Christopher Rush

Preface

Of the essays in the collection, I found eight to be useful to varying degrees in addition to Mr. Commager’s introduction.  I will briefly highlight the content of each of these eight essays as well as each author’s perspective together (as they are too short to treat well separately), and conclude with a critical evaluation of the essays.  Many of the essays are either abridgements from their original lengths or reductions of chapters from entire books by the authors.  Since I read only what was made available in the collections, I must refer to the essays by the titles given to them by the editor.

Content Summary and Author’s Perspective

Steele Commager’s brief introduction to the collection of essays, unlike Harold Bloom’s introductions to the Modern Critical Interpretations series, is not a précis of what the following essays concern (ironically, what I am doing now), but mostly a brief treatment of Aeneas as an epic hero, and how he through Virgil distinguished himself from Homer’s heroes.

C.M. Bowra’s essay “Some Characteristics of Literary Epic” does exactly what its title implies: he briefly discusses the nature of oral epic, its purposes and forms, and its heroes and representation of a heroic world.  He distinguishes briefly between Homer’s heroic world and Virgil’s heroic world, one key difference being Homer’s heroes live and die for their own glory, while Virgil’s heroes have a higher calling for a social ideal (61).  Bowra’s guiding perspective on the epic is the different purposes for the heroes: whether it be self-centered or others-centered.

C.S. Lewis’s essay “Virgil and the Subject of Secondary Epic” is extracted from his Preface to Paradise Lost.  While the extract does not make much sense by itself — atypical of the Twentieth Century Views series, since most chapters re-forged into short essays make sense as presented — Lewis’s chapter/essay offered some helpful ideas on Virgil’s presentation of the epic, as distinguished from earlier author-less epics.  His fuller discussion on the difference between “primary” and “secondary” epics, while quite trenchant, was not included in this selection, which is odd since it was Lewis’s main purpose in addressing Virgil in a work more devoted to Milton.  Fortunately, that difference is not relevant to our purposes here.

“Odysseus and Aeneas” by Theodore Haecker was a short (roughly the first eight essays in the collection were generally fewer than twelve pages long; the final four were much longer) contrast of the two heroes, though his insights treat Aeneas more than Odysseus.  He, like most of the authors of these early shorter essays, did not have any overt “perspective” in the sense of approaching the poem from psychology, archetypes, feminism, or the like, but instead was more formalist, addressing primarily what was in the poem, not external to it.  At least, that is the impression I got from the essay originally.

Wendell Clausen’s “An Interpretation of the Aeneid” acknowledges the prerequisite of knowing Homer before understanding Virgil: “any response to the Aeneid will depend in good part on an intimate knowledge of the Iliad and the Odyssey” (75).  Most critics of Virgil (that I’ve read recently) reference the connection of the two authors in what ways such knowledge suits their particular foci, but Clausen’s general admission seemed unique, not saying Virgil is a copy or modifier of Homer, but just the idea that the reader’s success with Virgil is in some way determined by the reader’s prior success with Homer.  After that, Clausen focuses mostly on the character of Aeneas, highlighting his burdens and the tragic circumstances he surmounts in his poem.  Clausen’s emphasis on the emotional states of Aeneas borders on psychological interpretation but does not give the reader any overt references to it.

Brooks Otis’s “The Odyssean Aeneid and the Iliadic Aeneid” begins the final third of essays much longer than the previous grouping.  Otis begins with a structural approach to the Aeneid, offering a kind of map with a two-fold purpose: first it lists the general content of each book of the poem in a brief three- or four-word phrase, labeling books one through six as “Odyssean” and books seven through twelve as “Iliadic”; second it draws (literally) connections from one book to another, indicating its mostly chiastic pattern — similar to Cedric H. Whitman’s structural diagram of the Iliad referenced by Peter Leithart in Heroes of the City of Man.  The rest of his essay elaborates on the pattern, how the first half (Aeneas’ Odyssey) is preparation for the “Iliadic Fulfillment” of his quest in the second half of the poem.

The title of Adam Parry’s essay “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid” is at times akin to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers, in that the reader is not always sure to which voices/towers the author is specifically referring.  For Parry, sometimes the two voices are those of Aeneas and his rival Turnus; at times it is what Otis called the two halves of the poem, the Odyssean and Iliadic halves; at other points in the essay Parry seems to be referring to two different moods of the poem itself: the tragedy of Aeneas’ personal losses contrasted with the empowering hope for the future surety of the Roman Empire.  Regardless of the oft-times ambiguous title, the content of the essay provides a distinctive approach to Aeneas’ character in light of Virgil’s authorship and audience: sometimes Aeneas is a Roman version of Homer’s Greek Achilles and Odysseus, sometimes he is a model of his supposed successor Octavius-Augustus; Parry also suggests the possibility that Virgil temporarily casted Aeneas as Octavius’ enemy Mark Antony, when Aeneas entangles himself with Dido, Queen of Carthage (who becomes a type of Cleopatra, in that Egypt and Carthage are both enemies of Rome).  Parry spends much time analyzing Aeneas as a servant of History/Fate/Destiny; because he serves an “impersonal power,” he cannot be a hero (123) — an interesting conclusion.  For Parry, though, Aeneas is saved “as a man” because he is so unrelentingly self-sacrificial and suffers through so much for others.

Bernard M.W. Knox (who, along with Mortimer Adler, would undoubtedly be on the Mt. Rushmore of Influential 20^th-century Classicists — using “classicist” as an encomium) contributed “The Serpent and the Flame: The Imagery of the Second Book of the Aeneid” to this collection.  While interesting and excellent, as Knox usually is, it was limited in focus, as its title makes clear.  Unlike other classicists, such as Gilbert Murray, Knox does not assume the reading audience is familiar with Greek and limits his use of it while thoroughly analyzing an intentionally narrow component of Virgil’s epic.

Finally, Viktor Pösch’s “Basic Themes” concludes the collection.  One of the major themes for Pösch is the sea, which for him is “an overture” to the other motifs in the poem (165).  Other themes (at times Pösch seems to use “theme,” “symbol,” and “metaphor” interchangeably, as I am, unfortunately, wont to do in my classroom) include love as the “motivating force in all that Aeneas does” (166), the Aeneid as a “poem of humanity” (173), and Aeneas’ journey to the underworld as a symbol of “a trial of the hero” (176), this last quite aligned with Joseph Campbell’s journey of the hero.

Critical Response and Evaluation

Though my elongated summary connotes some of my responses to the essays, some final evaluations are appropriate here.  On the whole, I have found the older Twentieth Century Views series of essays far superior to Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations series.  That is not an attack on Professor Bloom, nor an overt diatribe against recent scholarship contrasted to earlier scholarship (I am a much younger, poorer, and unpublished scholar than those published in either series); it is merely a generalized reaction.  I prefer (and trust) the Twentieth Century Views series so much that I will purchase one whenever I can find one in a used book store, even if I have never read the author in question (such as Proust, though he is on my “someday soon” list).  The series also does not, in my acknowledged limited experience with it, include derisive or vituperative essays on the author or subject, unlike what Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations essays occasionally do.  Bloom’s series does offer great essays, certainly, especially the occasional erudite contributions by latter-twentieth-century scholars, so they are not entirely shoddy — I simply prefer the Twentieth Century Views series.

Commager’s introduction, as I mentioned before, aids in the superiority of the series, in that his introduction is a thoughtful contribution to the subject, unlike Bloom’s “introductions” which are synopses of the essays in the collection (I often find Harold Bloom a helpful albeit limited scholar, though in his own books).  Commager sets the tone of analytical appreciation for Virgil and his poems, giving insights I found helpful, such as his remark “… in the Aeneid, duty and inclination are constantly opposed” (11).

C.M. Bowra’s essay provided good generalized descriptions of epic poetry.  His precise comments help introduce the nature of epic poetry before focusing on epic heroes, more so than the typical high school definition of an epic poem as “a long, narrative poem usually focusing on one hero.”  Bowra’s essay emphasizes the differences in values of Homer’s epic and Virgil’s epic, an invaluable insight in the distinction of the heroes.

I knew about C.S. Lewis’s essay (unlike the other “essays” transplanted from their original sources) because I have read Preface to Paradise Lost.  As mentioned above, the extraction of this one chapter does not make too much sense, though I did find some useful comments from Lewis (not a third face with Adler and Knox, since Lewis was more of a medievalist than a classicist).  With the profundity of useful ideas from the other essays in this collection (and other sources), one needs not revisit Lewis’ book, even for his distinction between “primary” and “secondary” epics — unless one wants to read a good work about an even more important work, and thus gain a better understanding of Western Civilization.

A title like “Odysseus and Aeneas” offered great promise, in that comparatively so few of the critical works I’ve read had anything to say about the participants in the content of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.  So many other critics want to talk about the poems’ origins or historicity or animal and nature symbology — which is wonderful, but not all there is.  Unfortunately, Haecker’s essay (at least the version presented in this collection) did not provide as much analysis as I had hoped.  I gleaned three tidbits from him — helpful tidbits, but brief tidbits: “How full of paradox, how dialectical is the inner life of Aeneas!  Does he in this resemble any of Homer’s heroes?” (70)  “Like all reticent men, he (Aeneas) can speak only the truth that is in him, and that only occasionally and darkly.  And again, like all reticent men, be they so from necessity or of their own free will, he makes no such brave figure as Achilles or Odysseus” (Ibid.).  And “the true leader is not he who makes himself leader, but he who is called and dedicated to that end by Fate” (74).  I appreciate Haecker’s perspective that Aeneas might be inferior in some ways to Odysseus and Achilles (unlike most other critics who usually see Aeneas as a better-rounded consummation of “the hero” Homer was trying to create), especially his stress on Aeneas as a “reticent hero” out of necessity — I just wished Haecker had more useful things to say (a thoroughly selfish comment, though it is a well-meant selfishness, unlike Achilles’).

Wendell Clausen’s “An Interpretation of the Aeneid” is similar to other essays in the collection in that he highlights the tragedy and suffering Aeneas endures — genuine loss, unlike Odysseus’ temporary abstinence from happiness and contentment or Achilles’ egotistic honor besmirchment (his loss of Patroclus is genuine, though Gilbert Murray cautions us against believing Achilles is completely selfless even in missing/feeling loss at the death of Patroclus).  Of the many helpful ideas from Clausen, two stand out: “Aeneas enters the poem wishing he were dead, the only epic hero to do so” (77); “Aeneas is more burdened by memory than any other ancient hero” (Ibid.).

Certainly Brooks Otis’s structural diagram of the Aeneid’s thematic and chiastic pattern is invaluable.  His explication of that pattern is similarly useful.  Even his summary of the poem is remarkable: “the Aeneid is … the story of death and rebirth by which unworthy love and destructive furor are overcome by the moral activity of a divinized and resurrected hero” (92) — a bit of archetypal criticism added to his structural criticism.  Like other critics, Otis notes Aeneas’ psychological component of his heroic character, though Otis always relates his ideas to the structure of the poem, in that it (Aeneas’ psychology) changes in connection with the structural plot changes: plot and character are intertwined.

I commented above on the elasticity, if not ambiguity, of Adam Parry’s title, “The Two Voices of Virgil’s Aeneid,” though the title was not as important to me as his other insights.  I especially enjoyed his connections to Virgil and Augustus — certainly that is a necessary component to accurately understanding and interpreting this epic poem.  His comparisons of Aeneas to Octavian/Augustus and Mark Antony are enlightening and unique, while completely plausible.  Similarly, his conclusion that Aeneas can’t truly be a “hero” because he is guided/forced/in the service of an impersonal power, but that he is a more complete “man” than the Homeric heroes, offers an interesting perspective.  Yet, Parry’s conclusions are odd, in that he maintains that Aeneas is a fuller man than either Achilles or Odysseus even though he does not have the free will that they have — Aeneas is the plaything of History, which he cannot escape: how does this make him more of a man?  For Parry, the answer is that Aeneas “is man himself; not man as the brilliant free agent of Homer’s world, but man of a later stage in civilization, man in a metropolitan and imperial world, man in a world where the state is supreme.  He cannot resist the forces of history, or even deny them; but he can be capable of human suffering, and this is where the personal voice asserts itself” (121-122).  Possibly: I need to keep pondering these conclusions until I can more readily agree with him.

Obviously I have great respect and admiration for Bernard Knox if I am willing to place him on the Mt. Rushmore of Classicists (along with Mortimer Adler after a fashion, certainly A.E. Housman, and possibly Gilbert Murray — Maynard Mack might be up there, especially if we changed the title to Influential Popularizers of Classics in the 20th century).  Even so, his narrow essay, while stunning in its thoroughness and wealth of knowledge, was mostly extraneous to my personal focus on the heroes of the poems.  He did make some indirectly useful comments on Menelaus and Agamemnon (calling them twins, which no other commentator highlighted — except Gilbert Murray, though also indirectly) as together a force of “merciless destruction” (127), and another interesting comparison of Pyrrhus (Achilles’ son?) to the serpents killing Laocoön as he kills Priam (136).

Victor Pösch’s “Basic Themes” was, like Knox’s essay, interesting, but mostly unsuited for my needs when researching for my Master’s thesis.  His themes quoted above were the themes I found most useful of the many he addressed.  In order to incorporate his dominant sea theme, though, I’d would have had to insert much of his argument, which on the whole is irrelevant to my thesis, so I couldn’t really do that.  However, if one simply wanted to improve one’s ability to understand (and potentially teach) such classical literature, then one of his almost superfluous comments is extraordinarily helpful: “The essence of a symbolic relationship is that the correspondence between the symbol and the thing symbolized is not precise, but flexible, opening up an infinite perspective” (166).  Certainly Pösch’s concise definition is extraordinarily helpful beyond the confines of this article.

As only one example of the many in the history of classical scholarship and inquiry into Virgil’s Aeneid, Commager’s Twentieth Century Views collection is a challenging introduction to one of the most important works in Western Civilization.  The Twentieth Century Views series as a whole is undoubtedly a worthwhile series to investigate, own, and enjoy forever, especially in light of the general and decided decline of scholarship (especially classical scholarship) today — despite the fact my postmodern Master’s professors encouraged me to ignore the older works in favor of the more recent writings on the subject.