#aeneidblogging

i think it's really nice that ursula le guin was careful to specifically mention in lavinia that vergil isn't so much a real historical person as a character we've all constructed in our collective imagination. because now she's also a character we've all constructed in our collective imaginations.

RIP vergil you died too soon your book would've done NUMBERS on tumblr if it was published as young adult fiction retelling of the Iliad

to the person on spotify whose aeneas playlist includes snakeskin by rina sawayama, arsonist’s lullabye by hozier, and brand new city by mitski: you are, from the bottom of my heart, the only motherfucker in this city who can handle me

the aeneid as a post-apocalyptic poem, yes sure, the fall of troy is the end of a world, but what about the aeneid as a pre-apocalyptic poem???? vergil does all this ideological work setting up augustus as the telos toward which the entire arc of history bends and you can argue how he really feels about that but regardless, doesn't it mean that augustus is the end? that there is nothing beyond him, nothing after him? vergil poises himself as writing at the top of the world and there's nowhere else to go from there when that moment passes