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Chapter 4 - Morals and minimalism

from Part II - Reputation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2014

David Scott Wilson-Okamura
David Scott Wilson-Okamura
Affiliation:
East Carolina University
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Summary

Leibniz has a parable about two libraries: one of a hundred different books of different worth, the other of a hundred books that are all equally perfect. It is significant that the latter consists of a hundred Aeneids.

Jorge Luis Borges (trans. Eliot Weinberger)

Virgil the reviser

The richest and perhaps most interesting of the clichés about Virgil was his refinement. As we have seen, Virgil’s poetry was revered almost universally for its scope and versatility; its variety resembled Nature in seeming to be endless. But Nature is careless, undependable; it requires supervision, guidance, and cultivation. What it wants is refinement, and refinement was supposed to be Virgil’s specialty.

Again, the tradition begins in antiquity. In Horace, Virgil’s song is described as “smooth and polished” (molle atque facetum). Varius Rufus, who was assigned to edit and publish the Aeneid after Virgil’s death, records that the poet composed slowly, only a few lines a day. According to Aulus Gellius, Virgil boasted of making verses

after the manner and fashion of a bear. For as that beast, he said, brought forth her young formless and misshapen (ineffigiatum informemque), and afterwards by licking the young cub gave it form and shape (conformaret & fingeret), just so the fresh products of his mind were rude in form and imperfect, but afterwards by working them over and polishing them (tractando colendoque) he gave them a definite form and expression.

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Virgil in the Renaissance , pp. 101 - 142
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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