Oh, and Lavinia is implicitly the mother of the Roman race. While discussing this with my husband, he said, "Isn't that just like life? Although Virgil is not yet born in Lavinia's time when his disembodied shade visits her, he is dying in his own time. Lavinia is witness to little of it and what is presented third. Her family had the gift of communing with spirits and she summoned him beside the sacred spring of Albunea. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills. There is also a fine example of '1pxaaLs~, significatio (I am trying to avoid the word 'ambiguity').1o For fire, as we shall soon recall, is a very significant image of love in the Aeneid. I was intrigued. A goddess-driven storm cast them up on the shores of Carthage, but despite a fling with Queen Dido of Carthage, Aeneas refused to settle there. He has a torrid affair with Dido, the wily queen of Carthage, but leaves her and she burns herself (presaging, I might add, what Scipio’s–and Aeneas’–heir will one day do to all of Carthage). Virgil only mentions her in a line or two. LeGuin's Lavinia gives us her life after the war, too, immersing readers in early Italy's pagan life and rituals. Exactly two references to Lavinia. I suppose that one man’s cliché is another man’s archetype. Virgil apologizes: "You're almost nothing in my poem, almost nobody. It's a brilliant concept; she takes a character mentioned in passing in Virgil's Aeneid, the wife of Aeneas, and creates a story around her. Bottom line, writers need to keep their chin up, keep their powder dry, live and learn and and avoid stories that are all foam no beer…. Is it possible that Ursula K. LeGuin can write a bad book? BUT. But Virgil died, so the epic concludes with Aeneas killing Turnus in a fit of rage, despite the young man's plea for mercy. But it’s not easy. But she should have jumped in with both feet and defined a whole world, as only she can do. Umm, I better just let sleeping dogs lie. April 1st 2008 It’s always nice to have something to start out with, rather than the horrible blank page. Welcome back. I admit, I dozed a little. Lavinia's character was handled with grace and imagination. ( Log Out / In Virgil’s Aeneid Turnus is king of the city of Ardea, and his people are called the Rutuli. ." Lavinia is a whole book written from the perspective of a character that never utters a word in Vergil's epic, The Aeneid. Recommending the book by a hair is not enough for me. Being a lady classicist often requires willful acts of cognitive dissonance. books), opts to fill in the space around Aeneas and his battles. ", But here Lavinia is at the mercy of LeGuin, who has read, her acknowledgments tell us, two compelling books on Roman rites and rituals. Summer Reading from Sci-Fi & Fantasy Authors. LeGuin details the distaff side of the story in. Virgil has drawn the character of his main man - dutiful, pious - and much of the rest of the epic is given over to arms, just as he said it would be. Lavinia, watching Aeneas perform the spring ritual, Ambarvalia, observes, "You can tell a great deal about a man from how he performs sacrifice. ", © 2020 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. In her novel Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series and many other science fiction and fantasy novels, gives life to a forgotten character from Virgil's Aeneid.Lavinia is the daughter of King Latinus of Latium, and in Virgil's epic she is destined to marry the Trojan hero Aeneas. Don't go reading Le Guin expecting Koontz. Change ). Once Aeneas arrives on the scene and we finally have some mythological material to work with (Virgil’s), it gets good. Instead, the story keeps nervously returning to Virgil, and Lavinia is somehow aware she's only a character in a book some of the time and a full character in her own right at other times. Aeneas' hands on the leggy ram-lamb were calm and gentle, his knife stroke sudden and sure. He is considered an important figure in Greek and Roman legend and history. Despite being a fairly short book, it read very slowly, but in a good way. Thoughts? She is a giant in the fantasy-sci-fi field, with books like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Earthsea Trilogy, but Lavinia is only the second half of a great story. So, 5 stars it is. ( Log Out / Slightly less evil are those who use their sexual wiles to distract men from their noble purposes--Circe, Calypso, Dido. 20 Furthermore, this discussion of Lavinia as a tool of political power marks a change in tone from the personal first half, to a more politically driven second half. ", Aeneas is not destined to live long, but he and Lavinia have a son, Silvius, who will. I read Hitchcock paraphrased in a book in which he said something along the lines of: “Don’t be afraid to start out from the known situation, the cliché. “You would get more out of this,” she kept saying to me, since there was all this, you know, ancient and Roman stuff in it. While discussing this with my husband, he said, "Isn't that just like life? I did read the Aeneid last night, though. In other words, hers was a story that benefited greatly from being told with care and respect. Her book club, having heard that NPR considers the book one of last year’s best, decided to read it. and spoke of emotion, but I never felt it. In epic, the worst women are pure, unadulterated evil--monsters like Scylla, Charybdis, and the Sirens. A sort of alchemy…. As depressing as that sounds, it's still a good book. I think this book was well reviewed, so I am sure many people would have a different experience, I was just not that keen on it. Ursala seems like a pretty hip 79 year old. In epic, the worst women are pure, unadulterated evil--monsters like Scylla, Charybdis, and the Sirens. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Worried by a prophet’s prediction that a foreign army will conquer the kingdom, Latinus consults the Oracle of Faunus. But what gets good is, in effect, the last part of the old Aeneid. Aeneas ends up in Italy, Latium, where his destiny is to found a people, later to become Rome. Lavinia's character was handled with grace and imagination. In the end, though, Lavinia has the generosity to forgive him: "In truth he gave me nothing but a name, and I have filled it with myself. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. I always found it to be a chore, as poetry is more challenging to translate than textbook translating exercises like "Roma est in Italia." Or something like that. I often prefer ancient world to medieval fantasy, because people in the ancient world experienced life through a mythic mindset, or so I believe. Lavinia takes her time telling her story, and you feel like you're there with her. Lavinia has no feminist ax to grind, but immortality has given her a lot of time to think and she wants to set the record straight. A Rutulian king named Turnus had the hots for her and felt upstaged when Aeneas swooped in, and that–ie, she–is what set off the bloody wars. The novel is called Lavinia, and I just finished it. The lady simply has a way with words. In The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. On the other hand, no pain no gain. worked, in that now I know why books need those things. You’ve heard of Dido and Aeneas (and Purcell, Virgil and all that). We give some of them names - Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. I guess I should say, I kept waiting for the climax, and it never happened.
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