no I still hate Vergil
Jan. 12th, 2009 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
polutropeOh Vergil. You were doing so well with Dido's speech (Aeneid IV, lines 305-330) and then you got to the last four lines, "At least if something* was begotten by you before you took flight, if some little Aeneas would play in my halls, who would recall you with his face, I would not seem so wholly deserted." It's so weak, especially as an ending to the rest of the speech (which is my favorite part of the Aeneid, besides the beginning). It's not that I object to Dido wanting Aeneas' child, or even her vocalizing it, it's that I object to Vergil's tacking those four lines on to an otherwise powerful speech.
And "tacking on" is exactly the right word. The rest of the speech is thematically consistent: You're leaving, how could you, have pity, you've screwed me over, remember our love. And then out of nowhere, 'I wish I could have had your baby.' As an ending to a speech that begins "Did you hope, coward***, to hide such a crime**" and contains the touching line ..guest (for that name alone remains to me from that of 'husband')...*****! Really, Vergil? Like line 33, he builds up drama and then kills it one shining moment of bathos. And even then this fails - it takes four lines to do what line 33 did in one.
*Leaving aside how creepy it is to call a baby "qua"
**It's better in Latin: Dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum/ posse nefas
***Yes I know perfide doesn't mean coward but English doesn't have substantives. It's a lack I mourn daily.****
****I also think it's pretty hilarious when libretti translate crudele as "cruel man!" Way to kill the drama there.
*****Also better in Latin. The point is, she's lost even the ability to call him her husband, because he's a douche.
PS This is totally random but I am writing a paper about her:
To Helen
Who are you, lady,
loved or hated,
defined by men who died
for the shining image of you?
Whose eyes looked down
from that high wall to see
men fragile as the carding of your loom?
And home beside your first lord,
did you drink daily of your Lethean cup?
And "tacking on" is exactly the right word. The rest of the speech is thematically consistent: You're leaving, how could you, have pity, you've screwed me over, remember our love. And then out of nowhere, 'I wish I could have had your baby.' As an ending to a speech that begins "Did you hope, coward***, to hide such a crime**" and contains the touching line ..guest (for that name alone remains to me from that of 'husband')...*****! Really, Vergil? Like line 33, he builds up drama and then kills it one shining moment of bathos. And even then this fails - it takes four lines to do what line 33 did in one.
*Leaving aside how creepy it is to call a baby "qua"
**It's better in Latin: Dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum/ posse nefas
***Yes I know perfide doesn't mean coward but English doesn't have substantives. It's a lack I mourn daily.****
****I also think it's pretty hilarious when libretti translate crudele as "cruel man!" Way to kill the drama there.
*****Also better in Latin. The point is, she's lost even the ability to call him her husband, because he's a douche.
PS This is totally random but I am writing a paper about her:
To Helen
Who are you, lady,
loved or hated,
defined by men who died
for the shining image of you?
Whose eyes looked down
from that high wall to see
men fragile as the carding of your loom?
And home beside your first lord,
did you drink daily of your Lethean cup?
