There is an article by Susanna Morton Braund in the Proceedings of the Virgil Society for 1998 about the good old question of Dido and Aeneas and their conflicting states of mind. I certainly find the depiction of their emotions successful and convincing. You ask for thoughts: my thought would be to start from the point where the two are at the same emotional point, ie in the (Platonic?) Cave. Dido rationalises the emotion of that moment - it was the beginning of a legitimate, long-term relationship from which children (328) will spring. V is clear that this is an attempt to rationalise behaviour which is irresponsible - a culpa (172). The irresponsibility is on the political level - V presents Dido as unable to carry her people with her into alliance with the Trojans (321). I would say that it was part of the realistic study of emotion that one should think of how the person reflects on, perhaps rationalises, their emotions. The need to think about emotions is as inherent in human life as the need to experience them. Aeneas' experience is presented in terms of divine intervention, but in V divine intervention can always be explained - at least approximately! - in naturalistic terms. (V all but comments on this feature of his narrative at IX, 185. To me it seems theologically correct (I don't know if James Wiersum would agree) that revelation must always be somewhat ambivalent, partly a New Word from on high, partly something which is a logical extension of our existing convictions and passions.) Aeneas too, as is proved by Mercury's bitterly sarcastic 'uxorius!' has been thinking in the same terms as Dido (266): this is really a marriage. The collapse of this rationalisation in his mind is so horrible to him that it feels like (perhaps is) an invasion by a higher force. He sees the political impossibility of what he is trying to do - after all, the Trojans will cheer mightily (577) when they leave Carthage. I think that there is something very realistic about the feeling, on the part of one whose illusions about a relationship have collapsed, that the only decent thing to do is leave. That is what a person in that position would think, even though the decency of the action is so questionable, perhaps just another illusion. There is a more favourable reworking of the Dido/Aeneas story at a much lower (still quite good) level of literature in Terence Rattigan's 'Deep Blue Sea', another study of postwar moral disruption. In that story the man somehow sees, rather inarticulately, that he has to leave a relationship in which the woman expected him to be something that socially he could not be. In this case he is right and the woman regains her hold on life. - Martin Hughes
On Tue, 14 Dec 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Is it fair to suggest that Virgule portrays emotions successfully in book 4> > I've been thinking long and hard about this question, and despite taking in > account his stark realism and truth to human nature as well as his profound > smiles i am finding it difficult to come to any valid conclusion. > Any Thoughts? > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. > Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message > "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You > can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
