I've been interested in The Aeneid again lately, so I've been less attracted to the prospect of achieving moral satisfaction, offered by people who advocate the impeachment of the American President, when the commitments of translators of that poem fur-nish so much of that fleeting peace by their example. The rendering of that work into English is one of the great struggles the mind can undertake, and we have seen how the ordeal yields an appreciation of an impossibility revealed even in the original. Inevitably, to witness this dilemma's exposure is to undergo the seeming urgency of experiencing its consequence, a trust in the limits of the intellect against impassioned certitude.
Human beings appear to have no choice but to strive for beautiful, orderly explanations of the ugly things we do. These explanations may also represent a basic drive - and in one way a more painful one. We have chances to get land, livelihood, and security for the next generation, pretty much in the forms we imagined or even better, though the cost will be high. We cannot match in reality our vision of what we need to create from our minds. Virgil couldn't, and I certainly couldn't in my efforts to translate his glorious poem.
Anything like a zeal for an impeachment verges on a vain matching of this awe-somely fateful need to create, with reality. Who sees its consequence?
James McNeill Whistler
The Ocean Wave
1883-84
Whistler in Watercolor
On exhibition at the Freer
through November 3
Virgil
The Aeneid
Sarah Ruden
translator
fragment from her
essay of introduction
Yale University Press, 2008©
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