VARIETr
123
me of this edition, "Such magnan–
imity from editors is only possible
in
the case of a study which is com–
pletely dead." The "visible voca–
bulary" idea is, I suppose, pat–
ented.
With such a helpful text and
with Mackail's translation also at
hand, deciphering the
A eneid
is
not unpleasant. You are free to
enjoy the verse and to speculate
about the poet, and Virgil is an in–
triguing poet. I wonder in par–
ticular how this temperamental
writer ever came to serve the neo–
classic centuries as a model of
literary decorum. It is true that
elements of the "classical" formula
are present in him: religious and
political orthodoxy, literary tradi–
tionalism. Yet what chiefly comes
through to a modern reader is the
frank riotousness of his sensibility
and the urgent nature of his un–
conscious life. In understanding
Virgil the categories of romantic–
ism and classicism, obsolete in any
case, are of no help. Nor does the
modern composite term, "meta–
physical," serve here either.
The
Aeneid
is a highly emotional
and emotive poem. In contrast to
the slow-paced
Iliad
it unwinds at
a speed which is almost hysterical.
And while Homer
h~
his apoca–
lyptic passages, as Achilles' combat
with the River Xanthus, Virgil
seems positively to exult in images
of panic and destruction: storms,
shipwrecks, meteors, people shriek–
ing and sweating and swooning,
Troy burning, women running
mad. But Virgil is equally attracted
by visions of things immobile and
paradisaical. Besides the imagery
of terror and flight there is in the
Aeneid
a complementary imagery
of repose, a world of groves and
caverns and forest-fringed waters
and subterranean fastnesses, with
the primeval Tiber flowing benign–
ly through it all. Strongly nostal–
gic, this image-stream is the fruit
of reverie as the other is of night–
mare and it is compensatory in ef–
fect. It calls up sentiments of peace
-a peace not only pre-historical
but pre-natal.
Moreover, Virgil seems to be tor–
mented by, on the one hand, bad
conscience, and on the other a sense
of the cruelty of .the world. Guilt
and malignity are everywhere in
the
Aeneid.
Juno is a far more
melodramatic agent of persecution
than any in Homer. As for the
virtuous Aeneas, he seems to stag–
ger under the weight of a con–
science as oppressive as the body of
his aged father, whom he carries
on his shoulders out of fallen Troy.
Aeneas knows guilt over Creusa
and Dido; the poem expresses guilt
for the devastation of Carthage
and for Roman militarism general–
ly.
In his
Study of History
(vol. V)
A.
J. Toynbee discusses Virgil as
an example of the conscience–
stricken Roman elite of the Augus–
tan period. Toynbee quotes the
amazing passage in the
Georgics
which begins,
Ergo intersesse pari–
bus concurrere telis.
In Mackail's
translation the passage reads as
follows:
Therefore a second time Phi–
lippi saw Roman lines meet in
shock of equal arms, and our
lord forbade not that ·Emathia
and the broad plains of Haemus
should twice be fattened with
