Campi Lugentes

I am over half-way through my rendering of Book VI, having put nearly 500 lines into rhyme and meter. And I feel my grasp on the rhythm further strengthening. Looking back at the first hundred lines I rendered, it looks embarrassingly clumsy. So by the time I finish the initial rendering, it won’t be too hard going back and bringing those lines up to the current level, or better. Inspired by a 19th-century translation of Aeschylus, I’m making sparing use of eliding the’s as th’ and such, plus extending the meter to 12 syllables if absolutely necessary. So to mark my progress I present lines 430-474, freshly rendered. They cover Aeneas’ entrance into the Fields of Mourning and his encounter with the shade of Dido. This is one of the more emotional scenes in the poem, so keep the tissues at hand.

Next those with death’s sentence whose charge true was not,
Assigned weren’t these realms without judge, without lot:
For Minos th’ inquisitor stirring the pot,

calls silent assemblies whose sins they confess.
Here sorrowful shades by whose own hand brought death,
despising the light of the sun, though guiltless,

their spirits discarded. How now they think better
to’ve borne in the aether both begg’ry and toil!
The sorrowful swamp by decree keeps them fettered;

the Styx them imprisons nine times circling round.
Not far off stretched in all directions outpoured
the places they call Fields of Mourning are found,

of those by love’s ruthless decaying consumed,
sequestered in forests of myrtle and glades:
from cares not released by the hour of doom:

See Phaedra and Procris, Eriph’lë in tears,
displaying the wounds of her barbaric son;
Evadne, Pasiphë, Laodamia’s here,

a youth named Canaeus, in womanly flesh,
by fate to her earlier figure transformed.
Phoenician queen Dido, the stab-wound still fresh,

was wand’ring this forest: whom Ilium’s knight
through shadows obscure standing there recognized,
as one at the fall of the month’s op’ning night

thinks sees he or saw the moon clouds rising through.
Tears falling with love he addresses her thus:
“Sad Dido, the message, therefore it was true

that thou perished, pursuing thine end with a sword.
Did this cause thy death? Oh, if there’s any faith
under earth’s furthest depths, by the stars and their lords,

unwillingly, queen, did I exit thy shores.
The mandates of gods through these shades bid me go,
through lands of deep night, realms of ruins ignored,

from thine empire freed; lo! I cannot believe
that I brought thee such grief, when disembarked I.
Withdraw not from sight, halt thy step, do not leave!

Whom dost thou avoid? Fate makes these words my last.”
The words of Aeneas her animus cooled,
her grimness relaxed by his tears flowing fast.

But turned she away with her eyes downward locked.
No more is her countenance moved by his speech:
it stood like hard flint or as Marpesian rock.

She stole herself off, so averse to Aeneas,
to shadowy groves in retreat to her spouse,
who soothes her concerns with his love, dear Sychaeus.

aestatis legenda

I’m free! Summer has begun and I am back in Westport Island, Maine for a month of R&R before I begin working at the Squire Tarbox Inn. So while I will continue the terza rima rendering, I’ll have time to read a whole bunch of fun stuff in preparation for my dream semester of Fall ‘09. That’s right, all my classes taught by Drs. Passman, Bregman, Palmer and Howard. So in preparation for this holy tetrarchy of philology, history, politics and philosophy I have compiled a summer reading list of various classical and contemporary works. 

For Dr. Palmer’s Classical Political Thought I will be re-reading works by Plato, Thucydides and Aristotle, mainly the Republic, Histories and Politics. I will also look into the works of Xenophon and modern commentaries on these cornerstones of ancient political science. 

Some of these works will also help the thesis project, as Vergil (and Dante to a lesser extent) certainly drew influence from Plato and Aristotle to some degree. I am currently reading Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, and will follow it up with a recent work by Gregory Vlastos called Plato’s Universe. Other helpful texts have come through my audiobook subscription, such as The Dream of Reason, a history of ancient philosophy by Anthony Gottlieb. And in parallel to re-reading the Divina Commedia I am listening to a Modern Scholar lecture series on it delivered by Dr. Timothy Shutt. 

For Dr. Bregman’s History of Greece I will re-read parts of Herodotus and Thucydides, and pick up Xenophon’s Persian Expedition. I’ve also found a lecture series on Greek history through Audible.com.

Lastly, I will be “sitting in” on Dr. Passman’s online summer course for Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as a means to keep my Latin skills sharp before we dive into Vergil this fall. 

Please drop me a note if you have any other texts to recommend. I’m counting on devouring more literature than I have listed here, so if I missed anything, ancient or modern, bring it to my attention. Thank you and happy summer to all.