The voice of Heaven...

   W. F Jackson-Knight was, without a question, one of the most passionate and fascinating interpreters of Virgil (or as Jackson-Knight always insisted, Vergil.) This from the introduction to his translation of "The Aeneid."

"Virgil had no doubt that that the affairs of the earthly are subject to the powers of another world...The belief is vital to the poem.  For Virgil was presenting a true poetic picture of the world, showing how human affairs are controlled by human and superhuman qualities and deeds, and in particular how it happened that Rome grew to greatness after a process which began in weakness and despair. Aeneas  himself is more than once ready to abandon Hope. But every time he is given some assurance. And, whatever his faults, for he had many, he would never disregard the voice of Heaven."

a fiendishly complicated game...

This from Douglas J. Stewart on Virgil's "Aeneid." Pretty true that...

"The essential subject of the Aeneid is the education of a political leader...

Virgil's first insight was...that a politician, normally, is neither a gangster or a hero, but a frequently puzzled player of a fiendishly complicated game most of the rules of which change by the hour."

invention as rediscovery...

This from E.R. Curtius:

"For fundamental to Virgil is the strength and the will to preserve the permanent through all change. Repetition as restoration, invention as rediscovery...This was Virgil's most cherished concern."

rumor...

Has their ever been a better description of the devestation caused by gossip and rumor than that of our friend Virgil's?

Dido and Aeneas have just consumated their tragic relationship and Fama (Rumor) the goddess of fame and gossip carries the word... (from book four of the Aenied, Fagel's translation)

"Starightway Rumor flies through Libya's great cities,

Rumor, swiftest of all the evils in the world.

She thrives on speed, stronger for every stride,

Slight with fear at first, soon soaring into the air

she treads the ground and hides her head in the clouds.

She is the last, they say, our Mother Earth produced.

Bursting in rage against the gods, she bore a sister

for Coeus and Encladus; Rumor, quicksilver afoot

and swift on the wing,  monster, horrific, huge

and under every feather on her body-what a marvel-

an eye that never sleeps and as many tongues as eyes

and as many raucous mouths and ears pricked up for news,

By night she flies aloft, between the earth and sky,

whirring across the dark, never closing her lids

in soothing sleep. By day she keeps her watch,

crouched on a peaked roof or palace turret,

terrorizing the great cities, clinging as fast

to her twisted lies as she clings to words of truth.

Now Rumor is in her glory, filling Africs's ears

with tale on tale of intrigue, bruiting her song

of facts and falsehoods mingled..."

spiritual generosity...

This from Thomas Greene's " The Descent from Heaven" on reading Virgil...

"...he is...a poet of maturity rather than youth, because his work continues to educate as the understanding ripens. Fully to know him, one must know him long. If he teaches the schoolboy style, to the man he imparts nobility.

   Nobility in Virgil is concerned with authenticity, labor, and humility: it involves above all a spirtiual generosity and an incapacity for triviality..."

the emptiness of human suffering...

I am occasionally asked why I love Virgil as I do and the answer is complicated. The final line of Adam Parry's essay, "The Two Voices of Virgil's Aeneid," comes close to an answer and is, I think, appropriate on this, the day of the passing of Nelson Mandela. 

"The Aeneid," Parry wrote, "enforces the fine paradox that all the wonders of the most powerful institution the world has ever known are not necessarily of greater importance than the emptiness of human suffering."

Amen, and rest in peace...

making smooth the ruffled wave...

My "bucket list" has only two items, one of which is a visit to Sir Walter Scott's home in Scotland. The other is to learn enough Latin to read Virgil. I have started the latter though it is, to say the least, daunting. So for the foreseable future translations will have to do. Translation itself, of course, has its great virtues. I am, right now, reading the "Aeneid" book by book in four different translations:

John Conington's version using Walter Scott's poetic form

H.R. Fairclough's version, updated by Goold, (Loeb Library)

Allen Mandelbaum's version...and, finally, 

the newest translation by Robert Fagels.

This the first great "Homeric simile" in all four versions...Neptune has just calmed the raging seas, saving Aeneas from certain death...

Conington: "He...Makes smooth the ruffled wave, and rides

Calm o'er the surface of the tides.

As when sedition oft has stirred

In some great town the vulgar herd,

And brands and stones already fly-

For rage has weapons always nigh-

Then should some man of worth appear

Whose stainless virtue all revere,

They hush, they hist; his clear voice rules

Their rebel wills, their anger cools;"

Fairclough:  "Thus he speaks, and swifter than his word he calms the swollen seas...As when oftentimes in a great nation tumult has risen, the base rabble rage angrily, and now brands and stones fly, madness lending arms; then, if perchance they set eyes on a man honoured for noble character and service, they are silent and stand by with  attentive; with speech he sways their passion and soothes their breasts..."

Mandelbaum:  "But now the god himself takes up his trident 

to lift the galleys, and he clears a channel

across a vast sandbank...

And just as, often, when a crowd of people

is rocked by a rebellion, and the rabble

rage in their minds, and firebrands and stones

fly fast-for fury finds its weapons-if,

by chance, they see a man remarkable

for righteousness and service, they are silent

and stand attentively; and he controls

their passion by his words and cools their spirits..."

Fagels: "...As the god himself whisks them up with his trident,

clearing a channel through the deadly reefs, his chariot

skimming over the cresting waves on spinning wheels

to set the seas to rest. 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..."