Virgil, interrupted by Crowley
Oct. 24th, 2019 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enevarimFrom Dryden's translation of Virgil's Aeneid, which I'd forgotten about until this afternoon:
To which it feels like the only reasonable answer (perhaps because I've just re-watched Good Omens episodes 5 and 6) is Crowley's “Where have you been?”
In act more graceful in the original (Aeneid I.8-11):
And saying, in a stumbling attempt at a literal translation, something like:
Deryck Williams's note on tantaene animis caelestibus irae?:
Which again feels like Crowley, asking questions, not getting answers.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok’d, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav’n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv’d his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos’d to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav’nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?
To which it feels like the only reasonable answer (perhaps because I've just re-watched Good Omens episodes 5 and 6) is Crowley's “Where have you been?”
In act more graceful in the original (Aeneid I.8-11):
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso
quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere casus
insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores
impulerit. tantaene animis caelestibus irae?
And saying, in a stumbling attempt at a literal translation, something like:
Muse, recall for me the reasons, by what injury to divinity, or what suffering in the queen of the gods, drove the man marked by piety/devotion to be tossed in so many mishaps, to go through so many labours. [Can] so great (tantae-ne) an anger (irae) [exist] in heavenly (caelestibus) minds/spirits (animis)?
Deryck Williams's note on tantaene animis caelestibus irae?:
“can there be such anger in the hearts of gods?”; in Milton's words (Paradise Lost, 6.788), “In heav’nly Spirits could such perverseness dwell?” This is the question which the Aeneid explores, “to justify the ways of God to men”. Virgil unlike Milton finds only groping and imperfect answers.
Which again feels like Crowley, asking questions, not getting answers.
