The Other Virgil: `Pessimistic' Readings of the Aeneid in Early Modern Culture

267 Pages·2007·2.65 MB·English

by  Craig Kallendorf

CLASSICAL PRESENCES
General Editors
Lorna Hardwick James I. Porter
CLASSICAL PRESENCES
Thetexts,ideas, images,andmaterialcultureofancientGreeceandRome
have always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order to
authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and the
assertion and challenging of values and identities, old and new. Classical
Presencesbringsthelatestscholarshiptobearonthecontexts,theory,and
practiceofsuchuse,andabuse,oftheclassicalpast.
The Other Virgil
‘Pessimistic’ Readings of the Aeneid in Early
Modern Culture
CRAIG KALLENDORF
1
3
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Preface
Thisbook,likeallotherscholarlyprojects,isaparticipantinalarger
conversation, and I think it would be helpful to place what I have
writtenintotheparticulardialoguethatgenerateditrightaway.The
focus of the book is Virgil’s Aeneid, the epic poem about the estab-
lishmentofRomethatservedasafoundationforRomancivilization
andforthesuccessionofculturesthatdeWnedthemselvesinrelation
totheirclassicalorigins.AfterthefallofTroy,Aeneasleadsagroupof
survivorsacrosstheMediterraneantoItaly,wherehefoundsthecity
that will eventually rule the world. Along the way he overcomes a
seriesofobstaclesandintheprocesslearnsagooddealaboutwhatit
means to be a leader. As Aeneas lands in Italy and conquers its
indigenous inhabitants, he articulates more and more successfully
the values that would come to be associated with imperial Rome,
untilintheWnalsceneofthepoemheslaysTurnus,theenemyleader,
and removes the last obstacle to Roman power and glory. By this
point he has overcome the forces of furor (‘rage’) and ira (‘anger’),
both within himself and as represented by the people who oppose
him,sothathesuccessfullyembodiespietas,thatparticularlyRoman
virtue that embraces one’s duties to God, country, and family. This
approach is fundamentally optimistic, with Aeneas serving as the
idealheroofancientRome,theAeneidcelebratingtheachievements
ofAugustusandhisage,andthepoemenduringasamonument to
thevaluesoforderandcivilization.
This is the basic interpretation of the poem that predominated
throughthemiddleofthelastcentury,asitwassetforthbyHeinze,
nuancedbyPo¨schl,anddisseminatedintheEnglish-speakingworld
by Eliot.1 But after the Second World War, a group of Anglophone
1 R.Heinze,VergilsepischeTechnik(Leipzig:B.G.Teubner,1903),tr.Virgil’sEpic
Technique,tr.HazelandDavidHarveyandFredRobertson(Berkeley-LosAngeles:
Univ.ofCaliforniaPress,1993);T.S.Eliot,WhatIsaClassic?(London:Faber&Faber,
1945);V.Po¨schl,DieDichtkunstVergils:BildundSymbolinderAeneis(Innsbruck:
MargaretaFriedrichRohrer,1950);TheArtofVergil,tr.G.Seligson(AnnArbor:Univ.
of Michigan Press, 1962); see also A. Wlosok, ‘Vergil in der neueren Forschung’,
Gymnasium,80(1973),129–51;andS.J.Harrison,‘SomeViewsoftheAeneidinthe
vi Preface
scholars centred at Harvard and Oxford began listening more sym-
patheticallytowhathavecometobecalledthe‘furthervoices’inthe
Aeneid—notthevoiceofAeneasastheprototypeofRomanimperi-
alism,butthevoicesofthosewhostandinoppositiontohim:Dido,
the Carthaginian queen whose love is sacriWced to Aeneas’s higher
mission; Turnus, the Italian prince who falls before Aeneas while
trying to defend his country against the Trojan invaders; and so
forth. These scholars also pointed out that in the course of the
poem, Aeneas himself sometimes speaks in one of these further
voices.Thatis,Aeneashimselfisofteninconsistentinthesetofvalues
he articulates, especially in the last scene of the poem, which was
reinterpretedasakeyfailureinwhichAeneassurrenderstothevery
voices of barbarism and fury within himself that he had struggled
throughout the poem to suppress. Within the narrative structure of
thepoem,theseothervoicesalsoprojectworthyvalues,andthisnew
schoolofcriticism,whichhaschallengedtherobustoptimismofthe
traditionalapproach,hashelpedusseewhatwassacriWcedinpursuit
ofRomeandthecivilizationitengendered.2
Twentieth Century’, in Harrison (ed.), Oxford Readings in Vergil’s Aeneid (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1990), 1–20. 20th-cent. German scholarship that retains the key
featuresofthetraditionalapproachmaybeexempliWedbyK.Bu¨chner,DerSchicksal-
gedankebeiVergil(FreiburgimBreisgau:Novalis-Verlag,1946),P.VergiliusMaro,der
Dichter der Ro¨mer (Stuttgart: A. Druckenmu¨ller, 1955), and Humanitas Romana
(Heidelberg:C.Winter,1957),147–75;theessaysofF.KlingnercollectedinRo¨mische
Geisteswelt (Munich: H. Rinn, 1961), 239–311, 600–30, and his Virgil: Bucolica,
Georgica,Aeneis(ZurichandStuttgart:ArtemisVerlag,1967);andV.Buchheit,Vergil
u¨berdieSendungRoms.UntersuchungenzumBellumPoenicumundzurAeneis,Gym-
nasium Beiheft, 3 (Heidelberg, 1963). InXuential English-language studies from a
similarperspectiveincludeBrooksOtis,Virgil:AStudyinCivilizedPoetry(Norman,
Okla.:Univ.ofOklahomaPress,1995;repr.ofOxford,1964edn.); andP.Hardie,
Virgil’sAeneid:CosmosandImperium(Oxford:ClarendonPress,1986).
2 Thegenerallycited,seminalworksareRobertA.Brooks,‘DiscolorAura:ReXec-
tionsontheGoldenBough’,AmericanJournalofPhilology,74(1953),260–80;Adam
Parry, ‘The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid’, Arion, 2 (1963), 66–80, repr. in The
Language of Achilles and Other Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 78–96;
Wendell Clausen, ‘An Interpretation of the Aeneid’, Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology,68(1964),139–47(writtenin1949);andMichaelC.J.Putnam,ThePoetry
of the Aeneid: Four Studies in Imaginative Unity and Design (Cambridge, Mass.:
HarvardUniv.Press,1965).ThisapproachhasbeensurveyedbyF.Serpa,Ilpunto
su Virgilio (Bari: Laterza, 1987), 76–88, and given an elegant recasting by Steven
Shankman,‘TheAmbivalenceoftheAeneidandtheEcumenicAge’,inInSearchof
the Classic: Reconsidering the Greco-Roman Tradition, Homer to Vale´ry and Beyond
(UniversityPark,Penn.:PennsylvaniaStateUniv.Press,1994),217–45.
Preface vii
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the adherents of the
traditional approach came to be called ‘optimists’ and those of
the second approach ‘pessimists’ or ‘members of the Harvard
school’.3 As scholars like Karl Galinsky have been pointing out
recently, there are dangers to easy dichotomies like this.4 For one
thing, no responsible ‘optimist’ would deny that Aeneas makes
mistakes in at least the early parts of the poem, and no responsible
‘pessimist’wouldarguethatwhatwaslostinfoundingRomeexceeds
what was gained. That said, Iwould suggest that there is still a very
realdiVerenceinemphasis,evenifthediVerenceismoreamatterof
shades of grey than black versus white. I shall therefore retain the
terms but place them within quotation marks to remind the reader
thatcautionmustbeexercisedinusingthem.
A more fundamental problem has arisen from the claim that the
secondapproach,the‘pessimistic’one,isahistorical.Itenteredmod-
ernclassicalscholarshipinitsfullyarticulatedformaftertheSecond
WorldWar,andthishasledKarlGalinsky,again,toarguethatancient
criticismlacksthekindofhesitationaboutAeneasandhisactionsthat
the‘pessimists’believetheysee,5withtheassumptionbeingthatthey
arereadingtheirownconcernsbackintoVirgil’stext.AsS.J.Harrison
puts it, ‘For an outside observer, it is diYcult to separate such an
interpretation from the characteristic concerns of U.S. (and other)
intellectuals in these years: the doubt of the traditional view of the
3 The ‘Harvard school’ label appears to have been coined by W. R. Johnson,
Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil’s Aeneid (Berkeley, Calif.: Univ. of California
Press,1976),11n.10,whonotesthatpessimisticreadingsoftheAeneid‘werewritten
bycriticswhohavebeenassociatedwithclassicsatHarvardfromthelatefortiesto
thepresentatsometimeorother’.RichardThomasnotesthattheHarvardconnec-
tionistenuousatbest,withthemajorworksoftenhavingbeenproducedwhentheir
authorswereelsewhere:ParrywasatYale,ClausenatAmherst,andPutnamatBrown
(‘Ideology,InXuence,andFutureStudiesintheGeorgics’,Vergilius,36(1990),64n.1).
Thomassuggeststhatthetermimpliesaclosercollaborationthanthereactuallywas,
andClausenmakesthesamepoint,notingthatwhileheandParrywerecolleaguesat
Amherstinthemid-1950sandtalkedoftenabouttheAeneid,hedidnotmeetPutnam
until1957andmetBrookssociallyonlyoncein1959or1960(‘Appendix’,inNicholas
Horsfall(ed.),ACompaniontotheStudyofVirgil(Leiden:Brill,1995),313–14).Ishall
thereforeusethelabel‘pessimist’inthediscussionthatfollows.
4 KarlGalinsky,‘ClothesfortheEmperor’,Arion,10(2003),143–69,anextended
review of Richard Thomas’s Virgil and the Augustan Reception (Cambridge: CUP,
2001).
5 KarlGalinsky,‘TheAngerofAeneas’,AmericanJournalofPhilology,109(1988),
322.
viii Preface
Aeneidhasatleastsomeconnectionwiththe1960s’questioningofall
institutions, political, religious, and intellectual, and in particular
withattitudestowardsAmerica’sownimperialism.’6Thisisaserious
charge. It is one thing to say that contemporary concerns have
madecontemporaryreadersmoreattunedtosomethingsinVirgil’s
text than others. But if it indeed took readers almost two thousand
yearstogetanyideathattheseconcernsareinVirgil’spoem,onehas
towonderhowimportanttheyreallyare.
The discussion took a dramatic turn in 2001, when Richard
Thomas published a groundbreaking book, Virgil and the Augustan
Reception, that shows that the ancient Aeneiskritik does indeed con-
tain a clearly ‘pessimistic’ strain.7 Thomas’s concern was primarily
with ancient readers and with their successors in the twentieth
century who have shaped the scholarly understanding of the poem
inourday,buthedidbegintosaysomethingaboutthecenturiesin
between,withafocusontheinXuentialtranslationofJohnDryden.
My book is designed to bridge this gap, to show in some detail
that there is a continuous tradition of ‘pessimistic’ readings that
extendsthroughtheearlymodernperiodinEuropeandthewestern
hemisphere, in works written in English, French, Italian, Latin, and
Spanish. What is more, Thomas’s story focuses on suppression,
on how the ‘optimists’ worked to occlude any ‘pessimistic’ reading
ofthepoemthatwouldthreatenthetraditionalvaluesonwhichsuch
a reading rested. My book stresses the liberating power of the ‘pes-
simistic’ readings. I have focused more on poetic imitations of the
Aeneid,althoughscholarshipfromtheearlymodernperiodcertainly
receives its due, and tried to show how reading Virgil ‘against the
grain’, so to speak, helped unleash artistic creativity in some totally
unexpectedways.
The works treated in the pages that follow contain allusions to
many classical authors, but in each case the connection to the
‘pessimistic’ Aeneid is unusually close. Some of these works, like
Filelfo’s Sphortias and Le Plat’s Virgile en France, never achieved
6 Harrison,‘SomeViews’,5.Clausen,however,clariWesthechronology:‘Themild-
minded pessimism of the Harvard school—the so-called Harvard school—reXects
themoodoftheWfties:ithadlittleornothingtodowiththedissentandanguishof
thesixties...’(‘Appendix’,313).
7 Seen.4above.
Preface ix
muchpopularity,asbeWtstheeVortsofwriterswhoseallusivestrat-
egies rested on an interpretation that most of their contemporaries
did not accept or really even understand. Others, like Ercilla’s La
Araucana, Barlow’s Columbiad, and Sor Juana’s lyrics, were widely
readintheirowndayandarestillknownatleasttoscholarsspecial-
izing in this period. And others, like Shakespeare’s The Tempest and
Milton’sParadiseLost,havebeenfamiliartoeducatedreadersevery-
whereforhundredsofyears,althoughtheinterpretationIpresentis
not. Thus my discussion will introduce the reader to some new
poems and, I think, suggest some very diVerent insights into some
ofthe basiccanonicalworks of thewestern literary tradition. I have
madeaspecialeVorttolinktheseinsightstothebroaderconcernsof
literary theory and cultural studies at the beginning of the twenty-
Wrst century, because I believe that the ‘pessimistic’ reading of the
Aeneid allows Virgil’s poetry to speak to those concerns in some
surprising ways. The linkages, however, are not arbitrary: each of
the theories applied here is logically associated with an approach to
theAeneiditselfthattoday’sclassicistsaredeveloping.
As I have been saying, books like this are not born in a scholarly
vacuum, and it is a particular pleasure to thank those who have
helpedmearticulateanddevelopmyideas.TheTannerHumanities
CenterattheUniversityofUtah(GeneFitzgerald,Director)andthe
Faculty Development Leave Program at Texas A&M University
(coordinatedbyKaranWatson,DeanofFaculties)providedsabbat-
ical time for research and writing, and it is no exaggeration to say
that, without their support, this book might never have been com-
pleted.PartsofmyargumentwereWrstpresentedatmeetingshosted
bytheAmericanPhilologicalAssociation,theRenaissanceSocietyof
America, the Classical Association of Great Britain, the Association
ofLiteraryScholarsandCritics,andtheinternationalcongresseson
humanistic studies that take place in Sassoferrato, Italy, and as
invitedlecturesattheUniversityofWarsaw,BrighamYoungUniver-
sity, the University of Copenhagen, Cambridge University, the Uni-
versity of Warwick, Bristol University, the University of Texas, the
University of Utah, the Istituto Orientale Universitario, Naples,
the Universita` degli Studi, Naples, and the Universita` di Roma II
‘TorVergata’.Theapproachdevelopedinthesetalksremainsespecially
controversial in continental Europe—I have a distinct recollection of