This was my fourth time reading the Aeneid (in English, obvs). I have used a different translation each time. Back in school I read the Rolfe Humphries, the Robert Fitzgerald a couple of years afterwards, the Fairclough (Loeb edition), and on this last occasion, the J.W. Mackail (Modern Library). These last two are prose translations. I own the Britannica Great Books edition of the poem, which has a verse translation by James Rhoades. Maybe I will find a reason to take that up in another ten years. There is also a Dryden translation which emits something of a classic aura, however accurate or poetically good it happens to be. The Robert Fagles seems to be considered the best of the modern efforts, and as in the art of translation consensus seems to be that there has been a steady progression over the centuries that continues into our own time, that would make it de facto the best in existence. As with most artistic or intellectual productions I have a hard time warming up to anything too contemporary, that might be alive in some way that has eluded me and therefore will be threatening to my self-esteem, I find I am not overeager to read it. I always even found Fitzgerald's translations, of Homer as well as Virgil, to be too informed by something I vaguely define as modern academic triumphalism, and he goes all the way back to the 60s. At the same time the prose translations, however old they are, are not wholly satisfying either. My favorite is still Rolfe Humphries's, originally published in 1951 and part of the Scribner Library. I know that the associations from the time that I read it, as well as the freshness of reading classic literature and the crazy but aesthetic attractive hopes that the undertaking represented, is coloring my memory, but after all it is precisely this sort of coloring in the midst of (in my instance blushingly tepid) youthful excitement that informs who most of are. That said, Humphries had something of that spare but forceful mid-century style that seems to suit the style and spirit of this poem--or at least what I want the style and spirit of this poem, and most classic literature--to be. Unfortunately I lost my copy of it some years ago or I would give a sample passage.
(According to Wikipedia, Rolfe Humphries was born in Philadelphia in 1894 and died in California in 1969. He was a graduate of Amherst College. Though he was a poet and published in Harper's and the New Yorker in addition to doing his Aeneid translation, he taught Latin in secondary schools until 1957. It is not uncommon in books published before 1960 to find authors or contributors whose titles are "English Department Chairman, Central High School" or the like (though I suspect Humphries probably taught at more exclusive private schools). W. H. Auden called his Aeneid 'a service for which no public award could be too great".
As with Faulkner and,, I am beginning to sense, many of the Great Books, The Aeneid is more or less impossible to read when you are tired or at all distracted. This is a big problem for me, since I rarely have the opportunity to read when I am not tired, and never when I am not distracted. At night, which is when I do, or was planning to do, most of the reading for this program, I usually could not get through more than two pages before my head would begin lolling, I would completely forget where I was, sentences begun would get lost in the mush of my brain and run on into completely nonsensical strings of words, and the book would fall out of my hands (Such is the sad fate to which the failed scholar comes in the end; but I digress). So it took me much longer to read the poem than would seem reasonable. I was averaging 5-7 pages (or about a third of one Book of poetry) a day. When I could stay awake and concentrate long enough to build some momentum and become immersed in the act of reading the book, I felt some of the old enjoyment and happy associations that come even with reading accounts of ancient bloodbaths; thoughts of Italy and the Mediterranean World, of the saga of Western Civilization, now in our own lifetimes apparently dying, in its handsome boyhood, of the destinies of great nations and men, images of my own youth, of clouds slowly drifting across the blue sky of a sunny day when one had all the time and possibility in the world. Of course the primary content of the book if one pays any attention to it, especially in a prose translation, is war and death, in the service of a glorious cause, or several of them perhaps, but nonetheless life and dignity, where the ordinary individual is concerned, is less than cheap. In youth one always identifies with the writer, and the triumph of his vision and art and the strongest of the creations he has employed in the service of this. Greatness and achievement, we think, are often by necessity messy, but no man worthy of the name would suffer to endure life as a mediocre or inferior person anyway. In middle age however, especially in the state of semi-delirium that is the attempt to read late at night, such passages read like this:
"...Next the great meritocrat levelled his spear full on (Bourgeois Surrender) from far...(Surrender), clasping his knees, speaks thus beseechingly...'I entreat thee, save this life for a child and a parent...The victory of Big Money Enterprises does not turn on this, nor will a single life make so great a difference.' (Surrender) ended...The Global Champion grasps his helmet with his left hand, and bending back his neck, drives his sword up to the hilt in the suppliant..."
or
"...(Surrender), slipping down from the chariot, pitiably outstretched helpless hands: 'Ah, by the parents who gave thee birth, great Investor, spare this life and pity my prayer.' More he was pleading, but the Investor, who was also a cardiac surgeon, an attorney, a best selling author and a former Olympic medalist: 'Not such were the words thou wert uttering (before I was present) Die...' With that his sword's point pierces the breast where the life lies hid."
I had wanted to finish the book before my vacation in Florida in order to have something a little less stodgy (and more practical with children) to read on the beach. My slow pace prevented this from being realized however, as I could only get to the middle of Book Ten by the time of my arrival. This actually would not be a bad beach read if one were left unmolested even for a couple of hours a day. I think I only managed to get through about fourteen pages in a week as it was however, and I did not finally finish the book until I got back to New Hampshire.
I have not talked much about he actual book. It is emotional for me, as all of the undisputed canonical books and authors are, because I felt at point in my life to have some connection to this strain of life, that it was in reach for me. It wasn't, so there is a lot of sadness and feelings of pointlessness as trying to revisit them now, but at the same time it evokes images and thoughts from, if not a happier, at least a period of life when one felt the possibility of someday being alive and playing a serious role somewhere in the world.
The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge
The winner of the last challenge, Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes, I am reading now, and am about 2/3rds of the way through. I was hoping to read this at the beach if I had finished Virgil, but seeing as the book is a Kafka/Beckettesque story about a man who is unwittingly entrapped in a hole surrounded by fifty foot sand cliffs from which it is impossible to escape, maybe I am glad I did not. It is supposed to be one of the premier Japanese novels of the 20th century, according to my early 90s era Vintage Press paperback copy (they're on the level, right?) Perhaps the translation is inadequate--I remember reading some complaint recently that English translations of Japanese literature were notably weak--but I find the book to be rather thin. Maybe it has one of those remarkable endings that pulls all the seemingly minor incidents and specified objects of the book together. I suppose there is a sense of fineness and of seemingly small things being more significant than or the essential part of bigger things that I think of as characteristically Japanese. But at the moment, on page 156 of 241, I want more of something, not action necessarily, but personality, or demonstration of brain power. Maybe it is too subtle for me and everything I say I want is there, if you can find it (though if this is the case it is really subtle).
On page 136 Abe did get around to writing about sex. This part I think I am clear on:
"Food exists only in an abstract sense for anybody dying of hunger; there isn't any such thing as the taste of Kobe beef or Hiroshima oysters. But once one's body is full, then one begins to discern differences in taste and textures..."
This part lost me though, I have to admit:
"...sex couldn't be discussed in general; it depended on time and place...sometimes you needed a dose of vitamins...sometimes a bowl of eels and rice. It was a well thought out theory, but regrettably not a single girl friend had offered herself to him in support of it, with a readiness to experience sexual desire in general or even in particular. That was natural. No man or woman is wooed by theory alone. He knew this, but he naively observed the theory of the Mobius circle and kept repeatedly pushing the doorbell of an empty house, only because he did not want to commit spiritual rape."
The book is worth finishing, and I am curious to see where it is going after all. I would like to see the movie of it too. I can see where that might be interesting.
The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge
Many of the magic words used in this challenge were too blatantly Aeneid words, so our searches turned up an inordinate number of books with a classical theme about them somewhere. There were also an impressive number of titles by very celebrated authors (Oliver Wendell Holmes, E. B. Browning,Chesterton, Hazliit) with zero or one ranking.
1. Mythology--Edith Hamilton.............................................................267
2. A Grave Talent--Laurie R. King........................................................69
3. The Rise of Rome--Anthony Everitt....................................................59
4. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes--Conan-Doyle...........................46
5. Age of Bronze (The Story of the Trojan War) Betrayal--Shanower...10
Deadlock--James Reasoner................................................................10
7. Makers of Ancient Strategy--Victor Davis Hanson (ed.).....................9
8. Canadian Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--Stephen Gaspar...............6
McGuffey's Primary Eclectic Primer...................................................6
10. Cassell's Dictionary of Classical Mythology--Jenny March..............5
Encyclopedia of Greco-Roman Mythology--Mike Dixon-Kennedy...5
12. Greek and Roman Mythology A to Z--Kathleen N. Daly...................4
History of Rome--Livy (V. Warrior trans)..........................................4
Who's Who in Classical Mythology--Michael Grant & John Hobbs...4
15. The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction (Ace Books 1955)...........2
Cliff's Notes to Virgil's Aeneid.............................................................2
17. Encyclopedia of Greco-Roman Mythology--Jessie M. Tatlock...........1
The History of Romulus--Jacob Abbott................................................1
Justinian and His Age--P. N. Ure........................................................1
Queen Cleopatra--Talbot Mundy.........................................................1
The Spirit of the Age--William Hazlitt.................................................1
Those books that had received no reviews are The Holmes Reader--Oliver Wendell Holmes (Oceana), The Battle of Marathon: A Poem--Elizabeth Barrett (pre-Browning), Letters From Turkey--Mary Worley, Scenes From Virgil--Rev. A. J. Church, Beeton's Classical Dictionary, Companion to Roman Religion (J. Ruoke, ed.), Pompeii: Its Life and Art--August Mau, Chaucer--G. K. Chesterton, Schooplearning Guide to the Aeneid, Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium--Philip Hardie, Heroes & Heroines of Greece and Rome (auth?), and Stories of the Old World, by the Rev A. J. Church, who makes a second appearance in this challenge, but suffers the indignity of the shutout on both occasions.
This is a solid winner. I already have a copy of the Edith Hamilton book, which is a bit of a classic of its kind, though I have never read it. I am always embarrassed by how little I know, or can remember,of the Greek myths. I have actually been picking up a little in the last year or so, since my wife has been teaching her Greek classes and has been introducing some of the art and mythology into those. It is the kind of thing that it cannot hurt me to review. I still like art and poetry, or want to like them, and a sizable chunk of the collective body of these pursuits in our civilization is based on these myths. You cannot get very far in understanding these areas without a halfway decent knowledge of them (the myths).
The challenge produced one film contender:
1. Troy.............999
I'll put it at the bottom of my queue.
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