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Lavina
by Ursula Le Guin,
Harcourt, Inc., hardcover, 288 pages, $26.96,
ISBN 978-0-15-101424-8
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By Alidė Kohlhaas
It took very little time to decide that
Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin's latest book, will find a place of honor on my
groaning bookshelves. This graceful recapturing of a mythic pre-Roman past
of Italy by a novelist known more for science fiction has spoken to me with
unexpected intensity. It has also returned me to an old love, a language I
chose to study because I wanted to know it, not because I had to.
Of all the languages, I favor Latin for its
beautiful sound and expressiveness. It never fails to elicit from me both an
emotional response as well as spiritual one. Hence I can understand Le Guin's
desire to read The Aeneid in Virgil's Latin, a feat she accomplished in
her 70s. This inspired her to give both voice and a full life to
Lavinia,
who appears as a mere whisper in The Aeneid's Book VI, then in Book VII,
and twice in the final book: XII. Lavinia, the resulting novel, may in time
be viewed as the finest the now almost 89-year-old Le Guin has written. Its
very elegance of language alone lifts it above her other works.
Even if Virgil's Aeneid is unfamiliar to
you, Lavinia will capture your imagination. If you know the epic poem, you
may recall that she, like Helen of Troy, became the cause of war. Not that
Lavinia had done anything to bring about this state of affairs; unlike
Helen, she did not defy the gods, nor her father. She remained a dutiful
daughter, or so we surmise from the little Virgil gave us. Perhaps, had the
poet lived to finish the Aeneid—tragically he died before he completed
this epic poem—we would have learned more about it. Instead, our
imagination has to take over at the very moment when Aeneas is triumphant
over Turnus.
Le Guin builds her story on what is the
only moment in the Aeneid, that final time Lavinia appears in this hymn to
battles and heroes; for an instant she is not just spoken of, but is allowed
human emotions. Her ivory-colored skin blushes; she has tears in her eyes as
her mother, Amata, urges Turnus on to hand-to-hand combat with the Trojan,
Aeneas. When one reads Virgil, one senses Lavinia is in love, but the old
Roman left in doubt if it is with Turnus or with Aeneas.
At regina noua pugnae conterrita sorte
flebat et ardentem generum moritura tenebat:
'Turne, per has ego te lacrimas, per si quis Amatae
tangit honos animum: spes tu nunc una, senectae
tu requies miserae, decus imperiumque Latini
te penes, in te omnis domus inclinata recumbit.
unum oro: desiste manum committere Teucris.
qui te cumque manent isto certamine casus
et me, Turne, manent; simul haec inuisa relinquam
lumina nec generum Aenean captiua uidebo.'
accepit uocem lacrimis Lauinia matris
flagrantis perfusa genas, cui plurimus ignem
subiecit rubor et calefacta per ora cucurrit.
Indum sanguineo ueluti uiolauerit ostro
si quis ebur, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa
alba rosa, talis uirgo dabat ore colores.
illum turbat amor figitque in uirgine uultus;
ardet in arma magis paucisque adfatur Amatam:
'ne, quaeso, ne me lacrimis neue omine tanto
prosequere in duri certamina Martis euntem,
o mater; neque enim Turno mora libera mortis.
nuntius haec, Idmon, Phrygio mea dicta tyranno
haud placitura refer. cum primum crastina caelo
puniceis inuecta rotis Aurora rubebit,
non Teucros agat in Rutulos, Teucrum arma quiescant
et Rutuli; nostro dirimamus sanguine bellum,
illo quaeratur coniunx Lauinia campo.' |
Le Guin has opted for the
latter and picks up Lavinia's tale during her 19th year. Gathering salt at
the mouth of the Tiber for a sacred meal, the young woman spies ships that
she senses carry her future husband. Omens and prophecies had warned her
father, King Latinus, not to marry off his daughter to a suitor from the
surrounding Italian kingdoms. The most ardent of these wooers is Turnus, who
also happens to be Amata's favorite, one suspects in more than one way.
Instead, Lavinia must marry a stranger to found Italy's most noble line,
the future rulers of the Rome to come.
In this well researched,
detailed and evocative novel, it is Lavinia who tells us the story of her
life as it draws to a close. But, this is not just Lavinia's story. In many
ways, it is a story that carries us to the present, to places where women
are still as voiceless as women were in ancient Greece or Rome, as voiceless
as our own grandmothers were until the early 20th century.
Whether or not Le Guin intended this, her tribute to Virgil is a modern
tale. Lavinia's story may be set in the eighth century BC, but it has many
modern echoes. Le Guin sounds the depth of history and mythology, and thus
reveals a world that is alien and familiar at the same time.
A shorter version of this review of Lavinia appeared in the Women's Post
http://www.womenspost.ca/articles/books/retelling-old-tales
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