![[Valid RSS]](/blog/images/rssvalid.gif "Validate my RSS feed")
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/blog/images/atomvalid.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
What stuck in my mind was his observation of how the certainty of youth had given way to the uncertainty of old age. He used the metaphor of a wrapped package of water untied and falling through ones fingers to illustrate the difficulty of truly understanding ourselves. His message chimed with my own feelings: the older I get the more I realise the less I know.
Reading Robert Hellenga's novel Fall of a Sparrow about the effect of the Bologna Railway Bombing on an American family, I was impressed by the observation of his central character, a classics tutor, that history "began" when Aeneas, the mythical refugee of the Trojan War, arrived on Italian shores to establish Rome. I think the spirit of this observation was spot on: to the Greeks life was cyclical, psychological, mythical. Humanity was essentially subject to the whims of capricious Gods, and always would be.
Although the Romans too made obsequies to the Gods, there was no doubt about who was in charge. Everything came second to the will of Rome. The world would be shaped according to their vision, whatever the Gods might say. Hence Hellenga’s (character’s) observation that the modern era began with them.
I can't mention Aeneas without referring to my favourite opera (and not only because it is blessedly short) Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, which features the doomed love affair of our Trojan hero and the Queen of Carthage.
In the final stanza, as well as featuring some of the most beautiful music ever composed, there is the following exchange between the departing Aeneas and the Queen:
[Cupids appear in the clouds o're her tomb]
When I am laid in earth, May my wrongs create
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.
Great minds against themselves conspire, and shun the cure they most desire: Aeneas, brutal youth, presses on to Italy and the city he will build, leaving love behind.
But as I grow older the emotional sum of my life seems to count for more than my supposed accomplishments. When we are dust so too are our deeds, to us. Love, in its many guises, feels more important in the here and now.
We might fancy ourselves the builders of our lives but despite our grand designs we are only ever tenants.
While others may remember us, even benefit from our legacy, as individuals we leave life with nothing except our experience. In the end emotions are all we own.
This the Greeks understood, embodying our merry-go-round lives in their myths, which remain alive in modern drama and psychology.
The ancient world is our world, and we travel through it even if we’re not on the deck of a Mediterranean cruise liner.
06:05:52 |
