9 - At the Helm, Second in Command: Du Bellay and La Mort de Palinure

Summary

To Andrew Becker, no fleeting figure on Virgil

A mere three years after he eschewed vernacular translation, situating the practice within the infancy of his project to establish the supremacy of French letters, Joachim Du Bellay published his verse translation of the story of Dido and Aeneas, complemented by two related pieces from Ovid and Ausonius. Soon thereafter, he inserted La Mort de Palinure into the second edition of his overtly Gallican Recueil de Poësie (1553) dedicated to Marguerite de France. This Virgilian episode recounts the epic and tragic loss of Aeneas' helmsman Palinurus, deadened by Slumber and thrown overboard on behalf of Neptune, who had agreed to assist the son of Venus on the condition that he receive one maritime casualty. This episode bears structural meaning within Virgil's Aeneid (5:779–871), as a stand-alone poem and within Du Bellay's Recueil as a whole. Having translated Books 4 and 6 of Virgil's epic, why did Du Bellay also select and isolate the end of Book 5 and the figure of Palinurus? Why separate the episode from its conclusive sequel in Book 6, published only posthumously? And why incorporate it within a sequence of original pieces?

Such a baffling editorial decision is to be read against the backdrop of renewed enthusiasm for Virgilian translations surrounding the ascent of the Pléiade. Issues of erudite emulation and commercial competition, however, fail to fully explain the uncanny inclusion of this sacrificial figure near the end of a predominantly encomiastic and propagandistic collection.