THE “DIVINE POET”

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1935, Page 15

THE “DIVINE POET”

CAREER OF VIRGIL HIS PERSISTENT INFLUENCE. MILTON’S GLOWING TRIBUTE. . . The “divine poet” of Rome, Publius Vergilius Maro, whom we call Virgil, is one of the few poets who has never been I lost to sight, even in the Dark Ages, Isays a writer in the Melbourne Age. While he still lived his work became a text book in the schools, and the melody and beauty of his writing a model and an influence. He is “a schoolbook for youth, a treasure house for mature appreciation, a model for artists, for as Newman so beautifully expresses it, he gives “utterance as to the voice Nature herself, to that pain and weariness, yet hope of better things, which is the experience of her children in every time.” ' . Virgil was born in Mantua m 70 8.L., and lived throughout that stimulating and exciting time that saw the downfall of the Roman Republic and the formation of the Roman Empire. His father was a thriving yeoman-farmer, who made the greater part of his living from forestry and bee-keeping. Of his mother nothing is known excepting her name, Magia Polla, and this—in so great venex ation was Virgil held—became distorted in medieval times, and assumed a mystical significance, so that Virgil himself came to be regarded as a miracle worker like Merlin in the legend of Arthur. When he was 12 years of age he was sent to school at Cremona, and four years later went on to the more advanced school at Milan. Thence he passed, when he was in his 19th year, to Rome, the centre of studies for the Latin-speaking world, where he joined a brilliant group of young poets. For ten years we know little of his life excepting that he studied widely and read deeply. His father died and he had sufficient patrimony to live the life of a scholar, to study and travel, and devote himself to philosophical and historical studies. His great shyness and a certain rusticity of manner which he retained throughout life, together with his delicate physical health, determined the path of the scholar rather than the soldier—the only other avenue open to the youth of that time. Certainly within these years he learned the works of earlier Roman poets, Catullus and Lucretius, who were responsible for wonderful development in Latin poetry, and the Greeks from whose influence Latin grew so greatly. FRESH LIFE; In 37 B.C. Virgil published the collection of “Eclogues,” selected pastoral poems which, breaking through the bounds of the elaborately scholarly and rather artificial conventions of Latin verse of that period, introduced a fresh life and graceful tenderness hitherto unknown; brought out in the Latin language melodious tones never heard in it before. By perfection of structure and execution, accompanied as they were by the most refreshing charm, the poems brought him instant recognition. At once the poet was famous; to his great embarrassment he was cheered when he entered the theatre. These poems established him as the laureate of the new regime gradually setting up in Italy, and through them he was introduced to Maecenas, the Minister for Home Affairs, and to the court of Augustus.

For the next seven years Virgil, through the encouragement and under some pressure from Maecenas, worked at the “Georgies.” Men were returning from the civil wars, and, untrained for the life of the land, were crowding in the cities, crying, “Panis et circenses.” The farms, orchards and vineyards that had made of Italy a garden, and had maintained a hardy and healthy peasantry, were left uncared for by landlords, or inhabited by migratory troops of herdsmen and shepherds, who were slaves and half savages. Discontent, a craving for excitement and idleness were rife. A NATIONAL POEM. To check this process small holdings were created and subsidised, and the disbanded armies were settled all over Italy in agricultural colonies. Scientific farming was studied and taught, and to Virgil fell the task of writing a national poem which would recall the traditions of Roman life, and would make a moral, as well as material, appeal to the people. “The praises of Italy” are the central motive of the book. He presents a “divine country,” not a fanciful paradise, but a land where, in spite of frost-bound winters, parching . summers, storm, drought, incessant toil, there is prosperous peace, a harmony with Nature, a deep sympathy and a sense of wonder and mystery towards all life. There are only 2000 lines in this poem, which Virgil took seven years to write. Old Virgil, who would write ten lines they say At dawn, and lavish all the golden day To make them wealthier in his reader’s eyes, says Tennyson, who, of all recent English poets, was most swayed by Virgil’s influence. Tennyson it is who has most nearly reproduced the cadences and charm of the Georgies in the lines—

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tithe and vineyard, hive and horse and herd; All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word.

During his early years Virgil is supposed to have written three shorter poems, the Ciris, the Moretum, and the Culex. He also attempted to write a historical epic, and now again, in the prologue of the third book of the

Georgies, he mentions that he is approaching a far greater task. And he set himself to write a poem which would embody the pageantry of Roman history and vindicate the unity of Roman Italy; would have vital human interest, and find expression in romantic adventure; would exalt the new regime and would lift itself into the higher sphere of philosophy and religion.

NEAR DESPAIR.

At time his difficulties brought him near to despair. “I think myself almost mad to have embarked upon it,” he wrote in a letter to the Emperor Augustus, fragments of which have been preserved. In the poem he told the story of Aeneas, the founder of Rome, the capture and fall of Troy; Aeneas’s wanderings over the seven seas, the founding of the city and the setting up of a new kingdom. To write it he studied deeply Greek, the earlier Latin poets, history, archaeology, science—pouring into it all his thought and accumulated learning, so that, from being a national epic, the Aeneid became something greater, an epic of civilisation and humanity. The poet spent ten years on its composition, but thought it still unfinished when he set out in 19 B.C. for a short visit to Greece, from which he returned only to die. On his death bed he requested that it should be destroyed, but Augustus forbade this, and ordered that it should be published just as he had left it. Virgil’s poetry was first used in a secondary school in 26 8.C., and within > century after his death came to be regarded as a Bible, from which men sought guidance. His influence can be traced in the works of Bede and Cynewulf, in Chaucer-

Glory and honour, Virgil Mantuan, Be to thy name! and I shall as I can Follow thy lantern as thou gost biforn!

—in passages of Wordsworth’s Prelude and in Keats’ Hyperion and Lama. Matthew Arnold in The Virgilian cry, The sense of tears in mortal things, echoes the throbbing music of Virgil’s wistful phrase, "lacrimae rerum,” the tears of things. Such lovely phrases and half lines are frequent—the shadowiness of fame; the flickering light of an inextinguishable hope; the longing for rest; the sorrow of departing and. the keen grief over the departed. Milton modelled “Paradise Lost” on the “Aeneid,” drawing from it not only the epic structure, the management of rhythm, phrasing and diction, but. at times an almost literal translation. “Thick as the autumnal leaves that strew the woods in Valambrosa”—“Quam multa in silvus autumni frigore primo lapsa cadunt folia,” is a frequently quoted instance. So Virgil’s work comes to us, not only with its original virtue and charm, but with the addition of the vision and experiences of the great among the English poets—not only a classic, but a human document.