوی ایلیاد لیست کردم. ماجرای کتاب اودیسه هم بعد از جنگ اتفاق میافته و در مورد آوارگیهای اودیسیوس، یکی از فرماندگان یونانیه. از نظر خط زمانی، اودیسه و انئید بسیار نزدیک هستند. پس از لحاظ داستانی ضروری نیست که ایلیاد و اودیسه قبل از انئید خوانده بشن و اگر داستان کلی جنگ رو بدونید، مشکلی نخواهید داشت
اما، و این امای بزرگیه که ایلیاد و اودیسه جد ادبی انئید محسوب میشن و ویرژیل از سبک هومر الگو گرفته. پس برای مقایسهی ادبی و دقیقتر لازمه که این دو کتاب اول خوانده بشن که بشه شباهتها و تفاوتهاشون رو پیدا کرد. نیمهی اول انئید بسیار شبیه ماجراهای اودیسه و نیمهی دومش بسیار شبیه جنگهای ایلیاده
امان از خدایان
تازه دو دقیقه شده بود که اسامی خدایان یونانی و اینکه هرکس چهکارست رو یاد گرفته بودم که انئید رو شروع کردم. بعد فهمیدم رومیها در یک حرکت عجیب خدایان یونانیها رو برای خودشون هم انتخاب کردن و میشه گفت فقط اسمشون رو عوض کردن. پس مجبور شدم لیست تبدیل اسامی رو دائم چک کنم و ببینم کی به کیه. برای خواندن اسطورهها کلا مجبور میشید در این مورد یاد بگیرید.
چرا باید خوندش؟
که آدم بتونه بگه انئید خوندم
جدای از این، این آثار ستونهای ادبیات هستند و وقتی محتواشون رو میدونی مثل این میمونه که یک عینک خاص روی چشمهات میاد و رد پاشون رو در ادبیات جهان همه جا میبینی
تجربهی خودم
خواندن انئید پیرم کرد. مگه این کتاب پیش میرفت؟ البته انصافاً زمان خوبی هم نبود. به نظرم انئید کاراکتر نچسبیه و با تمام تلاشهای ویرژیل، اصلا از بین خطوط شعر خارج نشده. آکیلیسِ ایلیاد، یا اودیسیوسِ اودیسه، صرف نظر از اینکه دوستشون داشتم یا نه، «کاراکتر» داشتند و به یادماندنی هستند، اما انئید نه. داستان رو هم احتمالاً اگر با فاصلهی بیشتری از آثار هومر میخواندم بیشتر لذت میبردم. شباهت و تکراری بودن ماجراها برام اذیت کننده بود و نشد اونطور که باید از زیبایی قلم ویرژیل لذت ببرم
نسخههای مختلف کتاب و صوتیش رو میتونید از اینجا دانلود کنید
Maede's Books
۱۴۰۳/۱۱/۱۱
ماجرا
انئید در واقع اسم کاراکتر اصلی این داستانه. مردی که در لحظات آخر سقوط شهر تروی همراه با گروهی، از شهر فرار میکنه و همگی راهی سفری طولانی میشن تا خانهی جدیدی برای خودشون پیدا کنند. سرزمینی که توسط خدایان به انئید وعده داده شده و همان ایتالیاست. انئید و همراهانش باید از چالشهای مختلفی عبور کنند تا به سرزمین موعود برسند. این داستان در اصل افسانهی پایهگذاری رُم محسوب میشه و یک پروپاگاندای ادبیه
پیشنیازهای مطالعه
اگر بخوایم با ترتیب خط زمانی پیش بریم، باید اول سراغ آثار هومر رفت. ایلیاد داستان بخشی از جنگ رو مطرح میکنه و در اون از شخصیت انئید هم نام برده میشه. اما نه داستان دلیل جنگ یونانیان با تروجانها رو کامل توضیح میده و نه به بخش فتح تروی میپردازه. برای دانستن این بخشها باید از کتابهای دیگه کمک گرفت که در ریویوی ایلیاد لیست کردم. ماجرای کتاب اودیسه هم بعد از جنگ اتفاق میافته و در مورد آوارگیهای اودیسیوس، یکی از فرماندگان یونانیه. از نظر خط زمانی، اودیسه و انئید بسیار نزدیک هستند. پس از لحاظ داستانی ضروری نیست که ایلیاد و اودیسه قبل از انئید خوانده بشن و اگر داستان کلی جنگ رو بدونید، مشکلی نخواهید داشت
اما، و این امای بزرگیه که ایلیاد و اودیسه جد ادبی انئید محسوب میشن و ویرژیل از سبک هومر الگو گرفته. پس برای مقایسهی ادبی و دقیقتر لازمه که این دو کتاب اول خوانده بشن که بشه شباهتها و تفاوتهاشون رو پیدا کرد. نیمهی اول انئید بسیار شبیه ماجراهای اودیسه و نیمهی دومش بسیار شبیه جنگهای ایلیاده
امان از خدایان
تازه دو دقیقه شده بود که اسامی خدایان یونانی و اینکه هرکس چهکارست رو یاد گرفته بودم که انئید رو شروع کردم. بعد فهمیدم رومیها در یک حرکت عجیب خدایان یونانیها رو برای خودشون هم انتخاب کردن و میشه گفت فقط اسمشون رو عوض کردن. پس مجبور شدم لیست تبدیل اسامی رو دائم چک کنم و ببینم کی به کیه. برای خواندن اسطورهها کلا مجبور میشید در این مورد یاد بگیرید.
چرا باید خوندش؟
که آدم بتونه بگه انئید خوندم
جدای از این، این آثار ستونهای ادبیات هستند و وقتی محتواشون رو میدونی مثل این میمونه که یک عینک خاص روی چشمهات میاد و رد پاشون رو در ادبیات جهان همه جا میبینی
تجربهی خودم
خواندن انئید پیرم کرد. مگه این کتاب پیش میرفت؟ البته انصافاً زمان خوبی هم نبود. به نظرم انئید کاراکتر نچسبیه و با تمام تلاشهای ویرژیل، اصلا از بین خطوط شعر خارج نشده. آکیلیسِ ایلیاد، یا اودیسیوسِ اودیسه، صرف نظر از اینکه دوستشون داشتم یا نه، «کاراکتر» داشتند و به یادماندنی هستند، اما انئید نه. داستان رو هم احتمالاً اگر با فاصلهی بیشتری از آثار هومر میخواندم بیشتر لذت میبردم. شباهت و تکراری بودن ماجراها برام اذیت کننده بود و نشد اونطور که باید از زیبایی قلم ویرژیل لذت ببرم
نسخههای مختلف کتاب و صوتیش رو میتونید از اینجا دانلود کنید
Maede's Books
۱۴۰۳/۱۱/۱۱
December 12, 2024
Third read, this time David West’s translation which made it easier to see more of the story nuances.
A few months back I read Robert Fagles’ verse translation. This is wonderful in how it brings the scenes to life, where in that second read, I saw a more complex Aeneas, I’m not sure if I like him but I understand better the duty he is bound to and his love for Dido.
In some ways the story is fascinating in how it doesn’t quite gel together, and there are pages where I am engrossed in the drama: I could feel Troy burn, Dido’s heart breaking, and the pains and sorrows of war.
My least favourite part is how this bristles with propaganda; what continues to puzzle me is ? But this won’t stop me from reading this again.
A few months back I read Robert Fagles’ verse translation. This is wonderful in how it brings the scenes to life, where in that second read, I saw a more complex Aeneas, I’m not sure if I like him but I understand better the duty he is bound to and his love for Dido.
In some ways the story is fascinating in how it doesn’t quite gel together, and there are pages where I am engrossed in the drama: I could feel Troy burn, Dido’s heart breaking, and the pains and sorrows of war.
My least favourite part is how this bristles with propaganda; what continues to puzzle me is ? But this won’t stop me from reading this again.
November 30, 2021
Virgil’s Aeneid is not that long but I still feel like I spent a lot of mental energy to conquer it.
Heavily inspired by Homer, it tells the story of Aeneas (think of a less charismatic Trojan counterpart of Odysseus) who:
- Survives the fall of Troy ;
- Enter his own wandering (hello The Odyssey) ;
- Then goes to war (hello The Iliad) ;
- To finally become, after the gods have ceased to fight for a minute and given their blessing, the founder of the Roman race.
Tell me about plagiarism! Overall this book is mostly one big piece of Roman propaganda, and the sheer intensity of it can be tiresome.
Some chapters are less stimulating than others. I'm not going to lie, I skipped a few parts because I couldn't force myself to keep reading. I agree that the ending is good though! it kinda redeemed the rest of the book in my memory, but not enough to want to go through it again any time soon.
The political/propaganda aspect of it is fascinating however, and I was much more captivated by the (deep) contextual analysis at the start of my edition than by the work itself.
Overall, it's the opposite of a page turner but the analysis aspect is pretty cool and make that tedious read worth it.
It is still a very important piece of literature, far below the quality of Homer's work (which is immortal in my opinion). I will come back to this, if one day I have an obscene amount of mental stamina to spare.
Heavily inspired by Homer, it tells the story of Aeneas (think of a less charismatic Trojan counterpart of Odysseus) who:
- Survives the fall of Troy ;
- Enter his own wandering (hello The Odyssey) ;
- Then goes to war (hello The Iliad) ;
- To finally become, after the gods have ceased to fight for a minute and given their blessing, the founder of the Roman race.
Tell me about plagiarism! Overall this book is mostly one big piece of Roman propaganda, and the sheer intensity of it can be tiresome.
Some chapters are less stimulating than others. I'm not going to lie, I skipped a few parts because I couldn't force myself to keep reading. I agree that the ending is good though! it kinda redeemed the rest of the book in my memory, but not enough to want to go through it again any time soon.
The political/propaganda aspect of it is fascinating however, and I was much more captivated by the (deep) contextual analysis at the start of my edition than by the work itself.
Overall, it's the opposite of a page turner but the analysis aspect is pretty cool and make that tedious read worth it.
It is still a very important piece of literature, far below the quality of Homer's work (which is immortal in my opinion). I will come back to this, if one day I have an obscene amount of mental stamina to spare.
June 30, 2016
Introduction
Map
--The Aeneid
Translator's Postscript
Genealogy: The Royal Houses of Greece and Troy
Suggestions for Further Reading
Variants from the Oxford Classical Text
Notes on the Translation
Pronouncing Glossary
Map
--The Aeneid
Translator's Postscript
Genealogy: The Royal Houses of Greece and Troy
Suggestions for Further Reading
Variants from the Oxford Classical Text
Notes on the Translation
Pronouncing Glossary
September 7, 2022
Aeneas of Troy, in Homer’s Iliad, survives the Trojan War that kills most of his fellow-countrymen. A warrior of notable skill and bravery, he is nonetheless just about to be killed by Achilles when, in Book 20 of the Iliad, the sea-god Poseidon “poured a mist across Achilles’ eyes…and hoisting Aeneas off the earth he slung him far…” At that point, Aeneas simply disappears from the poem – and in the formulation of the Roman poet Virgil, Aeneas’ disappearance can be explained in terms of his being destined to lead a band of fellow Trojan survivors in founding a new and greater Troy, in the form of mighty Rome.
Virgil (70-19 B.C.) stands alone among the poets of classical Rome, like Homer among the Greeks. No other classical writer composing in Latin is thought to share Virgil’s gift for wielding the language in such a way as to produce work that is both forceful and graceful. His talent for poetry was recognized, and encouraged, from his youth. At the same time – perhaps unavoidably, considering the times in which he was living – Virgil was caught up in the turbulence of Roman politics as Rome careened through one crisis after another, on its way from republic to empire.
He is said to have been born near present-day Mantua, in northern Italy – a region where Octavian, after his defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 B.C., rewarded his soldiers with land that he took from local landowners. One of those landowners may have been the then-28-year-old Virgil, and some scholars have seen Virgil’s Eclogues as containing pointed references to Octavian’s act of land theft.
Yet even if Virgil resented what Octavian did in northern Italy, he must have known which side his puls (or focaccia) was buttered on. Within five years, he was part of the retinue of Maecenas, a trusted advisor to Octavian and patron of poets. Maecenas encouraged Virgil to compose the Georgics. This poetic cycle further enhanced Virgil’s reputation for poetry, and Virgil and Maecenas are said to have read the Georgics to Octavian, after Octavian had returned from defeating Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
It must be nice – it must be nice – to have a future emperor on your side. The poet Propertius tells us that Octavian, once he had officially become the first Emperor of Rome as Augustus Caesar, commissioned the composition of the Aeneid by Virgil, so that the poet could spend the last decade of his life working on the epic poem that would forever be considered his masterpiece. Reading the Aeneid, one gets the sense of how Virgil is building upon the Homeric tradition – and, in some ways, changing it by incorporating a contemporary political inflection that no doubt pleased his imperial patron.
There are many great translations of the Aeneid. I favour the Penguin Classics deluxe-edition translation by Robert Fagles. A classics professor at Princeton University, Fagles had a gift for rendering the Greek of Homer and the Latin of Virgil into muscular, evocative English, in a Shakespearean-sounding blank-verse iambic pentameter that captures the musicality of both poets while avoiding both pedantry and excessive informality. His work found a wide and appreciative audience, and deservedly so.
Fagles starts his translation of The Aeneid by writing, “Wars and a man I sing” (p. 71) – not the traditional “Of arms and the man I sing” – and in a way I like Fagles’s version better. The reason is that his translation – “a” rather than “the” – emphasizes Aeneas as a specific individual with a destined historical role, in a way that seems to comport well with Virgil’s historical vision and poetic sensibility. Aeneas, after all, is “an exile driven on by Fate…destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil”, and to face “many losses…in battle…before he could found a city” (p. 71) at what would one day be Rome.
The world of The Aeneid is, like that of The Iliad and The Odyssey, a world where the Olympian gods intervene regularly and forcefully in human affairs. Jupiter himself, the king of the gods, has made clear that it is Aeneas’ ultimate destiny to defeat any enemies he may encounter in Italy, and to found the Roman state:
Aeneas will wage
A long, costly war in Italy, crush defiant tribes
And build high city walls for his people there
And found the rule of law….
On them I set no limits, space or time:
I have granted them power, empire without end….
From that noble blood [of Troy] will arise a Trojan Caesar,
His empire bound by the Ocean, his glory by the stars:
Julius, a name passed down from [Aeneas’ son] Iulus, his great forebear. (pp. 81-82)
Aeneas faces the constant and unyielding opposition of Juno, the queen of the gods, whose hatred for the Trojans did not end with the destruction of Troy; but he enjoys the protection of other Olympian deities, such as Venus (goddess of love, and Aeneas’ mother) and the sea-god Neptune. When Juno persuades the wind-god Aeolus to send wild winds to strike the Trojan ships at sea, threatening the wreck of the entire Trojan expedition to Italy, Neptune goes with his son Triton and the sea-nymph Cymothoë to calm the seas and rescue the Trojans – an event that Virgil recounts via an elaborate simile that emphasizes the Roman “rage for order” and fear of chaos:
Just as, all too often,
Some huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising,
The rabble runs amok, all slaves to passion,
Rocks, firebrands flying. Rage finds them arms
But then, if they chance to see a man among them,
One whose devotion and public service lend him weight,
They stand there, stock-still with their ears alert as
He rules their furor with his words and calms their passion. (pp. 76-78)
Driven to Carthage, the Trojans are granted sanctuary by the Carthaginian queen Dido. Hearing Aeneas’ recounting of the Trojans’ travails during and after the fall of their city, she says, “Schooled in suffering, now I learn to comfort/Those who suffer too” (p. 97). While Virgil depicts Venus as making Dido fall in love with Aeneas by having the love-god Cupid shoot Dido with arrows of love, in accordance with a well-known trope of classical epic, doing so hardly seems necessary. It makes perfect sense that Dido – like Aeneas, an exile who has successfully led her people to safe harbour in a new land – might come to feel passion for someone who is brave and strong like her, and with whom she has so much in common.
In Book Two of the Aeneid, Aeneas provides Dido and the Carthaginian court with a detailed recounting of the fall of Troy, and he emphasizes in the process the treachery of the Greeks in securing victory through the subterfuge of the Trojan Horse. Aeneas tells how Laocoön, priest of Troy, tried to dissuade the Trojans from taking the horse into the city, saying, “Trojans, never trust that horse. Whatever it is,/I fear the Greeks, especially bearing gifts” (p. 105).
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts – another idea from Virgil that one hears spoken throughout the modern world, often by people who have never read Virgil. But the Trojans, as Aeneas reminds us, did not take Laocoön’s advice, because two giant sea-serpents, sent by the gods, swam up onto the land and promptly killed Laocoön and his two sons – a tableau that one can see recreated in a magnificent, and grim, statue preserved today at the Vatican Museum. Always we are reminded that the Olympian gods are perfectly able and willing to intervene in human affairs, in a manner that we mortals might find to be fundamentally unjust.
As Aeneas tells it, he was ready to give his life in Troy’s defence, until his mother Venus intervened and told him to focus on trying to save his wife Creusa, their son Ascanius, and Aeneas’ father Anchises. For good measure, Venus made it clear that there was no more use in Aeneas’ fighting for Troy, a city whose fall had been ordained by the gods: “Think: it’s not that beauty, Helen, you should hate,/Not even Paris, the man that you should blame, no,/It’s the gods, the ruthless gods who are tearing down/The wealth of Troy, her toppling crown of towers” (p. 127). And so Aeneas left Troy, carrying father Anchises on his back, holding the hand of his young son Ascanius. Wife Creusa trailed behind, her ultimate fate an unhappy one.
This part of the Aeneid, with its emphasis on how the gods arrange the love affair of Aeneas and Dido – even using the weather to trap the two together, alone in a cave, at the critical moment – creates a decided sense of sympathy for Dido. There is a desperate quality to Dido’s love for Aeneas:
This was the first day of her death, the first of grief,
The cause of it all. From now on, Dido cares no more
For appearances, nor for her reputation, either.
She no longer thinks to keep the affair a secret –
No, she calls it a marriage,
Using the word to cloak her sense of guilt. (p. 173)
Their love is passionate – and it is should be no surprise that more than a dozen composers have been inspired to bring to the operatic stage the story of Dido and Aeneas. Understandably, Aeneas is in no hurry to leave his Queen of Carthage. It takes a visit from the messenger-god Mercury to Aeneas to induce the prince of Troy to flee from his Carthaginian love interlude and return to the performance of his divinely established duty. Mercury may offer a frankly sexist assessment that “Woman’s a thing/That’s always changing, shifting like the wind” (p. 190), but one gets a sense of how much Virgil sympathizes with Dido.
Aeneas follows the directive of the gods and leaves. Dido curses her departed lover, prophesying eternal enmity between Carthage and Rome – a perfectly correct prophecy that anticipates the three Punic Wars of 246-164 B.C., and the total destruction of Carthage – and then takes her own life.
It soon becomes clear that Aeneas will not be able to complete his quest and fulfill his destiny unless he descends into the underworld, the realm of Pluto and abode of the dead, to receive crucial information from his now-dead father Anchises on how to conduct the rest of his mission. In passages of singular grimness, Virgil sets forth a vivid picture of the underworld, with particular emphasis on the cruel punishments facing those who have sinned against the gods.
These passages from Book 6 of the Aeneid are said to have caused Augustus’ sister Octavia to faint when the poem was read to her. And, centuries later, they inspired the poet Dante Aligheri. In the first two books of his Divine Comedy, Dante the Poet makes Virgil the guide for Dante the Pilgrim through Hell and Purgatory; and anyone who has read the Aeneid will see at once how strongly Virgil’s poem influenced Dante’s vision of Hell in the Inferno.
Like Odysseus in the Odyssey, Aeneas in the Aeneid successfully makes his way through the underworld, and finds his father Anchises, who gives him advice regarding how things are to go, in a way that looks ahead to the Roman Empire and the Roman “destiny” to rule the world:
“But you, Roman, remember, rule with all your power
The peoples of the Earth – these will be your arts:
To put your stamp on the works and ways of peace,
To spare the defeated, break the proud in war.” (p. 266)
Armed with that new knowledge, Aeneas returns to the world of the living, and goes forth to fulfill his destiny. And while Latinus, king of the Latins, is willing to heed the wishes of the gods, forge an alliance with the Trojans, and marry his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas, there are some formidable antagonists still to be faced. Turnus, king of the Rutuli, was the man whom Latinus’ wife Amata wanted to see marry Lavinia, and he is angry at the prospect that both his bride-to-be and his prospective future kingdom are to be taken from him by some Johnny-come-lately from defeated troy. Turnus – “his build magnificent, sword brandished,/Marches among his captains, topping all by a head” (p. 300) – is likely to be a formidable enemy for any warrior. And among the greatest of Turnus’ supporters is the Volscian leader Camilla; “This warrior girl, with her young hands untrained/For Minerva’s spools and baskets filled with wool,/A virgin seasoned to bear the rough work of battle” (p. 301).
Virgil has a gift for interweaving elements of incisive characterization, even in the midst of bloody scenes of battle. One of the pre-eminent villains of The Aeneid is Mezentius, an Etruscan king who is notorious for his cruelty, and who revels in the chance to spill Trojan blood – until his son Lausus bravely and selflessly gives his own life stopping a sword thrust that would have killed Mezentius. The grieving father regrets living on once his son has died: “Was I so seized by the lust for life, my son,/I let you take my place before the enemy’s sword?...I owed a price to my land and people who despise me./If only I’d paid with my own guilty life” (p. 400). Aeneas takes on Mezentius in single combat and defeats him soundly, asking, “Where’s the fierce Mezentius now?/Where’s his murderous fury?” (p. 401). And the despicable Mezentius achieves a measure of dignity in his last moments, asking to be buried next to his beloved son Lausus as “he offers up his throat to the sword” (p. 401).
And thus the Aeneid moves toward a conclusion that may be divinely pre-ordained but nonetheless makes for suspenseful reading. While the political element – the recurrent need for Virgil to throw in a reference or two to what great leaders Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar are going to be – is jarring, it may also have been inevitable, considering the hyper-politicized nature of a Roman state that had been through so much political turbulence during the century of which Virgil was a part. But a modern reader can look past the politics and enjoy the richness of the poetry.
If you have a friend who enjoys classical literature, then someday you may see on their bookshelf Fagles’ Penguin Classics translations of the Iliad (with a blue cover), the Odyssey (with a red cover), and the Aeneid (with a gold cover). If your friend has bought those editions and read them, then their time and their money were well-spent.
Virgil (70-19 B.C.) stands alone among the poets of classical Rome, like Homer among the Greeks. No other classical writer composing in Latin is thought to share Virgil’s gift for wielding the language in such a way as to produce work that is both forceful and graceful. His talent for poetry was recognized, and encouraged, from his youth. At the same time – perhaps unavoidably, considering the times in which he was living – Virgil was caught up in the turbulence of Roman politics as Rome careened through one crisis after another, on its way from republic to empire.
He is said to have been born near present-day Mantua, in northern Italy – a region where Octavian, after his defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 B.C., rewarded his soldiers with land that he took from local landowners. One of those landowners may have been the then-28-year-old Virgil, and some scholars have seen Virgil’s Eclogues as containing pointed references to Octavian’s act of land theft.
Yet even if Virgil resented what Octavian did in northern Italy, he must have known which side his puls (or focaccia) was buttered on. Within five years, he was part of the retinue of Maecenas, a trusted advisor to Octavian and patron of poets. Maecenas encouraged Virgil to compose the Georgics. This poetic cycle further enhanced Virgil’s reputation for poetry, and Virgil and Maecenas are said to have read the Georgics to Octavian, after Octavian had returned from defeating Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
It must be nice – it must be nice – to have a future emperor on your side. The poet Propertius tells us that Octavian, once he had officially become the first Emperor of Rome as Augustus Caesar, commissioned the composition of the Aeneid by Virgil, so that the poet could spend the last decade of his life working on the epic poem that would forever be considered his masterpiece. Reading the Aeneid, one gets the sense of how Virgil is building upon the Homeric tradition – and, in some ways, changing it by incorporating a contemporary political inflection that no doubt pleased his imperial patron.
There are many great translations of the Aeneid. I favour the Penguin Classics deluxe-edition translation by Robert Fagles. A classics professor at Princeton University, Fagles had a gift for rendering the Greek of Homer and the Latin of Virgil into muscular, evocative English, in a Shakespearean-sounding blank-verse iambic pentameter that captures the musicality of both poets while avoiding both pedantry and excessive informality. His work found a wide and appreciative audience, and deservedly so.
Fagles starts his translation of The Aeneid by writing, “Wars and a man I sing” (p. 71) – not the traditional “Of arms and the man I sing” – and in a way I like Fagles’s version better. The reason is that his translation – “a” rather than “the” – emphasizes Aeneas as a specific individual with a destined historical role, in a way that seems to comport well with Virgil’s historical vision and poetic sensibility. Aeneas, after all, is “an exile driven on by Fate…destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil”, and to face “many losses…in battle…before he could found a city” (p. 71) at what would one day be Rome.
The world of The Aeneid is, like that of The Iliad and The Odyssey, a world where the Olympian gods intervene regularly and forcefully in human affairs. Jupiter himself, the king of the gods, has made clear that it is Aeneas’ ultimate destiny to defeat any enemies he may encounter in Italy, and to found the Roman state:
Aeneas will wage
A long, costly war in Italy, crush defiant tribes
And build high city walls for his people there
And found the rule of law….
On them I set no limits, space or time:
I have granted them power, empire without end….
From that noble blood [of Troy] will arise a Trojan Caesar,
His empire bound by the Ocean, his glory by the stars:
Julius, a name passed down from [Aeneas’ son] Iulus, his great forebear. (pp. 81-82)
Aeneas faces the constant and unyielding opposition of Juno, the queen of the gods, whose hatred for the Trojans did not end with the destruction of Troy; but he enjoys the protection of other Olympian deities, such as Venus (goddess of love, and Aeneas’ mother) and the sea-god Neptune. When Juno persuades the wind-god Aeolus to send wild winds to strike the Trojan ships at sea, threatening the wreck of the entire Trojan expedition to Italy, Neptune goes with his son Triton and the sea-nymph Cymothoë to calm the seas and rescue the Trojans – an event that Virgil recounts via an elaborate simile that emphasizes the Roman “rage for order” and fear of chaos:
Just as, all too often,
Some huge crowd is seized by a vast uprising,
The rabble runs amok, all slaves to passion,
Rocks, firebrands flying. Rage finds them arms
But then, if they chance to see a man among them,
One whose devotion and public service lend him weight,
They stand there, stock-still with their ears alert as
He rules their furor with his words and calms their passion. (pp. 76-78)
Driven to Carthage, the Trojans are granted sanctuary by the Carthaginian queen Dido. Hearing Aeneas’ recounting of the Trojans’ travails during and after the fall of their city, she says, “Schooled in suffering, now I learn to comfort/Those who suffer too” (p. 97). While Virgil depicts Venus as making Dido fall in love with Aeneas by having the love-god Cupid shoot Dido with arrows of love, in accordance with a well-known trope of classical epic, doing so hardly seems necessary. It makes perfect sense that Dido – like Aeneas, an exile who has successfully led her people to safe harbour in a new land – might come to feel passion for someone who is brave and strong like her, and with whom she has so much in common.
In Book Two of the Aeneid, Aeneas provides Dido and the Carthaginian court with a detailed recounting of the fall of Troy, and he emphasizes in the process the treachery of the Greeks in securing victory through the subterfuge of the Trojan Horse. Aeneas tells how Laocoön, priest of Troy, tried to dissuade the Trojans from taking the horse into the city, saying, “Trojans, never trust that horse. Whatever it is,/I fear the Greeks, especially bearing gifts” (p. 105).
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts – another idea from Virgil that one hears spoken throughout the modern world, often by people who have never read Virgil. But the Trojans, as Aeneas reminds us, did not take Laocoön’s advice, because two giant sea-serpents, sent by the gods, swam up onto the land and promptly killed Laocoön and his two sons – a tableau that one can see recreated in a magnificent, and grim, statue preserved today at the Vatican Museum. Always we are reminded that the Olympian gods are perfectly able and willing to intervene in human affairs, in a manner that we mortals might find to be fundamentally unjust.
As Aeneas tells it, he was ready to give his life in Troy’s defence, until his mother Venus intervened and told him to focus on trying to save his wife Creusa, their son Ascanius, and Aeneas’ father Anchises. For good measure, Venus made it clear that there was no more use in Aeneas’ fighting for Troy, a city whose fall had been ordained by the gods: “Think: it’s not that beauty, Helen, you should hate,/Not even Paris, the man that you should blame, no,/It’s the gods, the ruthless gods who are tearing down/The wealth of Troy, her toppling crown of towers” (p. 127). And so Aeneas left Troy, carrying father Anchises on his back, holding the hand of his young son Ascanius. Wife Creusa trailed behind, her ultimate fate an unhappy one.
This part of the Aeneid, with its emphasis on how the gods arrange the love affair of Aeneas and Dido – even using the weather to trap the two together, alone in a cave, at the critical moment – creates a decided sense of sympathy for Dido. There is a desperate quality to Dido’s love for Aeneas:
This was the first day of her death, the first of grief,
The cause of it all. From now on, Dido cares no more
For appearances, nor for her reputation, either.
She no longer thinks to keep the affair a secret –
No, she calls it a marriage,
Using the word to cloak her sense of guilt. (p. 173)
Their love is passionate – and it is should be no surprise that more than a dozen composers have been inspired to bring to the operatic stage the story of Dido and Aeneas. Understandably, Aeneas is in no hurry to leave his Queen of Carthage. It takes a visit from the messenger-god Mercury to Aeneas to induce the prince of Troy to flee from his Carthaginian love interlude and return to the performance of his divinely established duty. Mercury may offer a frankly sexist assessment that “Woman’s a thing/That’s always changing, shifting like the wind” (p. 190), but one gets a sense of how much Virgil sympathizes with Dido.
Aeneas follows the directive of the gods and leaves. Dido curses her departed lover, prophesying eternal enmity between Carthage and Rome – a perfectly correct prophecy that anticipates the three Punic Wars of 246-164 B.C., and the total destruction of Carthage – and then takes her own life.
It soon becomes clear that Aeneas will not be able to complete his quest and fulfill his destiny unless he descends into the underworld, the realm of Pluto and abode of the dead, to receive crucial information from his now-dead father Anchises on how to conduct the rest of his mission. In passages of singular grimness, Virgil sets forth a vivid picture of the underworld, with particular emphasis on the cruel punishments facing those who have sinned against the gods.
These passages from Book 6 of the Aeneid are said to have caused Augustus’ sister Octavia to faint when the poem was read to her. And, centuries later, they inspired the poet Dante Aligheri. In the first two books of his Divine Comedy, Dante the Poet makes Virgil the guide for Dante the Pilgrim through Hell and Purgatory; and anyone who has read the Aeneid will see at once how strongly Virgil’s poem influenced Dante’s vision of Hell in the Inferno.
Like Odysseus in the Odyssey, Aeneas in the Aeneid successfully makes his way through the underworld, and finds his father Anchises, who gives him advice regarding how things are to go, in a way that looks ahead to the Roman Empire and the Roman “destiny” to rule the world:
“But you, Roman, remember, rule with all your power
The peoples of the Earth – these will be your arts:
To put your stamp on the works and ways of peace,
To spare the defeated, break the proud in war.” (p. 266)
Armed with that new knowledge, Aeneas returns to the world of the living, and goes forth to fulfill his destiny. And while Latinus, king of the Latins, is willing to heed the wishes of the gods, forge an alliance with the Trojans, and marry his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas, there are some formidable antagonists still to be faced. Turnus, king of the Rutuli, was the man whom Latinus’ wife Amata wanted to see marry Lavinia, and he is angry at the prospect that both his bride-to-be and his prospective future kingdom are to be taken from him by some Johnny-come-lately from defeated troy. Turnus – “his build magnificent, sword brandished,/Marches among his captains, topping all by a head” (p. 300) – is likely to be a formidable enemy for any warrior. And among the greatest of Turnus’ supporters is the Volscian leader Camilla; “This warrior girl, with her young hands untrained/For Minerva’s spools and baskets filled with wool,/A virgin seasoned to bear the rough work of battle” (p. 301).
Virgil has a gift for interweaving elements of incisive characterization, even in the midst of bloody scenes of battle. One of the pre-eminent villains of The Aeneid is Mezentius, an Etruscan king who is notorious for his cruelty, and who revels in the chance to spill Trojan blood – until his son Lausus bravely and selflessly gives his own life stopping a sword thrust that would have killed Mezentius. The grieving father regrets living on once his son has died: “Was I so seized by the lust for life, my son,/I let you take my place before the enemy’s sword?...I owed a price to my land and people who despise me./If only I’d paid with my own guilty life” (p. 400). Aeneas takes on Mezentius in single combat and defeats him soundly, asking, “Where’s the fierce Mezentius now?/Where’s his murderous fury?” (p. 401). And the despicable Mezentius achieves a measure of dignity in his last moments, asking to be buried next to his beloved son Lausus as “he offers up his throat to the sword” (p. 401).
And thus the Aeneid moves toward a conclusion that may be divinely pre-ordained but nonetheless makes for suspenseful reading. While the political element – the recurrent need for Virgil to throw in a reference or two to what great leaders Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar are going to be – is jarring, it may also have been inevitable, considering the hyper-politicized nature of a Roman state that had been through so much political turbulence during the century of which Virgil was a part. But a modern reader can look past the politics and enjoy the richness of the poetry.
If you have a friend who enjoys classical literature, then someday you may see on their bookshelf Fagles’ Penguin Classics translations of the Iliad (with a blue cover), the Odyssey (with a red cover), and the Aeneid (with a gold cover). If your friend has bought those editions and read them, then their time and their money were well-spent.
February 9, 2017
The Romans took over from the Greeks as the dominant Mediterranean power after Alexander of Macedon died in 323 BCE, and then turned into an empire when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, which is a nice way to say that he staged a military coup and installed himself as dictator. It ran along merrily for 800 years until around 500 AD, when it was finally overrun by a series of people with awesome names like Visigoths and Attila the Hun.
Rome was actually founded even earlier than that, though, in the 700s BCE, by Aeneas, who was a Trojan - from the Trojan War, so we’re working (as usual) off Homer. Like Odysseus, Aeneas had a long and incompetent journey from Troy.
I made this myself! Click for bigger
He wasn’t going home, though, he was trying to find a prophesied new one. Because Odysseus showed up in a horse and burned his old one. (That famous Trojan Horse story is mostly told in the Aeneid, only briefly referred to in the Odyssey.)
That founding story, which is made up, is what's told in the greatest Roman epic, Virgil's Aeneid, written around 20 BCE. It’s pretty good. The story of the Carthaginian queen Dido is a high point: she falls in love with him; they sleep together and then he’s like never mind, I gotta go found Rome, prompting her to commit suicide by stabbing while burning, and beginning a feud with Carthage that will come to fruition when Hannibal barely fails to defeat Rome around 200 BCE, and then Rome completely destroys Carthage and you can’t even find ruins anymore, really, which is a bummer.
Dido killing herself - by Cayot, 1711, this is in the Louvre
TS Eliot calls The Aeneid "our classic, the classic of all Europe." It's a minor work for our generation - we're way more familiar with Homer - but it's been consistently read since it was written, unlike Homer (who lost favor for a while in the Middle Ages). It's an imperialist work, basically, written to canonize Rome as a great civilization and specifically exploring what it means to be a superpower. Virgil wasn't comfortable with it himself; he never finished it, and (according to the myth) asked that it be burned after his death, which lesson Kafka might have paid attention to: if you want something burned right, you'd best do it yourself.
Translations
I read the Fagles translation, which was as usual excellent. In case you don't know, Fagles is the Pevear & Volokhonsky of antiquity: he's done well-regarded translations of just about every work written BCE, which means you can just go with him if you don't have any better ideas but you should maybe watch out that you don't end up absorbing the entire canon through him, which would be weird. Mandelbaum also has a translation; I haven't read it but his work is dependable. Your other options are the conservative Fitzgerald or the very liberal Lombardo. Here's an excellent but very lengthy piece that (starting about halfway down) talks at length about different translations and comes out for Fagles.
Rome was actually founded even earlier than that, though, in the 700s BCE, by Aeneas, who was a Trojan - from the Trojan War, so we’re working (as usual) off Homer. Like Odysseus, Aeneas had a long and incompetent journey from Troy.
I made this myself! Click for bigger
He wasn’t going home, though, he was trying to find a prophesied new one. Because Odysseus showed up in a horse and burned his old one. (That famous Trojan Horse story is mostly told in the Aeneid, only briefly referred to in the Odyssey.)
That founding story, which is made up, is what's told in the greatest Roman epic, Virgil's Aeneid, written around 20 BCE. It’s pretty good. The story of the Carthaginian queen Dido is a high point: she falls in love with him; they sleep together and then he’s like never mind, I gotta go found Rome, prompting her to commit suicide by stabbing while burning, and beginning a feud with Carthage that will come to fruition when Hannibal barely fails to defeat Rome around 200 BCE, and then Rome completely destroys Carthage and you can’t even find ruins anymore, really, which is a bummer.
Dido killing herself - by Cayot, 1711, this is in the Louvre
TS Eliot calls The Aeneid "our classic, the classic of all Europe." It's a minor work for our generation - we're way more familiar with Homer - but it's been consistently read since it was written, unlike Homer (who lost favor for a while in the Middle Ages). It's an imperialist work, basically, written to canonize Rome as a great civilization and specifically exploring what it means to be a superpower. Virgil wasn't comfortable with it himself; he never finished it, and (according to the myth) asked that it be burned after his death, which lesson Kafka might have paid attention to: if you want something burned right, you'd best do it yourself.
Translations
I read the Fagles translation, which was as usual excellent. In case you don't know, Fagles is the Pevear & Volokhonsky of antiquity: he's done well-regarded translations of just about every work written BCE, which means you can just go with him if you don't have any better ideas but you should maybe watch out that you don't end up absorbing the entire canon through him, which would be weird. Mandelbaum also has a translation; I haven't read it but his work is dependable. Your other options are the conservative Fitzgerald or the very liberal Lombardo. Here's an excellent but very lengthy piece that (starting about halfway down) talks at length about different translations and comes out for Fagles.
April 20, 2022
The main ancient Roman epic poem, written at the beginning of the reign of Octavian Augustus.
Plot. Rating 4
The plot of the poem is divided into two parts. The first part tells about the voyage of Aeneas to the shores of Italy and various incidents on his way. The second part reports on the actions of Aeneas in Latium.
I liked the second part of the poem more, where the plot is full of military operations and a tense confrontation between the opposing sides. There is also more drama in this section of the poem. Although the chapters on Dido sound rather poignant, the descriptions of the war, and the heroics, death and sorrow associated with it, seemed to me more convincing.
The general plot of the poem is varied and contains many small branches and events.
Characters. Rating 4
Aeneas is well developed, his constant desire to obey the gods and put the common good above his own desires is clearly shown. The history of Rome in the pre-imperial period contains many such heroes. I think Virgil's poetry was a good example of a first hero of Roman times.
Although most of the characters in the poem are rather faceless, there are memorable personalities such as Dido, Turnus, Camilla, and other episodic characters.
Dialogues. Rating 4
Dialogues can be considered a model of pathos and grandiosity. They fit the genre, but to be honest, towards the end of the book, I got a little tired of such monotonous recitations.
Writing style. Rating 4
There are many beautiful sayings and metaphors in the poem, and the poems themselves are full of action and details. Virgil is clearly among the best ancient poets. But, this style is quite difficult to read. You often need to re-read incomprehensible phrases because of the unknown concepts of antiquity and the subtle meanings that Virgil puts into the text.
Worldbuilding. Rating 5
I think when reading such poems one can feel the great depth of the Roman world, which was extremely developed socially, culturally, and religiously. There are many different features of antiquity in the poem. I liked the descriptions of military battles and fights in Eliade - for an epic they are quite diverse and reliable.
Conclusion. Overall rating 4
A great poem, which is a good fusion of poetry and antiquity.
Plot. Rating 4
The plot of the poem is divided into two parts. The first part tells about the voyage of Aeneas to the shores of Italy and various incidents on his way. The second part reports on the actions of Aeneas in Latium.
I liked the second part of the poem more, where the plot is full of military operations and a tense confrontation between the opposing sides. There is also more drama in this section of the poem. Although the chapters on Dido sound rather poignant, the descriptions of the war, and the heroics, death and sorrow associated with it, seemed to me more convincing.
The general plot of the poem is varied and contains many small branches and events.
Characters. Rating 4
Aeneas is well developed, his constant desire to obey the gods and put the common good above his own desires is clearly shown. The history of Rome in the pre-imperial period contains many such heroes. I think Virgil's poetry was a good example of a first hero of Roman times.
Although most of the characters in the poem are rather faceless, there are memorable personalities such as Dido, Turnus, Camilla, and other episodic characters.
Dialogues. Rating 4
Dialogues can be considered a model of pathos and grandiosity. They fit the genre, but to be honest, towards the end of the book, I got a little tired of such monotonous recitations.
Writing style. Rating 4
There are many beautiful sayings and metaphors in the poem, and the poems themselves are full of action and details. Virgil is clearly among the best ancient poets. But, this style is quite difficult to read. You often need to re-read incomprehensible phrases because of the unknown concepts of antiquity and the subtle meanings that Virgil puts into the text.
Worldbuilding. Rating 5
I think when reading such poems one can feel the great depth of the Roman world, which was extremely developed socially, culturally, and religiously. There are many different features of antiquity in the poem. I liked the descriptions of military battles and fights in Eliade - for an epic they are quite diverse and reliable.
Conclusion. Overall rating 4
A great poem, which is a good fusion of poetry and antiquity.
September 19, 2022
Evo – topos neizrecivosti: ni da sve moguće superlative ovde upotrebim, ne bi bili dovoljni da dočaraju šta je sve „Eneida”. Susret sa klasičnim delima zaista umiva čoveka – predstavlja nužni reset za dodir sa savremenošću. A zaista dobri prevodi, kao što je to ovde slučaj, rastežu savremenost do drevnosti. Marjanca Pakiž je uspela da Vergilije zvuči kao neko sasvim blizak, uz zadivljujuću posvećenost da osavremenjivanje bude i potkrepljeno, autentično, ali i beskrajno elegantno. Čitanje ovog izdanja je briljantan omaž celini rimske kulture, rekapitulacija mitologije i antičke istorije i udžbenik stila, pun avantura i izazova. Doživljaj ne bi bio ni upola takav da nije bilo ne samo, naravno, odličnog prevoda gde je heksametar dosledno poštovan od prvog do poslednjeg stiha, već i izuzetnih prevodilačkih napomena, korisnih, neopterećujućih, otmenih i, usudiću se reći, šmekerski duhovitih – pogotovo jer Pakiž ne preza od gotovo pa lično obojenih ocena, kao i kritičkih promišljanja pojedinih neusaglašenosti u delu, koje čine čitanje još zanimljivijim. Stoga svih 767 napomena čine svojevrsnu kriptoknjigu u odnosu na „Enejidu”, koja višestruko nagrađuje sve posvećene. A tek da ne govorim o tome koliko puta sam bacio pogled na geografsku kartu koja se dobija uz ovo izdanje! Ovo je, dakle, čitanje sa punom borbenom i putničkom opremom – a, da stvar bude još bolja – pristupačno! Jer Pakiž nije ni precenila ni potcenila čitaoce – ko želi da priđe Vergiliju, moći će po svojoj sopstvenoj meri, ali uz retko vrednu pomoć. Zaista, ovako dragoceno izdanje se retko pojavljuje u nekoj kulturi i treba da apsolutno bude prepoznato i pozdravljeno.
Pošto je čitanje trajalo dugo, moj rokovnik je značajno podgojen. I sažet pregled beležaka bio bi preobiman, pa ću sada napraviti neki sažetak sažetaka. Najpre jedan sasvim opšti utisak: Vergilije je pesnik epskog sveta, ali delikatne lirske refleksije. Koliko sam uživao u pričama, toliko su me radovali svi lirski uzleti i poetična skretanja koja čak i surovosti čine na poseban način nežnim. Ono što je posebno uzbduljivo, a što bi znao i neko pre čitanja, jeste što je celina „Eneide”, u odnosu na nama poznatije, Homerove oči, pogled poraženih. I to ne običan pogled, već osveta i trijumf, utemeljujuć za poimanje posebnosti jedne zajednice. Otuda Vergilije komunicira kako sa ondašnjim trenutkom, tako sa Homerom, ali i, kao svaki epski pesnik, večnošću. Inače, često se prenebregava da između Homera i Vergilija stoji raspon od, bogami, osam vekova! Zamislite da danas poredimo neki savremeni roman sa nečim iz 12. veka? Vreme se usitnjuje.
Pregled nekih omiljenih momenata, po pevanjima:
I) Eolova stolujuća špilja i Neptun dok umiruje vetrove:
„Reče pa rečima samim nabubrelu pučinu smiri,
rasprši oblaka hrpe i sunčevu povrati svetlost.” (57)
II) Kasandra je najuverljivija najneuverljivija proročica u istoriji proricanja.
Eneja sanja Hektorovu sen.
III) Jeza – iz zelenih izdanaka krv. Eneja susreće mrtvog Polidora.
Podnožje Etne: Grk koji moli Trojance da ga prime.
Polifem na brdu bez i tog jednog njegovog oka. (168)
IV) Didonu izjeda zaljubljenost. Sukobi i navijanja Junone i Venere.
Didonino proklinjanje zbog neuzvraćene ljubavi:
„(...) Biću daleko, al’ mrkim ću ognjem
pratiti tebe. A ledena smrt kad mi dušu od tela
rastavi, biću uz tebe kao utvara! Platićeš grdno!
Znaću, jer meni će vesti do najdubljeg podzemlja stići.” (192)
Misterija čarobnice iz Etiopije.
Didonino samoubistvo.
V) Trka brodova i nagrada – zlatni ogrtač sa porubom.
VI) Katabaza!
I saznanje da Had nije konačan – da duđe idu uvis i potom se vraćaju u tela. Metempsihoza! (292)
VII) Krčkanje rata. (Do ovog trenutka „Eneida” je više nalikovala „Odiseji”, od ovog postaje „Ilijada”.)
VIII) Reka Tibar govori u svoje ime. (358)
Ali i: „čude se vode i šume: ne videše do tad da blješte
ičiji brodovi tako, a brodovi da se šarene.” (360)
U „Eneidi” su vrlo česta svitanja, ali i počinci.
Venera u postelji ubeđuje Vulkana da pomogne oružjem. Enejin štit. (379) A na njemu sva italska prošlost i sva rimska budućnost.
IX) Niz i Eurijal se uvlače među Turnove vojnike.
X) Veće bogova: Jupiter negoduje.
Opis: „A među njima je, eno, i briga Venerina silna:
dečak Dardanac, a prelepu otkrio glavu pa blista –
kao treperava svetlost dragulja sred tamnijeg zlata
na dijademi il’ kakvom đerdanu, il’ kao što sjaji
s tamnog kovčežića, od terpentinovog drveta, vešto
umetnut deo od slonove kosti. Niz prebeli vrat se
slila dečakova kosa, a meko je prikuplja zlato.” (446)
Eneja se raznevljuje. Pa i šutira glavu ubijenog. (467)
Junona interveniše: pravi utvaru po ugledu na Eneju da bi se spasio Turno.
XI) Kamila kao jedna od najupečatljivijih amazonki – obnaživanje grudi u napadu – herojska smrt.
XII) Finalna borba: Eneja vs. Turno.
Venera krišom Eneji daruje bilje, da pomogne.
Poređenje: opšta uznemirenost kao kad pronađe pčele neki pastir u šupljikavoj steni. (558)
Pošto je čitanje trajalo dugo, moj rokovnik je značajno podgojen. I sažet pregled beležaka bio bi preobiman, pa ću sada napraviti neki sažetak sažetaka. Najpre jedan sasvim opšti utisak: Vergilije je pesnik epskog sveta, ali delikatne lirske refleksije. Koliko sam uživao u pričama, toliko su me radovali svi lirski uzleti i poetična skretanja koja čak i surovosti čine na poseban način nežnim. Ono što je posebno uzbduljivo, a što bi znao i neko pre čitanja, jeste što je celina „Eneide”, u odnosu na nama poznatije, Homerove oči, pogled poraženih. I to ne običan pogled, već osveta i trijumf, utemeljujuć za poimanje posebnosti jedne zajednice. Otuda Vergilije komunicira kako sa ondašnjim trenutkom, tako sa Homerom, ali i, kao svaki epski pesnik, večnošću. Inače, često se prenebregava da između Homera i Vergilija stoji raspon od, bogami, osam vekova! Zamislite da danas poredimo neki savremeni roman sa nečim iz 12. veka? Vreme se usitnjuje.
Pregled nekih omiljenih momenata, po pevanjima:
I) Eolova stolujuća špilja i Neptun dok umiruje vetrove:
„Reče pa rečima samim nabubrelu pučinu smiri,
rasprši oblaka hrpe i sunčevu povrati svetlost.” (57)
II) Kasandra je najuverljivija najneuverljivija proročica u istoriji proricanja.
Eneja sanja Hektorovu sen.
III) Jeza – iz zelenih izdanaka krv. Eneja susreće mrtvog Polidora.
Podnožje Etne: Grk koji moli Trojance da ga prime.
Polifem na brdu bez i tog jednog njegovog oka. (168)
IV) Didonu izjeda zaljubljenost. Sukobi i navijanja Junone i Venere.
Didonino proklinjanje zbog neuzvraćene ljubavi:
„(...) Biću daleko, al’ mrkim ću ognjem
pratiti tebe. A ledena smrt kad mi dušu od tela
rastavi, biću uz tebe kao utvara! Platićeš grdno!
Znaću, jer meni će vesti do najdubljeg podzemlja stići.” (192)
Misterija čarobnice iz Etiopije.
Didonino samoubistvo.
V) Trka brodova i nagrada – zlatni ogrtač sa porubom.
VI) Katabaza!
I saznanje da Had nije konačan – da duđe idu uvis i potom se vraćaju u tela. Metempsihoza! (292)
VII) Krčkanje rata. (Do ovog trenutka „Eneida” je više nalikovala „Odiseji”, od ovog postaje „Ilijada”.)
VIII) Reka Tibar govori u svoje ime. (358)
Ali i: „čude se vode i šume: ne videše do tad da blješte
ičiji brodovi tako, a brodovi da se šarene.” (360)
U „Eneidi” su vrlo česta svitanja, ali i počinci.
Venera u postelji ubeđuje Vulkana da pomogne oružjem. Enejin štit. (379) A na njemu sva italska prošlost i sva rimska budućnost.
IX) Niz i Eurijal se uvlače među Turnove vojnike.
X) Veće bogova: Jupiter negoduje.
Opis: „A među njima je, eno, i briga Venerina silna:
dečak Dardanac, a prelepu otkrio glavu pa blista –
kao treperava svetlost dragulja sred tamnijeg zlata
na dijademi il’ kakvom đerdanu, il’ kao što sjaji
s tamnog kovčežića, od terpentinovog drveta, vešto
umetnut deo od slonove kosti. Niz prebeli vrat se
slila dečakova kosa, a meko je prikuplja zlato.” (446)
Eneja se raznevljuje. Pa i šutira glavu ubijenog. (467)
Junona interveniše: pravi utvaru po ugledu na Eneju da bi se spasio Turno.
XI) Kamila kao jedna od najupečatljivijih amazonki – obnaživanje grudi u napadu – herojska smrt.
XII) Finalna borba: Eneja vs. Turno.
Venera krišom Eneji daruje bilje, da pomogne.
Poređenje: opšta uznemirenost kao kad pronađe pčele neki pastir u šupljikavoj steni. (558)
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