Sunday, June 28, 2009

Aeneas the Amoeba

"Are we not
Entitled too, to look for realms abroad?
...But in my dreams my father's troubled ghost
Admonishes and frightens me. Then, too,
Each night thoughts come of young Ascanius,
My dear boy wronged, defrauded of his kingdom,
Hesperians lands of destiny." (The Aeneid, book 4, Virgil, translated by Robert Fitzgerald)

Here is the noble Aeneas, the father of Rome, explaining to a distraught Dido why it is that he must leave Carthage, the city of rest and immortal love. Before I wax unlyrical on the very ignoble Aeneas, I do want to touch upon something that the excellent DHR once said about the Aeneid as a text in general: it is the destruction of Troy that forces the voyage-- in other words, the first home must be destroyed in order for another one to be found. DHR put this in terms of the past being forgotten and overcome in order for these travellers to finally have a future. But why is Carthage not good enough for Aeneas? This, after all, is a land too. It has a queen who can make Aeneas king, future wars can find Ascanius a kingdom of his own-- the possibilities seem limitless. But no, the land that Aeneas searches for are lands of "destiny--" not ones that present themselves to him, yearning for acceptance, for rereading and slight rewriting of the prophecy. I want to talk about a couple of things here: the troubled ghost of Anchises, and, the wronged Ascanius-- past and future as existing in a different space from the one DHR so eloquently interpreted.
Let's take a look at Anchises first-- the guy who in death is so powerful that he dominates Aeneas' quest for selfhood, and for the sight of whom Aeneas undertakes the very torturous voyage to the Underworld. It is not a promise that Aeneas owes Anchises, in fact he owes him nothing. I think Anchises is Aeneas' invention, a clever mnemonic device that allows for Aeneas to exert identity, to have one over Carthage. Don't get me wrong here, this is not a feminist reading or anything near-- I'm just suggesting that the fear of Anchises is not so much a fear of this unghostly ghost but a fear that is entirely manipulated by Aeneas in order to read his prophecy in the way most preferred by the Trojans. I say the Trojans because increasingly I am convinced that Aeneas is not a man but a kind of malleable figure who goes from shore to shore serving the interests and national ego of the Romans. Dido and Aeneas?!! let Cleoparta and Marc, or Romeo and Juliet win that match...
Now for Ascanius. Here's what I think of Ascanius: he's as much an invention of Aeneas' fertile mind as Anchises is, but, he is the future. Kind of like plastics in The Graduate. But Aeneas approaches the future no differently from the way he approaches the past-- as my friend T.S. puts it, "In short, I was afraid." Yes, Aeneas, in short, you are afraid-- of both the past and the future. Ascanius exists in pretty much the same vein as Anchises does-- as a figure who in some way can incite fear of selfhood in Aeneas, and thus cheating this little prince of his Hesperian destiny is something Aeneas, the amoeba, cannot muster up enough strength to do. In other words, it would destroy Aeneas' form to acquire a form.
And where does Aeneas exist in time then? He is far from the immortal father of Rome. I think he exists in the presents of the Trojans as they are in the Aeneid, guiding them from point to point in their journey. His death signals the end of the malleability and vulnerability that he so embodied.

Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant. That's King Caesar to you, Aeneas.

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