So Book 1 is completed, and I had very little trouble reading it. I found it really interesting and I actually can't wait to go on. As of right now, I think it's just a bit too early in the epic to look at plot inconsistencies and the Aeneid in Augustan Rome, but it is possible that I've just missed them in the book. With that said, let me go on to my research topics and how they're developing.
Already, any reader can see that the role divine intervention will play in the novel will be a major one. On the first page alone there is already an explanation of "savage Juno's anger" and just a few pages later, Juno is hurling Jupiter's lightning bolts, and asking Aeolus to wreak havoc for Aeneas and his men. This is totally ironic because Juno is the goddess of marriage, which is a happy event (for most people), yet she has so much rage inside of her, which she projects on helpless humans. Juno will be a major obstacle for Aeneas and his men throughout the epic, making their journey much more difficult than it would otherwise be. Furthermore, in this book we see Venus and Cupid aiding Aeneas when he arrives on Dido's territory. Venus gives Aeneas, her son, the background information about Dido that he'll need to know, but also shields him from view as he walks into the city to protect him. She also sends her son Cupid down in Aeneas's place to ensure that Dido falls in love with Aeneas, eventually leading to her downfall. The Gods intervening in a human's life can be a curse or a blessing, but it certainly drastically alters life on Earth for all humans.
The Gods may play around with life on Earth as much as they desire; however, Virgil implies that there is a greater force that governs all life, which is Fate. Just like divine intervention, Fate is brought up on the first page of the epic as a force that will govern the events in the book no matter what anyone does to stop it. When Jupiter tells Venus about the "fates and their secrets" he is revealing what fate has planned for the future and reassures her that no one can change that (262). From this speech, the reader sees that even the greatest God of all, although he knows fate's plan, understands that it cannot be changed, even by him. All beings have a specific role to play and influence one another's fate, but there is a set plan for life before it begins.
Dido is the first mortal woman that we meet in the novel and from the intervention of Venus and Cupid, the reader can tell she will play a big role in the epic. Because the Gods cause her to fall in love with the protagonist, who has a destiny to fulfill, Dido will be left heartbroken again after living an already tough life. The Gods fool around with love, which is a big emotion to fool around with; however, the Gods also feel love. Venus loves her son, and Juno loves Carthage which is the reason they both mess with mortals. They want to protect what they love, which Virgil depicts as an instinct that comes with love. Furthermore, when Jupiter reassures Venus it is similar to the way Aeneas reassures his men and reassuring is a form of protecting, an instinct of love. Love is a powerful emotion, and it'll be interesting to see how it effects the characters more as the book goes on.
There weren't a ton of moral issues that I identified in the first book; however some of the actions performed by the characters could be looked at in a critical manner. First, Juno, who seems to have no moral code whatsoever, seems to be doing everything she can to protect her city of Carthage, regardless of how it hurts others. Actually, she intends to hurt others without feeling any sense of guilt or sadness, unlike Venus who intervenes on Earth without losing good morals. Moreover, when Dido accepts Aeneas's men into her kingdom, it could be looked at as her having a moral disposition. She acts as a very good host and sees to it that all of the men's needs are fulfilled. My favorite example from the book is Pygmalion, who demonstrates that morals may be ignored when one is faced with great power or money. He kills his sister's husband simply to keep his place as ruler and retain his riches within the kingdom. I'm sure that there are other examples within this book, but these were the three that stood out to me, so I chose to examine them.
Alright, Book 1 down. Onto book 2.
"As of right now, I think it's just a bit too early in the epic to look at plot inconsistencies and the Aeneid in Augustan Rome, but it is possible that I've just missed them in the book."
ReplyDeletePerhaps. Both of them require a very strong familiarity with a large amount of detailed information (the contents of the Aeneid and a key era in Roman history), so they might be more difficult to address at this juncture, but don't necessarily write them off your list just yet if they still interest you.
"This is totally ironic because Juno is the goddess of marriage, which is a happy event (for most people), yet she has so much rage inside of her"
It is ironic in some ways, but not particularly unheard of. Have you ever seen a relationship (or someone in a relationship) that sounds like Juno - the combination of immense love (marriage, symbolically as you point out) and immense rage? What does it look like? How does it work? What happens to people around someone or a couple like that?
"Fate is brought up on the first page of the epic as a force that will govern the events in the book no matter what anyone does to stop it."
That's one reading of the issue, and from a literary perspective the trope/theme of Fate plays a huge role in this text. What if we were to read the question at the end of the invocation ("Anger so great: can it really reside in the spirits of heaven?") and answer "no" (like a modern atheist might)? What happens to the story then? This would be a reading supported by a popular philosophy around Virgil's time - Epicureanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism . How does that change the way Romans might have looked at Virgil's work?
"From this speech, the reader sees that even the greatest God of all, although he knows fate's plan, understands that it cannot be changed, even by him."
See my comments on Parth's response to Book X for more about this.
"They want to protect what they love, which Virgil depicts as an instinct that comes with love."
See Eddie's blog for more about this.
"First, Juno, who seems to have no moral code whatsoever, seems to be doing everything she can to protect her city of Carthage, regardless of how it hurts others."
Is it that Juno lacks a moral code, or that her moral code is an unconventional one which is difficult to identify with? Could one argue that "protect Carthage's future at all costs" is a moral code of sorts? Why or why not? What does it mean for our reading of the epic?
"Perhaps. Both of them require a very strong familiarity with a large amount of detailed information (the contents of the Aeneid and a key era in Roman history), so they might be more difficult to address at this juncture, but don't necessarily write them off your list just yet if they still interest you."
DeleteI wasn't planning to write them off!! I still like both of them!!
"It is ironic in some ways, but not particularly unheard of. Have you ever seen a relationship (or someone in a relationship) that sounds like Juno - the combination of immense love (marriage, symbolically as you point out) and immense rage? What does it look like? How does it work? What happens to people around someone or a couple like that?"
I'm trying to think of an example of immense love and immense rage. It's hard, especially because it's something I don't think I've ever felt before. I'd imagine that thats an extremely painful emotion..for the viewers and the feeler... Something that is extremely contradictory like that.. But I can't think of an example.
That's one reading of the issue, and from a literary perspective the trope/theme of Fate plays a huge role in this text. What if we were to read the question at the end of the invocation ("Anger so great: can it really reside in the spirits of heaven?") and answer "no" (like a modern atheist might)? What happens to the story then? This would be a reading supported by a popular philosophy around Virgil's time - Epicureanism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism . How does that change the way Romans might have looked at Virgil's work?
Well if you answered 'no' to that question, wouldn't half of the story have to be a dream or some type of hallucination made up by the protagonist or narrator? Because the gods are so prevalent throughout the story, the whole story has a totally different meaning. When the gods aren't there or are given qualities that make them equal to people.. what does that mean?
Is it that Juno lacks a moral code, or that her moral code is an unconventional one which is difficult to identify with? Could one argue that "protect Carthage's future at all costs" is a moral code of sorts? Why or why not? What does it mean for our reading of the epic?
That's a good point. I guess with extreme power, comes an extreme sense of being able to do what you want. The way you put it makes me think of Book 2, which I read earlier today. It's almost like when you're at war. What happens to your regular, everyday morals then? Do they disappear because you're faced with an out of the ordinary situation? Or do they just change for the time being?
See my comments on Parth's response to Book X for more about this
I can't!! I haven't been invited to view his blog!!
See Eddie's blog for more about this.
What part of Eddie's blog?
"I'm trying to think of an example of immense love and immense rage. It's hard, especially because it's something I don't think I've ever felt before. I'd imagine that thats an extremely painful emotion..for the viewers and the feeler... Something that is extremely contradictory like that.. But I can't think of an example."
DeleteThat's perfectly OK. I think in some ways it's just something you'd have to experience or come very close to having experienced to really grasp on a more-than-intellectual level. I've always said that love and hate are the exact same emotion, just looked at from different perspectives. If I had to give you an example of the two being combined, I'd say that the scenario that comes closest is the sense of extreme anger that accompanies a very deep betrayal of trust by someone who you (generally, not you specifically) love, e.g. cheating in a long term, committed relationship. The viscerally emotional rage at being betrayed that way only comes about *because* of the love. If you (again, generally) didn't love the personal so much, you wouldn't care. It's a weird idea to wrap your head around.
"Well if you answered 'no' to that question, wouldn't half of the story have to be a dream or some type of hallucination made up by the protagonist or narrator?"
I'm not necessarily sure that's the case, but it would certainly change things immensely. You would have to read every instance of divine anger (esp. on the part of Juno) as either a literary device (allegory, metaphor, trope, etc.) or as an unreliable report of the circumstances involved. Either way, it would certainly destabilize the entire epic that follows.
"When the gods aren't there or are given qualities that make them equal to people.. what does that mean?"
Good question. I'm going to answer it with another question: what do you think it means?
"It's almost like when you're at war. What happens to your regular, everyday morals then? Do they disappear because you're faced with an out of the ordinary situation? Or do they just change for the time being?"
This has been a problem with war (and violence generally) for humans as long as we've been around. I have a friend who is in the Army. Before he went to Iraq, he was a total laid back goofball. One of the funniest guys I've ever met. Since he came back (and especially since he came back from his third tour, where his hummer was blown up by an IED), he's never been the same. He's almost always super serious, rarely sleeps, and always has night-terrors. My great grandfather served in WWII (he even liberated a concentration camp) and he had night-terrors about it regularly for his whole life. The only person he ever talked with about any of it was me when I was little. Then there are all the people that come back from war and can't cope at all - suicide has almost killed more of our soldiers than the enemy since we started the war in Afghanistan 10 years ago (if it hasn't surpassed that number by this point.) The stories are horrific. I honestly can't say how people deal with these moral issues (I've obviously never had to), but I can say that it's EXTREMELY difficult for them, no matter how things end up. Have you ever read the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen? He was one of the British War Poets (WWI) and he uses the line from one of Horace's Odes satirically for the title of the poem. It pretty much sums up a lot of this.
"What part of Eddie's blog?"
His entry for Book II.
That's perfectly OK. I think in some ways it's just something you'd have to experience or come very close to having experienced to really grasp on a more-than-intellectual level. I've always said that love and hate are the exact same emotion, just looked at from different perspectives. If I had to give you an example of the two being combined, I'd say that the scenario that comes closest is the sense of extreme anger that accompanies a very deep betrayal of trust by someone who you (generally, not you specifically) love, e.g. cheating in a long term, committed relationship. The viscerally emotional rage at being betrayed that way only comes about *because* of the love. If you (again, generally) didn't love the personal so much, you wouldn't care. It's a weird idea to wrap your head around.
DeleteHahaha this helps with the Juno thing because she's been betrayed by Jupiter so much in mythology, I totally see where her rage comes from. It may be a weird idea to wrap my head around, but I get it. The 'closer' you are to someone that's betrayed you, the more betrayed you feel because they've severed a deeper connection and left a deeper wound than someone who was not as close.
Good question. I'm going to answer it with another question: what do you think it means?
I'm not sure. I can't imagine Virgil including the Gods in his epic if they were not going to be "real". I'm having trouble thinking about this concept where the Gods aren't actually "gods"..I'm also having trouble wording it, but it's what you replied to it in your comment.
Have you ever read the poem "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen?
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4)
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud(12)
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13)
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Now I have. Along with the story you've told me it's very sad. It says something about how "it is sweet to die for your country," but it says that it's a lie. It's an interesting poem because it's anti-patriotic. I feel almost as if Virgil is sending the opposite message in showing how eager Aeneas and other men of Troy and Greece are ready and willing to fight. But maybe that's because he's trying to boost spirit in Rome..it's his way of saying "Go! Fight for Rome! Be like these men or Aeneas, especially because he is our country's father!" (or something alone those lines).
I looked at Eddie's blog. I really liked what he wrote about mother's protecting their children, and I totally agree. A mother's love is one of the most powerful things in the world. I know almost positively that J.K. Rowling would agree with me here.
"I'm not sure. I can't imagine Virgil including the Gods in his epic if they were not going to be "real". I'm having trouble thinking about this concept where the Gods aren't actually "gods"..I'm also having trouble wording it, but it's what you replied to it in your comment."
ReplyDeleteIt's not, strictly speaking, that the Gods aren't 'real.' It comes down more to a matter of what it means to 'believe' in the Gods. Dennis Feeney (a Prof. of Classics at Princeton) wrote a book called "Literature and Religion at Rome" that I've been meaning to upload to the "Additional Resources" folder on the Google Docs site. It's a difficult read, but essentially he employs an argument like the one I made about your assumptions of love/family/etc. to question whether the Romans "believed" in the Gods in the way that we do. His answer is complex, but it's simplified version is that the modern, western idea of 'belief' is very much rooted in a Judeo-Christian idea, and that it isn't appropriate to apply those standards to the ancient world. The second difficulty comes about because in scholarship many people see an equivalency between Greek/Roman Gods (Jupiter = Zeus) that really isn't that simple, and so lots of work on Roman religion has made major assumptions about their system of beliefs. Feeney suggests that the Roman idea of 'belief' in the Gods is much closer to, e.g., Shinto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto) than it is our idea of the issue - i.e. it's based far more in a set of social/cultural practices and rituals than on some internal feeling. If this is the case, asking whether the Romans believed in the Gods as 'real' becomes a very loaded question. Try looking at the Gods as a literary device that moves the story along, rather than 'real' agents acting in history. It might help clear up some of the confusion and get you closer to the point that I was trying to make. This leaves the Gods their traditional roles in the Roman/Greek literary/cultural history, but gives you another way to read their actions as plot elements. This is all very complicated, but I don't intend for any of it to mean that the Gods *don't* exist in the way that you originally interpreted them. I'm just suggesting that there are lots of different ways to look at the issue, and that Virgil himself prompts one of them right from the beginning of the story.
"It says something about how "it is sweet to die for your country," but it says that it's a lie."
I'm inclined to agree. War brings out the worst evils, ignorance, and hatred in all of mankind. There's nothing beautiful or glamorous or heroic about death, especially a violent one. It's a dirty, solitary, emotionally devastating experience for all involved. That doesn't mean that one can't die heroically in defense of very good principles and ideals; sacrifices are at times necessary for 'the greater good'. I think Owen's point is that to glorify death in war, to put it on a pedestal, to treat it as something beautiful and noble as a method of recruiting young men to become soldiers is a lie. I find it very hard to disagree with him.
"It's an interesting poem because it's anti-patriotic."
ReplyDeleteFrom one perspective, basing the idea of 'patriotism' as subservience to the needs and demands of your country. This is the modern definition, but I'm not sure sure Owen would agree. He might argue that it's unpatriotic to *not* question your governments motives in entering a war (esp. WWI which was caused far more by treaties and alliances than actual acts of war against Great Britain) and the demand it makes for its youth, the future of its society and culture, to 'sacrifice themselves upon the alter' (to borrow from Lincoln) for the sake of older generations. It's a very tough set of issues. Was the American Civil War a patriotic one? Both sides used the call to patriotism to rally recruits, but the end result of the conflict was the death of over 1/3 of the entire male population of the country. Boys as young as 12-14 were slaughtered outright on the battlefield in the hundreds of thousands. Things are much more clear-cut when we can see an enemy that is *truly* evil (e.g. Hitler) and get behind the war effort. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the wars in all of history don't provide that sort of moral clarity. The American Revolution was as much an act of treason and terrorism over a relatively reasonable tax levied by the Crown to support the defense of the colonies (the British perspective) as it was a principled stand against what the Founders perceived to be a slow but unstoppable encroachment of tyranny on their individual liberties and rights at citizens (the US perspective). Who was right? How many people had to die to find out the answer? Did it even really resolve the issue, or did it just shift the question to another area of debate (i.e. local US politics)? It's all very, VERY tough, especially because there is no *right* answer. Just dead men. I don't mean to depress you with these facts and figures, but more to demonstrate that *everything* is a matter of perspective, and that the more we develop our abilities to see things from different perspectives and ask questions about them, the better we can understand our world and work to improve it. If there's one lesson I'd hope to impart to my students, it's the desire to question *everything* and try to understand it in the pursuit of improving the world for humanity. It's not always a pretty, or comfortable, or easy, or happy path, but it's the one to a truly meaningful life helping society (at least in my opinion).
"But maybe that's because he's trying to boost spirit in Rome..it's his way of saying "Go! Fight for Rome! Be like these men or Aeneas, especially because he is our country's father!""
ReplyDeleteThis is one very common reading of the Aeneid. Lots of people like to see the work as a panegyric (praise) for Augustus (Octavian) via his proclaimed ancestor Aeneas. It's a very common interpretation that's had support for centuries. There are other people who read the epic much more pessimistically as a cautionary tale about the moral hazards of empire and the dangers that it poses for its citizens and the world. Some even see it as a veiled critique of lots of Octavian's behavior in bringing the empire under his control. To provide one example: In book I Virgil describe's Neptune calming the storms as 'like a great orator' who uses his words to calm a rioting crowd - the ideal way to handle governmental upheaval. The obvious issue with this example is that, if we look at Roman history, this is the absolute OPPOSITE of how Octavian did it. He killed anyone that got in his way, numbering into the tens of thousands depending on whose reports you use. Moreover, Neptune was the patron God of one of Octavian's biggest rivals - Sextus Pompey. So what is Virgil doing with this simile? Why would he put it there? He lived through the whole ordeal, as did most of his readers, so we might expect them to be (painfully) aware of the allusion. What does it mean? Dr. Ahl wrote an article about this sort of criticism ("The Art of Safe Criticism" in the Google Docs "Additional Readings" folder). I think the issue is very complex and to boil it all down into a "Hail Augustus" or "Damn Augustus" reading is overly simplistic, but you should keep an eye on it, especially if you're interested in tracking inconsistencies in the epic.
"looked at Eddie's blog. I really liked what he wrote about mother's protecting their children, and I totally agree. A mother's love is one of the most powerful things in the world. I know almost positively that J.K. Rowling would agree with me here."
Me too. It's one of the many observational gems that you and your fellow students have offered me already in the course of this project.