Princeton (2017) p/b 193pp £14.95 (ISBN 9780691176123)
This republishing of B.’s La traccia del modello; effetti omerici nella narrazione virgiliana (1984) features a 15-page afterword in which the author seeks both to update his original critical attitude and to place his study of Virgilian intertextuality and allusiveness in the context of the subsequent ‘New Latin’ movement associated with scholars such as Feeney, Fowler, and Hardie, the last of whom contributes a foreword.
The bulk of the book is taken up with close readings of four passages from the second half of the Aeneid: ‘The death of Pallas’, ‘The structure of Aeneid 10’, ‘The arms in the sky’, and ‘The death of Turnus’. To these is added a fifth, not included in 1984, ‘The lament of Juturna’.
The study of Virgil’s use of Homeric elements was given a hefty change of direction by GN Knauer’s 1964 Die Aeneis und Homer, and B.’s book, an expanded doctoral thesis, has to be read in the light of this. He stops short of saying so, but clearly feels that Knauer’s interpretations sometimes verged on the mechanical, and he could be right. A good example of his unravelling of Vergil’s subtlety can be seen in Chapter 1 (subtitled ‘Intertextuality and transformation of the epic model’), where he shows convincingly how from a comparison of the deaths of Patroclus and Pallas there emerges a kind of illumination by opposites; of course Pallas and Turnus make us think of Patroclus and Hector, and the resultant effect, informed by Virgilian sensibility, is that much more complex than Homer. B. is equally sure-footed in his examination of the end of Book 12 and the opposing claims on Aeneas of ultio and clementia. Readers/listeners are meant to think of the end of the Iliad, and their experience is thereby enriched: ‘…the Virgilian text makes its readers “work” by opening contradictory spaces where a conflict of ideas is evoked through an extreme case.’
B. insists that Virgil’s perception of Homer is not direct, but coloured by the scholarship of intervening years, especially the Alexandrian scholiasts. ‘Longinus’ and Philodemus also appear, to illustrate the intellectual climate in which Virgil was read after his death; a kind of 1st century ‘reception’.
Despite his scholarly perception of Virgil’s art, there are reasons why B. should be approached with caution. First, his understanding of Homer is nothing like as secure as he would have us think. On Pallas’ balteus in Aen.10, which he rightly says ‘has become the emotional core of the entire Virgilian scene’, contrasting it with Hector’s stripping of Patroclus’ arms in Il.17, he claims that ‘the Homeric expression puts no “subjective” emphasis on whose particular arms were stolen’, and therefore lacks Virgil’s emotive force. Yet only two pages later he quotes Zeus’ words to Hector (Il.17.202-203), ‘… [you are] putting on the immortal armor of the best man, who makes others tremble. And you killed his comrade, kind and strong…’. Quite apart from making it clear ‘whose particular arms’ these are, the words carry a strong pathetic heft, something which B. is generally reluctant to give Homer credit for.
Again, to make the (fair) point of Aeneas’ humanity in his treatment of Lausus’ corpse, he contrasts it unfavourably with what he clearly regards as Homer’s dispassionate, ‘formulaic’ treatment of death scenes, missing the point that these economical descriptions are often extremely moving in themselves (‘forgetful of his horsemanship’, ‘distant relatives divided up his property’ – to say nothing of Gorgythion). Jasper Griffin’s Homer on Life and Death (published in 1980) does not appear in B.’s extensive bibliography.
Second, there is a tension throughout the book between explication of particular episodes and a desire to underpin Virgilian imitation by placing it securely in literary theory—in this case, the preoccupations of Feeney et al. and the ‘Pisan school’ founded by B. and his colleagues. Anglo-Saxons—or at any rate the British—do things differently on the whole from their continental colleagues; as B. says in his 2017 afterword ‘Something was beginning to happen, we had noticed, in a couple of collections published by Tony Woodman and David West in the UK, but frankly those books were improving the quality of close reading more than opening a dialogue with literary theory’. Precisely. It would be a pity if students were unable to benefit from B.’s close reading, put off by pages of—to this reviewer at any rate—literary angels dancing on the head of a pin. It’s hard to see how this kind of thing actually helps you to understand Virgil. One turns in relief to EJ Kenney’s exemplary study of Virgilian imitation in one of West & Woodman’s collections: dissimuli uiuunt specie retinentque parentum / naturam.
Third, the book is very hard going (possibly the translation’s fault, but unlikely). B.’s writing is laden with quasi-technical expressions, periphrases, multiple adjectives, and distracting parentheses. Why say ‘It functions as a prolepsis to announce’ instead of ‘it anticipates’? Too often a sentence has to be read twice to extract its meaning. It seems ironic that a study which aims to elucidate often succeeds only in concealment. Theorists with the key to this kind of meta-language will doubtless have no difficulty in deciphering B.’s intention, but students wishing to gain access to his insights may well give up before reaching their goal.
Anthony Verity