Myth and a Woman I Sing: The Book List

If you look back through my book list posts, Fagles’ translation of The Aeneid makes its first appearance in the October 26, 2007 entry: I mention that it’s in my cart at Barnes & Noble. I then mention that I’m reading it on December 4 of that same year. It stays on the Currently Reading list up until August 26, 2009; somewhere between that date and October 4 (nearly two years after I started it), Virgil’s epic finally makes it onto the Finished list. I had once joked to IP that The Aeneid was the Don Quixote of 2008 (while Don Quixote had been the Don Quixote of 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and probably 2010—I’ll never finish that book, will I?).

Anyway, I found The Aeneid difficult to get through—I was stumped by the funeral games for Anchises in Book V. I had been looking forward to Fagles’ translation very much as I had been a great fan of his translations of The Illiad and The Odyssey; I had tried to read Fitzgerald’s translation and failed (my sister, though, loved Fitzgerald’s rendering), and I thought that Fagles’ translation might resonate more. However, the funeral games knocked me off track sometime in February 2008 and I didn’t get back on the Virgil train until after the wedding this past August. I finally plowed through the last books, enjoying Fagles’ translation and, while I knew it was unfinished, cried out, “That’s it!?” when Aeneas kills Turnus and the screen goes to black.

I mean, what the hell!?

Kidding. I know that Virgil was dying and that his wish that the manuscript be burned was disregarded.

I didn’t expect myself to be writing about The Aeneid or Virgil on this blog anytime soon. After taking two years to read the poem, the idea of reviewing it for the blog seemed like nonsense. After all, it’s The Aeneid; it’s canon and it’s important and it is highly readable. When I committed to it, I enjoyed it, but because it took so long, something I recently read came to mind (and I think, but am possibly mistaken, that it was Harold Bloom who said it): if it takes more than a few days to read a book, you’re not fully committed to it; you’re not taking in the words and bonding to the writing like you should. It could be your fault, or it could be the text’s fault; however, if it takes you an inordinate amount of time (like, say, two years), then you’re not engaging the text as you should, nor should you offer it up for analysis. In this particular case, I agree (though I don’t always think that periods of time between readings renders you unable to analyze a book competently). I did not see myself mentioning The Aeneid again in any other context than an aside, or a joke about my slow reading of it.

In steps Ursula K. Le Guin and her superb novel, Lavinia.

Told from the point of view of Lavinia, daughter to King Latinus and Aeneas’ destined wife, the book follows the text of The Aeneid faithfully, allowing Lavinia to tell her side of the story as she sees it unfold. Le Guin does take liberties, assuming that Virgil got a few things wrong: for example, Lavinia is not a blonde, and does not tear at her hair when her mother kills herself (rather, I think Le Guin’s Lavinia is relieved, but intent on giving her mother the dignity and honors befitting a dead queen). But the text follows myth and legend for the most part, and it is Le Guin’s writing that carries the novel and allows Lavinia to come to life in a way Virgil did not.

The most interesting part of the text is that Lavinia, tuned into the gods and forces of her people and lands (though you’ll find no mischievous gods here), is able to communicate with the man who gave her life, but so little of it that her own telling is needed: Lavinia, in the forest of Albunea, speaks directly to Virgil, who lays dying centuries later aboard a ship. The Virgil of Le Guin’s story is thoughtful, intelligent, and aware that he has greatly underappreciated Lavinia as a person and character with a story; he laments that he did not let her light shine in his work. Their talks are cautious, with Virgil hesitant to give Lavinia too many details of her life, but it is in knowing those details that Lavinia sees her destiny: she must marry Aeneas, Turnus must die, and her descendants will give rise to the Roman Empire. The intersection of author and his myth and how much is will and how much is fate is an interesting conversation to say the least: what might you say to your creator? What might you say to your creation? And what would you say if you were the creator and suddenly found yourself created by another author (thanks to a throwaway line, Le Guin manages to tie in Dante’s Inferno)? The contrast of Lavinia’s myth and her personhood in Le Guin’s novel is a convoluted literary question to dwell on, but it is exciting nonetheless; where does Virgil end and where does Lavinia begin?

Once the war is over, the story is Lavinia’s entirely; she no longer has the writings of Virgil to guide her, or so she thinks. But the rendering of Lavinia’s world, in a Bronze Age glory that treats its inhabitants not as sophisticated Romans but as rough founders, is lovely, carrying the story past Virgil’s Aeneid and into its own realm. It’s a retelling, of course, but it is one done elegantly, seeking to give voice to a character whose importance was underrepresented. It does not attempt to perfect The Aeneid, of course, only expand. The women of Lavinia’s world are more than maneuvering goddesses and mad queens; they are essential to the society, striving to achieve what is best for their kingdom and their futures, bridging the Latin and Trojan ways in order to give rise to the rulers to come. As a character, Lavinia emerges as intelligent, resourceful, and pious; she makes mistakes, of course, but like Virgil’s hero, she strives to do what’s best for what is and what will come. In this, Aeneas and Lavinia are perfectly matched, and the domesticity they enjoy briefly is a beautiful literary snapshot in time.

A definite recommend. And as long it took me to read, be sure to read The Aeneid beforehand if you haven’t done so already. Also? Bernard Knox’s intro in Fagles’ translation is wonderful.

Onto the book list.

Finished:

1) The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
2) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
3) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peal Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
4) Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde
5) Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
6) Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
7) Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
8) Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Re-read:

Empty

Currently Reading:

1) Shakespeare’s Wife by Germaine Greer
2) The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Husband or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) Under the Dome by Stephen King
2) Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge by Eleanor Herman
3) Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman
4) The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez