III
VARIA CONFUSUS IMAGINE RERUM: DEPTHS AND SURFACES
The inner image of the verse is inseparable from the numberless changes of expression which flit across the face of the teller of tales as he talks excitedly.
MANDELSTAM48
In reading Virgil, I often cry: âOut hyperbolical fiend! How vexest thou this man!â
HOUSMAN to Mackail (1920)
novae cacozeliae repertor
Vita Donati
After sketching a quick, sure portrait of the melancholy Victorian Vergil, R. D. Williams issues this shrewd and timely warning: âThe twentieth-century critic, immersed in this pool of tears, may well look longingly for a dose of the hard and robust Dryden, asking to be allowed to disinvolve himself, to be permitted a little distance. And this surely is what Virgil gives him, provided that he does not substitute for the Aeneid an anthology of the most intense parts of the second, fourth, sixth, and twelfth books.â49 As I look over the passages chosen for discussion in this chapter and the way I have organized those passages, I realize, with some chagrin, that I have been busily constructing the forbidden anthology. But the portrait that emerges from the following pages bears no resemblance to the portrait that Williams correctly designs from the Victorian (and later) readings of this kind. In examining Vergilâs style and narrative structure in these âintense partsâ of the books in question, in looking at Vergilâs concern with nescius, vacuus, umbra, imago, res, I have found strong traces ofâand have chosen to emphasizeâthe harsher aspects of Vergilian âunrealityâ and âdeliberate confusedness,â50 a bitterness in the famous lyricism that borders on despairâin other words, the muscle beneath the âsofter emotional modeâ51 that is strained almost beyond its limit in a fateful and unequal struggle against madness, anger, profound ignorance, vulnerability, and malevolent darkness. In choosing to emphasize these qualities of Vergilian poetic I am not denying the existence or the importance of wistful lyricism or melancholy lustre or tender humanism; still less am I seeking to pretend that the tough and dynamic aspects of Vergilâs art which Williams stresses so strongly and brilliantly do not exist. What I want to investigate here are the dark places of Vergilâs impressionism and the mordancy of the stiff, almost expressionistic gestures of his language and narrative, for these parts of Vergilâs poetic have not yet, I think, received the attention they merit. And until we have a clear notion of the forms these poetic modes may take, we are apt to mistake them for modes that are deceptively similar to them. Specifically, what interests me most in this chapter is what I call the negative image: what it is, what it looks like, how Vergil goes about shaping it, and, finally, the kinds of things it tends to signify.
1. THE OPENING OF BOOK 12
at regina nova pugnae conterrita sorte,
flebat, et ardentem generum moritura tenebat,
âTurne, per has ego te lacrimas, per si quis Amatae
tangit honos animum, spes tu nunc una, senectae
tu requies miserae; decus imperiumque Latini
te penes; in te omnis domus inclinata recumbit:
unum oro: desiste manum committere Teucris.
qui te cumque manent isto certamine casus,
et me, Turne, manent; simul haec invisa relinquam
lumina, nec generum Aenean captiva videbo.â
accepit vocem lacrimis Lavinia matris
flagrantes perfusa genas, cui plurimus ignem
subiecit rubor, et calefacta per ora cucurrit.
Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
si quis ebur, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa
alba rosa: tales virgo dabat ore colores.
ilium turbat amor, figitque in virgine vultus:
ardet in arma magis paucisque adfatur AmatamâŠ.
(12.54â71)
But frightened by the terms of this new duel,
the queen, weeping, prepared to die, held fast
her raging son-in-law: âTurnus, by these
tears and by any reverence you still
feel for Amataâyou, the only hope
and quiet left my sad last years: the honor
and power of Latinus is with you,
this house in peril stands or falls with you;
I beg one thing: you must not meet the Trojans.
For in this duel that you so wish to enter,
whatever waits for you waits for me, too;
together with you, I shall leave this hated
light; for I will not be a captive, see
Aeneas as my son-in-law.â Laviniaâs
hot cheeks were bathed in tears; she heard her motherâs
words; and her blush, a kindled fire, crossed
her burning face. And just as when a craftsman
stains Indian ivory with blood-red purple,
or when white lilies, mixed with many roses,
blush: even such, the colors of the virgin.
His love drives Turnus wild; he stares at his
Lavinia; even keener now for battle,
he answers Queen Amata with few wordsâŠ.
At the opening of Book 12 Turnus confronts Latinus and reaffirms his decision to fight Aeneas in single combat. Latinus, torn by bad conscience since he knows what Fate has commanded and knows, too, that he has been impotent to fulfill those commands, begs Turnus to desist from his plan and to submit to the will of Heaven, both for the good of the Latins and for his own good. Latinusâ passionate plea fades with a skillful compressed echo of Iliad 22.38â76, Priamâs shrewd appeal to filial love:
miserere parentis
longaevi, quem nunc maestum patria Ardea longe
dividit.
(12.43â45)
Pity your aged father: even now his native
Ardea holds him far from us, in sadness.
So, far from convincing Turnus to yield to the inevitable, Latinusâ common sense and his concern serve only to inflame Turnus the more:
haudquaquam dictis violentia Turni
flectitur; exsuperat magis aegrescitque medendo.
(12.45â46)
Words cannot check the violence of Turnus:
the healing only aggravates his sickness;
his fury flares.
The oxymoron (âhe sickens because of the cureâ) emphasizes Turnusâ irrationality (this is the second use of violentia in this scene: haud secus accenso gliscit Turno [9]) even as it illumines much of what is strange about the opening scene as a whole. If aegrescitque medendo corresponds to anything in its Homeric model in Iliad 22, it can only be to the two occurrences of oudâ Hektori thumon epeithon (78 and 91). The spare precision of Homerâs phrase gains force with repetition (neither Priam nor Hecuba can change Hectorâs thumos with their separate pleas), and its lack of imagery brings into clear focus the heightened imagery of sickness with which Vergil chooses to complete the confrontation of Turnus and Latinus. It is not enough to say that Vergil desires to show by his oxymoron the wide difference between Turnusâ state of mind and that of Hector (Turnusâ unbridled passion as against Hectorâs controlled excitement and resolve: amoton memaĆs AchilÄi machesthai [36]) in order to emphasize, by this artful contrast, the full force of Turnusâ violentia. The chief function of the oxymoronic metaphor is to dissolve the outlines of a scene that never quite gets under way. As we move from Turnusâ second outburst to Amataâs outburst, to Laviniaâs blush, and, finally, to Turnusâ third and last speech, we sense that Latinusâ gesture is, like all of his gestures, futile: not because it is in itself unreasonable, but because Turnus suffers from an irrational sickness that is beyond this help or any help.
In the case of Hector, the fact that both Priam and Hecuba fail to persuade their son to desist from his resolve does not mean that persuasion could not possibly work in this instance; it means only that it happens not to work in this instance because both Fate and Hectorâs own character are more powerful even than the cunning, honest, and elemental rhetoric of his parents. Homerâs world in this scene, as in his other scenes, is the common world where health and rational discourse are the norm from which sickness and irrationality deviate. In this world the outlines of events and the motives of the human beings who participate in those events are generally extremely clear. Priam and Hecuba know what they are doing, and what they are doing is reasonable. Hector knows what he is doing, and his choices and behavior are at once utterly rational and utterly honorable. But the motives, the behavior, and even the dilemmas of Turnus are far less clear than are those of Hector.
Vergil cannot present them with the clear outlines and exact articulations that Homer uses for his scene because Turnus is sick, as Vergil emphasizes with his powerful oxymoron, and because the causes of this sickness (and indeed the fact of the sickness itself) are unknown to Turnus himself, to Latinus, to Amata, and even, in a way, to Vergil and to us. The sickness that destroys Turnus, that is in some ways the central concern of Book 12 and therefore in some ways the central concern of the epic as a whole, is not susceptible to rational analysis and is therefore not susceptible to firm design and the sequential clarity that are the hallmarks of Homerâs mode of beholding. Vergil will not, or, as I propose, cannot show us what Turnus suffers and does in this scene. Rather, what he does is to suggest the emotions that Turnus unconsciously suffers while under the illusion that he is performing a conscious, rational act. In saying this I do not mean to suggest that what Vergil offers us here is a psychological analysis of Turnus; that he is, to use another metaphor, being subjective rather than objective; or, to alter the same metaphor slightly, that he is turning from the outward appearance to the inward reality.
What Vergil offers here are clusters (not a series or groups) of blurred images that suggest but do not and cannot try to define the fluctuations and uncertainties of Turnusâ distorted perceptions; what Vergil offers are not inner realities, but illusions. The fact that these perceptions are distorted from the outset (from, say, the moment when Allectoâs magic firebrand becomes ...