By: Ursula K. Le Guin Publisher: Harcourt Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Harcourt Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: April 21, 2008
in The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word in the poem. 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.
Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to make her own destiny, and she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.
Lavinia is a book of love and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.
The allure of an unfinished tale There is a scene in Aeneid X where Juno pleads with Jupiter on behalf of her protégé Turnus who is doomed to die: "Change for the better the plans you have made for him - for you can do it!" (...et melius tua qui potes orsa reflectas). Only Jupiter can change a pre-ordained fate. Other deities can delay, hinder or help, but the outcome cannot be changed. Jupiter can do it - but so can the poet. Vergil, who invented fates for all the characters in his epic, could have changed them at will. He invented Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, destined to marry the foreigner Aeneas rather than an Italian prince, and become the founding mother of the Roman race. But he left her unfinished, a mere name, a shadowy figure without a voice.
But now Ursula Le Guin plucks her from obscurity and gives her a voice. Young Lavinia tells us how she encountered the shade of Vergil ("my poet") at the sacred spring where her father goes to consult the ancestral oracle. He speaks to her, tells her about the epic he wrote. He regrets some of the omissions and misjudgments he made: she corrects his misconceptions. He asks her to tell him about her life in pre-Roman Latium, before the arrival of the Trojans - and thus we are drawn into a Bronze Age culture we know very little about.
The gods of the Graeco-Roman pantheon mean nothing to Lavinia. Juno and Venus, the rival goddesses of the Aeneid, who constantly interfere with the action, are nothing but foreign names to her. She believes in omens, in oracles, in the spirits and wisdom of ancestors. She has a strong sense of 'fas' and 'nefas', of right and wrong. She delights in the daily rituals entrusted to her - tending the storerooms, minding the servants, preparing sacrifices, spinning and weaving : the realm of the penates, the household gods.
In her retelling of the main events of the Aeneid, Le Guin follows the Vergilian text pretty closely. Lavinia learns from Vergil what happened before; but after the Trojans have landed, she becomes a participant in the action. Knowing what fate has in store for her, she never wavers in her conviction that the prophecy must be fulfilled. She is not meek - she asks plenty of questions and voices her own opinion. But her piety (the same quality that distinguishes Aeneas) overcomes all obstacles.
Her mother Amata's infatuation with Turnus, her scheming against Latinus and Lavinia, her mad Bacchic revels in the hills are spun into colorful episodes. There are touches of whimsy: Turnus brings Lavinia a monkey as a gift. Euryalus wears a red Phrygian cap...
Vergil's Aeneid ends with the slaying of Turnus - to the dismay of generations of readers who would have liked to see the wedding of Aeneas and Lavinia. Well, Le Guin gives us the wedding, and more: Aeneas builds a city, Lavinium, begets a son, Silvius, and rules wisely, together with Latinus, over his newly-founded tribe. True love blooms in the marriage of the Trojan hero and the Latin princess.
I would have liked it to end here, but Le Guin presses on: Aeneas dies an inglorious death at the hands of a cattle thief whom he has spared ('parcere subiectis' - spare the defeated - had been one of the injunctions given him by his father Anchises; he had ignored the warning when he killed Turnus). There is trouble with Ascanius, Aeneas' Trojan son. Lavinia is exiled and raises her son Silvius in the woods (as envisioned by Anchises), but in the end, Silvius becomes king, and Lavinia is restored to queenly status. 'Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem' - it was so much trouble to found the Roman race.
At the very end of the novel, we realize that Lavinia, the girl, the woman who told us her story, who seemed so real, so down-to-earth and level-headed, is only a spirit herself, a ghost whispering to us from the oak tree near the sacred spring She has achieved immortality..
Lavinia This is a wonderful adventure. A womans view of life, love, marriage and war. Ursula LeGuin give a voice to a character not previously heard from.
Mythic tale of Rome's founding Made immortal by Virgil in his epic, "The Aeneid," Lavinia never gets to speak a word in the poem. Though her destined marriage to Trojan Aeneus is the beginning of the Roman people and its ancient connection with Troy, Lavinia remains a silent symbol.
"He gave me a long life but a small one. I need room, I need air," she says early on in Le Guin's novel.
And Le Guin gives it to her. Lavinia's narration is self-aware and mythic. "No doubt someone with my name, Lavinia, did exist, but she may be so different from my own idea of myself, or my poet's idea of me, that it only confuses me to think about her."
But Lavinia's story is also passionate and full of earthy, daily details. She is both centuries-old legend and flesh-and-blood woman.
She is the daughter of a substantial rural king, Latinus of Latium. Her mother, once a sunny woman, has been driven mad with grief over the death of her sons and begrudges the life of her healthy daughter. As Lavinia reaches marriageable age, suitors come calling.
Her mother favors one of the neighboring kings, lusty, ambitious Turnus, and Lavinia blushes and stammers in his company. But Lavinia also propitiates the gods at the sacred springs where she bows to the prophecy that she will marry a foreigner and become the cause of a bitter war in order to found the beginnings of a great empire. When Aeneus' ships arrive, she recognizes her destiny.
On the banks of the sacred springs the 19-year-old Lavinia also communes with the spirit of the dying poet, Virgil, who laments that he did not know her better before he died (some scholars say Virgil died before completing the epic, which would have included more about Lavinia, or at least Aeneus' marriage to her).
Winner of numerous awards for her fantasy novels, Le Guin reimagines history with as vivid an eye as she creates worlds of fantasy. From the market towns and poorer realms around Latinus to the details of plowing, herding, gathering precious salt from beds by the sea, the spelt meal and goat's milk of daily meals and the golden goblets of banquets - Le Guin creates a bustling, lively world.
But while Lavinia spins wool and gathers sacred salt and runs in the creek with her friends, she also willingly embodies destiny and legend. Beautifully written, Le Guin's novel will appeal to her legions of fans as well as fans of Steven Saylor's "Roma."
Life in magic, myth and fate Ursula LeGuin's novel extends The Aeneid, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC. Virgil was writing a founding myth of Rome, where the Trojan hero Aeneas, after many adventures in Cathage, Sicily and the underworld, arrives in Latium, near the eventual site of Rome. There he engages in warfare with the indigent clans and victorious, marries the local princess Lavinia to found the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
LeGuin's Aeneas is a Taoist ideal, the artisan attuned to the Way in its Augustan form as pietas, honour and duty. He contends with those overmastered by passions: King Turnus, who he kills (murders?) at the end of the Aeneid, and his own flawed son, Ascanius. Lavinia, a cipher in Virgil's poem, becomes a person in LeGuin's hands, but also an archetype: the owl of Minerva.
Other reviews here properly convey what a fine piece of writing this is. It works as history, a vivid picture of bronze-age life, and as a retelling of the last six books of the Aeneid. Lavinia lives her life, from small girl to her eventual destiny, in the immanent presence of magic, myth and fate. LeGuin ensures that the reader does too.
Note: it reminded me a little of "The Way of Wyrd" by Professor Brian Bates, which recreates the celtic 'life in magic' in dark ages Britain.
Transcendent, Fascinating, Imaginary, Wonderful As soon as I finished this marvelous story, I immediately read it again. Then I looked up all I could find about the Trojan War, The Aeneid, and early Roman history. Then I read it again. This is a charming, well crafted story. Very simple on the surface, but with layers and layers of color, emotion, meaning and personality. LeGuinn invents a brilliant device linking the spirit of the poet Virgil with a minor character from the Aeneid to develop the story from several viewpoints and timeframes all at once. Genius. She creates an intriguing and warming tale of heroes, loyalty, oracles, fate and virtue. She presents a fascinating world of pre-Roman Italy in exquisite detail. In my opinion the finest work of LeGuinn's complex and varied oeuvre. Highly recommended for literate readers.
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