In this newsletter, we will explore Vergil’s ideas of wind, water, and sand, not so much as elements of nature, but in terms of an enveloping power that encircles senses and sensibility. (Aeneid: Book I, lines 1 –207).1
We encounter a sandy home that can be an acceptable dwelling, and reflect on acceptance and what it means to us.
Neptune’s Response
The god’s senses and sensibility
In lines 71 to 80 we witness Aeolus, the king and master of the stormy winds, being bribed by Juno to become the agent of her outrage and her personal vendetta against the Trojans. He breaches a “gate” (porta2) for the violent winds to raise the seas, with devastating effect on our hero Aeneas and his troubled fleet. Yet, the sea’s destructive turmoil is most offensive to the sea-god Neptune, and indeed, he feels it:
Interea magno misceri murmure pontum,
emissamque hiemem sensit Neptunus, et imis
stagna refusa vadis, graviter commotus; et alto
prospiciens, summa placidum caput extulit unda.
Disiectam Aeneae, toto videt aequore classem,
fluctibus oppressos Troas caelique ruina,
nec latuere doli fratrem Iunonis et irae.
(Verg. A. 124-130)
[...] Now Neptune sensed with stern displeasure
The roaring havoc that the storm let loose.
Even the still depths spurted up. He raised
His calm face from the surface and looked down.
He saw Aeneas’ ships thrown everywhere,
Trojans crushed under waves, the plunging sky.
Juno’s own brother knew her guile and rage.
(Ruden 2021, p.8)
The wonderful poetic alliteration: magno misceri murmure (Verg. A. 1.124) evokes the flowing surges with their deep murmuring sound, and Neptune, as the poet writes, senses (sensit, Verg. A.1.125) it. Neptune truly feels (sensit) the turmoil of the sea as if in a cold and wet winter (hiem). Moreover, he sees how even the stillest waters are drawn up from the deep: et imis / stagna refusa vadis (Verg. A. 1.125-126), and how the turbulence arises from within, and from beneath.
And even more, looking (prospiciens, Verg. A. 1.127) from a vantage point, Neptune sees (videt Verg. A. 1.128) Aeneas’ fleets and their struggles. And at its core, what Neptune could “see” was his sister (fratrem, Verg. A. 1.130 ) Juno’s rage (Iunonis … irae, Verg. A. 1.130), invisible to mortals, and he acted upon his observation, and immediately commanded the winds to cease.
Sic ait, et dicto citius tumida aequora placat,
collectasque fugat nubes, solemque reducit.
(Verg. A. 1. 142-143)
Faster than words, he calmed the swollen sea,
Chased off the mass of clouds, brought back the sun.
(Ruden 2021, p.9)
We see then how Neptune chases away the winds and restores the sea to peace and harmony (Verg. A.144-147).
As we encounter Neptune’s senses and sensibility, we assume that the god also has a body. His governance over the sea not only determines his rank among the deïties, but also constructs who he is: the personification of sea-nature, and the embodiment of the governance of the sea. Here, this responsibility is, literally, responding to the sea-storm. His determined and decisive response rests on the fact that he actually dwells in the sea. And the sea, in turn, defines and sharpens his senses and sensibility.
Therefore, even though we, as mortals, do not see Neptune, we still can feel, or, sense his presence through the motion of the sea, and through the changes that he brings to the sea.
In antiquity, gods played that role that science plays for us today: to provide an adequate explanation of the powers of nature. All natural phenomena – wind, water, sun, and soil – each has its personified deity. Here however, I would like to approach this from a different perspective, not from the nature of each element, but from their interaction. An agent implies a patient, and for wind and water together, the most fundamental patient is the immovable rock, once it is worn down to grains of sand.
Wind, Water, and Sand
The poetics of “enveloping”
In the Aeneid, the winds are conceived as a violent potential, and though arising from a common source deep in Aeolus cave, once set free, they fill the plane of humans and acquire the characteristics of the respective cardinal directions:
… ac venti, velut agmine facto,
qua data porta, ruunt et terras turbine perflant.
Incubuere mari, totumque a sedibus imis
una Eurusque Notusque ruunt creberque procellis
Africus, et vastos volvunt ad litora fluctus.
(Verg. A. 1.82-86)
The winds pour out. They spiral through the world:
The East and South gales, and the mass of whirlwinds
From Africa swoop down, uproot the sea,
And send enormous billows rolling shoreward.
(Ruden 2021, p.6)
The gigantic structure of the Roman gate Porta Nigra in Trier, Germany came to my mind when I saw the phrase: “qua data porta” (Verg.A.1.83), and one might imagine what volume of currents could go through such a gate, and how it would impact the world when “the gate is opened …”, i.e. when such massive commotion is legitimized. In this way, the poem’s winds are metaphors of the destructive power of civil disorder, of mobs, who, sweeping out after breaking through bulwarks and barriers, raise havoc in a self-reinforcing loop, escaping control.
The personified winds (venti, Verg. A.1. 82) are minor gods in the Roman pantheon, though Vergil does not refer to this personification and leaves them as abstracta, or as a pack of beasts. The Eastern wind is named Eurus, across from him we would have Zephyrus, the Western wind; Notus from the South, Africus South-West: in all Ptolemy recognizes twelve, and there may be more. But they all share one substance, their hurricane-like nature, here named procella (procellis, “tempest”, Verg. A.1. 85), especially characteristic of the fierce Northern gale of winter, Aquilo:
Talia iactanti stridens Aquilone procella
velum adversa ferit, fluctusque ad sidera tollit.
(Verg. A. 1. 102-103)
A screaming northern gale blew past his wild words
And slammed the sails and pulled a wave toward heaven.
(Ruden 2021, p.7)
When I read these passages about the wind, waves and the stormy sea, I have an image of a vortex, whirling, rolling that envelopes everything into its bosom, and finally smashes it into pieces.
Wind is portrayed as violent, blind energy, and it pushes, sweeps, enters into space. But it is through a com-motion of wind, water, and sand that the entire sea is thrown into chaos, ready to devour our hero Aeneas and his companions. Juno thought this would the end of the Trojans and the end of their fated establishment of their new home in Italy, because even the Italian altars, the gigantic rocks are exposed and moved by such fierce tsunami:
Hi summo in fluctu pendent; his unda dehiscens
terram inter fluctus aperit; furit aestus harenis.
Tris Notus abreptas in saxa latentia torquet—
saxa vocant Itali mediis quae in fluctibus aras—
dorsum immane mari summo; tris Eurus ab alto
in brevia et Syrtis urguet, miserabile visu,
inliditque vadis atque aggere cingit harenae.
(Verg. A. 1. 106-112)
Crews dangled on the crest or glimpsed the seabed
Between the waves. Sand poured through seething water.
The South Wind hurled them three times at the rocks
That lurked midway—Italians call them altars;
Their massive spine protrudes—three times the East Wind
Dashed them clear to the shallows—awful sight—
And rammed them tight, and ringed them with a sand wall.
(Ruden 2021, p.7)
The way the text describes the rocks (saxa, Verg.A.1.108) that are identified as the Italian “altars” (aras, Verg.A.1.109) reminds me of the Japanese proto-shinto belief in which sacred rocks (iwakura 岩座) on the seashore are literally encircled with ritual ropes (shimenawa 標縄). Although these two religious practices do not share a common cultural root.
The waters agitated by the winds appear as “currents” (fluctus, Verg.A.1. 103) and as “waves” (unda, Verg. A. 102). The currents are the driving force whereas the waves surge and overthrow everything, every person on the sea. In Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)’s famous ukiyo-e masterpiece The Great Wave off Kanagawa, such waves are visually displaying their threatening “claws”.
In addition to wind, water, and rocks, the passage also twice mentions the sand (harenis, Verg. A. 107; harenae, Verg. A. 112). Firstly, it is the raging storm that smites into the sands; lastly, an enclosing “sand wall” is generated by the commotion of wind and sea.
The Japanese director TESHIGAHARA Hiroshi (勅使河原 宏, 1927–2001) contemplates the relationships between human and sand through his masterpiece Woman in the Dunes (砂の女 Suna no Onna,1964). There, incessantly moved by the wind, the sand shapes the environment that both constructs and destroys every living being that it encounters, from a tiny insect to a sentient human. In his original novel, ABE Kōbō (安部 公房, 1924-1993) precisely describes the environment with one single sentence, “The smell of the sea envelopes the sands” (ABÉ 1964/1991, p.7). The single Latin word that Vergil chose to animate his verse is cingit (Verg A.1.112), that the wind encloses and makes “a sandy wall”.
The mutual reinforcement of wind, water and sand creates an indifferent environment, not only on the sea but on the land as well. For the poem, it is this harsh “natural” condition that Aeneas and his team were thrown into by divine will. Even in modern times, as Woman in the Dunes shows, to live with sand could only become a choice when there is none.
Sand
An acceptable home
Can sand become a home?
In Teshigahara’s film, living with sand can become a willing choice only after much struggle. But sand is felt, it is tangible, and it touches a deeper universality that is not subject to our individual desires. Similarly, we find a poetic scene right on the sand in the Aeneid when the Trojan warriors longed for the land after surviving this leg of their bizarre journey:
Huc septem Aeneas collectis navibus omni
ex numero subit; ac magno telluris amore
egressi optata potiuntur Troes harena,
et sale tabentis artus in litore ponunt.
(Verg. A. 1.170-173)
Aeneas landed seven ships, regrouped
From the whole fleet. The Trojans went ashore
In mighty, yearning love for that dry sand.
Dripping with briny water, they lay down.
(Ruden 2021, p.9-10)
Here, the original Latin interestingly tells us that the sand is the Trojans’ “choice” (optata…harena, Verg. A.1.172) due to their “great love of the land” (magno telluris amore, Verg. A.1.171). But this subtlety is lost in the translation: “yearning love for that dry sand” (Ruden 2021, p. 10). In fact, the sand is not exactly what they “yearn for”, and the landing location is simply a “choice” that is imposed by the fates. Yet, they accept it and celebrate it. In other words, the sandy home is not what the Trojans “want”, but what they appreciate, and such subtle differences are important.
Interestingly, Aeneas’ speech to his companions is not simply on their suffering of the past and the promise of the future, but the “bitter-sweet”3 memory that they would cherish after their trials:
Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantis
accestis scopulos, vos et Cyclopea saxa
experti: revocate animos, maestumque timorem
mittite: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
(Verg. A. 1. 200-203)
You veered toward Scylla’s frenzy, and the deep roar
At the cliffs, you saw the rocks the Cyclops threw.
Revive your hearts, shake off your gloomy fear.
Sometime you may recall today with pleasure.
(Ruden 2021, p.11)
The Latin verb iuvabit (Verg. A. 1.203) is quite telling about the Trojans’ state of mind when they arrive at their temporary sandy home: even just remembering how they struggled through hardship with courage and determination would bring joy to their heart in the future.
It would be a sweet flavour after tasting the bitterness, although the future was still unknown to them at the moment.
Indeed, who could ever tell, whether for Aeneas and his companions, landing on the shore of Libya is a misplaced fortune, or simply a misfortune? Can they ever come home?
This is the question that Teshigahara asks as well.
Bibliography
ABE Kōbō (1964), trans. Saunders, E. Dale. 1991. The Woman in the Dunes. Vintage Books.
Ruden, Sarah (trans.) (2021). The Aeneid. Yale University Press.
TESHIGAHARA Hiroshi (1964). Suna no Onna (Woman in the Dunes). (YouTube)
Vergil, Aeneid Book I. Perseus Project.
We read Vergil’s Aeneid together, every week for an hour, in a small online group, simultaneously, whether you are in Tokyo, Toronto, or anywhere in the world. We read aloud, enjoy, and openly discuss, translating between Latin, and English, Japanese, and Chinese, and German from time to time.
teiresias.views@gmail.com
Cite: CHEN Yi (2023) “Vergil’s Aeneid (III)”. Teiresia’s Views. 2023-01-25 https://teiresia.substack.com/p/vergils-aeneid-iii .
Though, we note, the opening Aeolus broke into the side of the mountain is not a gate; rather, a gate is a quintessential of civility, it is that which regulates passage through ramparts and walls, it is the antithesis to Aeolus’ violent breach of the walls of the cave. Here, the gods do not enforce order, they uproot it.
Here I refer to the Chinese idiom kǔ jìng gān lái 苦盡甘來 that describes a feeling that when one tastes all the bitterness, at the end it turns into a strange sweetness, a feeling that describes a long time of bitter struggle that turns into the sweetness of success.