It is indeed true that the story follows from the view of V's personality that both we and the ancient biographers attribute to V: if he was that kind of person and if the poem was not 'essentially complete' (Mackail's phrase, I think) he would have wanted it destroyed. My doubts arise from the fact, as I would see it, that the poem does seem to me to be 'essentially complete' and I wonder if V would really have wanted so much careful work to vanish. Scholars have noticed the cross reference between beginning and end, with 'condit', where the plunging sword seems to 'lay a foundation', recalling 'condere', where the immense labour of founding the Roman people is noted as the theme of the poem. - Martin Hughes ----- Original Message ----- From: Leofranc Holford-Strevens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 11:06 PM Subject: Re: VIRGIL: why Virgil wanted to burn his poem
> In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David > Wilson-Okamura <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes > >At 11:03 AM 10/18/01 +0100, Patrick Roper wrote: > >>I thought that that might be the case, after all most creative people > >>feel they could have done better - the stuff on the page, isn't quite > >>what seemed to be in the mind. But do we know this is what Virgil > >>thought? Did he say so somewhere? Or did one of his contemporaries > >>say that of him? > > > >As Patrick Roper and Jim O'Hara point out, we need to be skeptical. In > >addition to Thomas, see, for instance, Nicholas Horsfall, "Virgil: His Life > >and Times," in _A Companion to the Study of Virgil_, ed. Nicholas Horsfall, > >Mnemosyne Supplement 151 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 1-25. > > Exactly. The all but explicit conclusion of Horsfall's analysis is that > we do not even know *whether* Vergil wanted the _Aeneid_ burnt, never > mind why. But the story is attractive on so many grounds: perfectionist > poet, enlightened monarch, the rights of posterity against an author's > wishes; after all, even those of us who are neither poets nor princes > will be posterity to more and more authors as we grow older. (And if you > rebel against the enlightened Augustus, then you can apply a different > _color_, or in modern parlance spin, as Broch did.) It has also, from > Hyginus onwards, licensed adverse criticism of particular passages > within the supreme masterpiece: since Vergil recognized that his poem > had faults, he must have agreed with the critic that this or that > expression or assertion was one of them, and would have corrected it had > he lived. The psychological utility of this safety-valve is rather more > evident than its scientific value, since there is always someone else to > say it isn't a fault at all (even in the case of the half-lines); > readers just need the story to be true. > > Leofranc Holford-Strevens > *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* > > Leofranc Holford-Strevens > 67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone > Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter? > OX2 6EJ > > tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/267865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237 > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) > > *_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_* > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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
