ok now that you've mentioned it i reaaaally want to know how wilfred owen truly Got virgil, i would be so so interested in that, if you have the time to tell me about it!!!
oh i have no like academic stuff to back this up with itâs just something i think about A Lot...... the first vergil i ever read was aeneid 9 and nisus has this line like âthe glory of the deed is enough for meâ which was Major âchildren ardent for some desperate gloryâ moods. then this year we did aeneid 10 which is. we were thinking a lot about vergilâs attitude towards war in the poem and did this practice essay that was smth like âdoes vergil more justify or condemn war in book 10âł and like...... itâs not really Either so much as he Pities the Cost of war. âwar and the pity of war, the poetry is in the pityâ, like wilfred owen in the foreword to his book!
and then as we kept doing aeneid 10 there were a Whole Bunch of other things that were big wilfred owen moods. (i know this is Reversed and itâs wilfred owen who has Aeneid moods but. h) like i think Pity is a big emotion throughout the aeneid but itâs in the battle scenes especially, and with the focus on the victims of war And Also Their Families!!! and pallas and lausus to whom fate denies a homecoming, the young soldiers doomed for the sake of fate/the gods/romeâs destiny, either way a higher force that they have no control over!!! the archetype of the doomed twink!!
maybe im just noticing a bunch of Similarities between them? or maybe wilfred owen was like. actually influenced by vergil in more places than are Thought. so far iâve only seen Two things in wilfred owen that Other People have said are big vergil moods: the poem âarms and the boyâ which quite obviously Is, and the line âwhen much blood had clogged their chariot wheelsâ in strange meeting maybe picking up on 6.87 âet Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cernoâ (and i see the tiber foaming with much blood). but there is! more! i probably need to reread the aeneid and also wilfred owen but off the top of my head:
âlike a purple flower severed by the plow; / he fainted into death, like a poppy bending / its weary neck when rain weighs down its head.â (9.435-7) and âthe front line withers, / but they are troops who fade, not flowers / for poetsâ tearful foolingâ (insensibility) (but i could talk about that flower image A Lot bcs. other big things are going on there!!!)
âhe touched the enemy earth with gory lipsâ (10.489) and âtil slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mudâ (the last laugh)
âpallas, evander, everything was before his very eyesâ (10.515-6)Â and âin all my dreams before my helpless sightâ (dulce et decorum est)
âthe goddess draped her head / in a grey veil and plunged into the riverâ (12.885-6) and âthe pallor of girlsâ brows shall be their pallâ (anthem for doomed youth)















