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Nov. 13th, 2002 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaznettiThis was brought on by a comment ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lizbee made in her journal, but isn't really aimed at her; she's hardly the first person to find Aeneas an unsympathetic character. But I started to wonder about the problem--why this is so--and this brought on the Aeneid rant.
On the one hand, I do understand why people don't like the Aeneid. For one thing, there's the problem of translation. The Aeneid is a poem that is notorious for its untranslatability, and so the majority of readers are left with no way to appreciate the sheer beauty of Vergil's Latin. And even those who are reading in Latin are often in their first years of the language and are spending so much time on the grammar, and reading so slowly, that the style is lost as well.
And that leads to the second problem with appreciating the Aeneid. We tend to read it too young. Here, though, the fault is not in the poem but in ourselves. Aeneas is a hero who gives up everything he has ever wanted or ever will want for a destiny that he doesn't even understand. The scene in Book 8 where he looks at the shield Vulcan has made for him, with its depictions of Rome's future greatness, and delights in their beauty without understanding them is tragic. Especially when compared with his response to the depictions of the Trojan War which he sees in Carthage. They touch him in a way his destiny just doesn't.
As readers, we prefer heroes whose duties don't interfere with their happiness. We want the big romantic ending. We want individualism and self-actualization. (That's why we prefer the Odyssey and Iliad to the Aeneid. Odysseus and Achilles are very modern heroes.) But we're wrong to want these things. Or at least, to want them for Aeneas. Aeneas' sacrifices are what make the poem work: the struggle to found Rome isn't just a struggle against Juno or against the Italians. It's a struggle within Aeneas himself. If it was easy for him to give up everything--if he never complained about what he had to do--it wouldn't be much of a story. But if he simply gave up he wouldn't be much of a hero.
And I think it's worth overcoming our problems with the Aeneid, because it's an important poem. Now more than ever. It's a story about the foundation of a great nation in turmoil and self-sacrifice. Its final lines expose the darkness that lay at the heart of Rome. They warn of the danger of becoming our enemies, in our struggle to overcome them. It isn't a poem with a happy ending, either: Aeneas sacrifices everything and is overcome by anger, and Juno wins. The Trojans disappear from the face of the earth. And yet there's still optimism in it: Virgil takes a hundred years of civil war and somehow finds hope, that most unexpected thing, in them. Rome does survive. The wounds of civil war can be healed.
The Aeneid is almost a tragedy--not in the Aristotelian sense of a hero undone by a fatal flaw but in a looser sense, of humans subject to the whims of merciless powers. But it's only almost a tragedy, and the almost is all bound up in Aeneas and his increasingly desperate attempts to do what he considers right, to maintain some kind of humanity, to hold on to his people and his family. The almost lies in the lacrimae rerum he finds in Carthage, the understanding of human suffering in the face of destiny. And the almost lies in the possibility--only that--that tomorrow will not be as bad as today.
lizbee made in her journal, but isn't really aimed at her; she's hardly the first person to find Aeneas an unsympathetic character. But I started to wonder about the problem--why this is so--and this brought on the Aeneid rant.On the one hand, I do understand why people don't like the Aeneid. For one thing, there's the problem of translation. The Aeneid is a poem that is notorious for its untranslatability, and so the majority of readers are left with no way to appreciate the sheer beauty of Vergil's Latin. And even those who are reading in Latin are often in their first years of the language and are spending so much time on the grammar, and reading so slowly, that the style is lost as well.
And that leads to the second problem with appreciating the Aeneid. We tend to read it too young. Here, though, the fault is not in the poem but in ourselves. Aeneas is a hero who gives up everything he has ever wanted or ever will want for a destiny that he doesn't even understand. The scene in Book 8 where he looks at the shield Vulcan has made for him, with its depictions of Rome's future greatness, and delights in their beauty without understanding them is tragic. Especially when compared with his response to the depictions of the Trojan War which he sees in Carthage. They touch him in a way his destiny just doesn't.
As readers, we prefer heroes whose duties don't interfere with their happiness. We want the big romantic ending. We want individualism and self-actualization. (That's why we prefer the Odyssey and Iliad to the Aeneid. Odysseus and Achilles are very modern heroes.) But we're wrong to want these things. Or at least, to want them for Aeneas. Aeneas' sacrifices are what make the poem work: the struggle to found Rome isn't just a struggle against Juno or against the Italians. It's a struggle within Aeneas himself. If it was easy for him to give up everything--if he never complained about what he had to do--it wouldn't be much of a story. But if he simply gave up he wouldn't be much of a hero.
And I think it's worth overcoming our problems with the Aeneid, because it's an important poem. Now more than ever. It's a story about the foundation of a great nation in turmoil and self-sacrifice. Its final lines expose the darkness that lay at the heart of Rome. They warn of the danger of becoming our enemies, in our struggle to overcome them. It isn't a poem with a happy ending, either: Aeneas sacrifices everything and is overcome by anger, and Juno wins. The Trojans disappear from the face of the earth. And yet there's still optimism in it: Virgil takes a hundred years of civil war and somehow finds hope, that most unexpected thing, in them. Rome does survive. The wounds of civil war can be healed.
The Aeneid is almost a tragedy--not in the Aristotelian sense of a hero undone by a fatal flaw but in a looser sense, of humans subject to the whims of merciless powers. But it's only almost a tragedy, and the almost is all bound up in Aeneas and his increasingly desperate attempts to do what he considers right, to maintain some kind of humanity, to hold on to his people and his family. The almost lies in the lacrimae rerum he finds in Carthage, the understanding of human suffering in the face of destiny. And the almost lies in the possibility--only that--that tomorrow will not be as bad as today.
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Date: 2002-11-13 12:54 pm (UTC)I definitely think you're right about reading this (and other classical texts as well) too young. And you have a very good point re. translations. Often (within my linguistic sphere anyway), the Greek and Latin classics are translated by highly acclaimed writers who do not know these languages themselves, but base their translations on verbatim translations of the Latin/Greek text and various well-reputed translations in the more generally accessible languages like French, German, Spanish and English. It's a very roundabout way of getting to the heart and beauty of a piece of fiction.