Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist

It seems early March is a popular time for announced award longlists.  This one is an American-based fiction translation award, the Best Translated Book Award, which provides an interesting alternative to the UK-based Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.  Below is the longlist of 25, with works read bolded and works owned but not yet read in italics.  Finalists will be announced April 15th, with winners announced on April 28th for fiction (there is also a poetry list that I'll post later).  Three read and one owned - reading work to be done after Lent ends, it seems.

Horses of God by Mahi Binebine, translated from the French by Lulu Norman (Morocco; Tin House)

Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter (Romania; Archipelago Books)


Textile by Orly Castel-Bloom, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu (Israel; Feminist Press)

Sleet by Stig Dagerman, translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman (Sweden; David R. Godine)


The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Italy; Europa Editions)

Tirza by Arnon Grunberg, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett (Netherlands; Open Letter Books)


Her Not All Her by Elfriede Jelinek, translated from the German by Damion Searls (Austria; Sylph Editions)

My Struggle: Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Norway; Archipelago Books)


Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (Hungary; New Directions) 

Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull (Ukraine; NYRB)


The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor (Argentina; New Vessel Press)

The Infatuations by Javier Marías, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Spain; Random House) - Read in Spanish


A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters (Japan; Other Press)

In the Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (Spain; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)


The African Shore by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, translated from the Spanish by Jeffrey Gray (Guatemala; Yale University Press)

Through the Night by Stig Sæterbakken, translated from the Norwegian by Seán Kinsella (Norway; Dalkey Archive)


Commentary by Marcelle Sauvageot, translated from the French by Christine Schwartz Hartley & Anna Moschovakis (France; Ugly Duckling Presse)

Leg Over Leg Vol. 1 by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies (Lebanon; New York University Press)


The Whispering Muse by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb (Iceland; FSG)

The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent (Netherlands; Pushkin Press)


The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym Topol, translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker (Czech Republic; Portobello Books)

The End of Love by Marcos Giralt Torrente, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (Spain; McSweeney’s)


Red Grass by Boris Vian, translated from the French by Paul Knobloch (France; Tam Tam Books)

City of Angels, or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud by Christa Wolf, translated from the German by Damion Searls (Germany; FSG)

Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (China; University of Oklahoma Press)

Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction longlist announced

Somehow, I missed hearing about this over the weekend (I blame the people I follow on Twitter; very spotty coverage, etc.), but the Women's Prize for Fiction, now sponsored by Baileys, just released their longlist of 20 titles.  I have had the good fortune to read a quarter of the nominees and if these are any indication, then the longlist may be one of the more impressive ones announced so far this year.  Here is the list (finalists to be announced April 7th, with the winner to be announced June 4th).  If I have time in May, I'll review the finalists.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah

Margaret Atwood - MaddAddam

Suzanne Berne –  The Dogs of Littlefield

Fatima Bhutto - The Shadow of the Crescent Moon

Claire Cameron –  The Bear

Lea Carpenter - Eleven Days

M.J. Carter - The Strangler Vine

Eleanor Catton - The Luminaries

Deborah Kay Davies - Reasons She Goes to the Woods

Elizabeth Gilbert - The Signature of All Things

Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

Rachel Kushner - The Flamethrowers

Jhumpa Lahiri - The Lowland

Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

Eimear McBride - A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

Charlotte Mendelson - Almost English

Anna Quindlen - Still Life with Bread Crumbs

Elizabeth Strout - The Burgess Boys

Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

Evie Wyld - All The Birds, Singing

Aeneid translation notes, Book I, lines 657-756

Now to post my translation of the final 100 lines of Book I.  In these lines, Venus, as if she were in an old Folger's cofee commercial, has secretly replaced Ascanius, Aenea's son (and her grandson), with her son Cupid, in order to make Dido fall in love with Aeneas.  Yes, this is one of the earliest soap opera angles still extant, but the payoff perhaps is a bit different than typical soap opera fare.  The concluding lines set up Aeneas' recounting of the previous seven years, between the Fall of Troy and his arrival in Carthage, in Books II and III.  Speaking of said books, outside of a stray passage on an exam, I did not translate anything from those books for my 1994 intermediate Latin course, so I am likely going to engage in a years-long translation of those books and others not covered (we did translate about half of Book IV and a couple excerpts from Book VI), just to say that I did so.  And now for the rest of Book I:

At Cytherea novas artes, nova pectore versat
Consilia, ut faciem mutatus et ora Cupido
pro dulci Ascanio veniat, donisque furentem
incendat reginam, atque ossibus implicet ignem;
quippe domum timet ambiguam Tyriosque bilinguis;
urit atrox Iuno, et sub noctem cura recursat.
Ergo his aligerum dictis adfatur Amorem:

'Nate, meae vires, mea magna potentia solus,
nate, patris summi qui tela Typhoia temnis,
ad te confugio et supplex tua numina posco.
Frater ut Aeneas pelago tuus omnia circum
litora iactetur odiis Iunonis iniquae,
nota tibi, et nostro doluisti saepe dolore.
Hunc Phoenissa tenet Dido blandisque moratur 
vocibus; et vereor, quo se Iunonia vertant
hospitia; haud tanto cessabit cardine rerum.
Quocirca capere ante dolis et cingere flamma
reginam meditor, ne quo se numine mutet,
sed magno Aeneae mecum teneatur amore.
Qua facere id possis, nostram nunc accipe mentem.
Regius accitu cari genitoris ad urbem
Sidoniam puer ire parat, mea maxima cura,
dona ferens, pelago et flammis restantia Troiae:
hunc ego sopitum somno super alta Cythera
aut super Idalium sacrata sede recondam,
ne qua scire dolos mediusve occurrere possit.
Tu faciem illius noctem non amplius unam
falle dolo, et notos pueri puer indue voltus,
ut, cum te gremio accipiet laetissima Dido
regalis inter mensas laticemque Lyaeum,
cum dabit amplexus atque oscula dulcia figet,
occultum inspires ignem fallasque veneno.'

Paret Amor dictis carae genetricis, et alas
exuit, et gressu gaudens incedit Iuli.
At Venus Ascanio placidam per membra quietem
inrigat, et fotum gremio dea tollit in altos
Idaliae lucos, ubi mollis amaracus illum
floribus et dulci adspirans complectitur umbra. 

All the while Cytherean Venus keeps turning new plans, new artifices in her heart, so that Cupid's face and mouth may arrive in place of dear Ascanius, may inflame the queen's bones to madness.  Truly the goddess fears the deceitful, double-tongued Tyrians, the thought of fierce Juno keeps vexing her at night.  Therefore these words she addressed to winged Love:  "Son, my strength, my great power, you alone disdain the Typhoean weapons of Jupiter.  I flee to you and as a suppliant I seek your divine power.  That your brother Aeneas is being tossed about all the seas because of the fierce hatred of Juno, this you know, and you have often grieved with me.  Now Phoenician Dido has him and is delaying him with her blandishments and I fear what may come of her Junoian hospitality:  by no means will she cease at such a crisis.  For this reason, I am considering capturing her with wiles and encircling her with passion, so that she will not be changed by another divinity, so that she herself may be held by me with a great love for Aeneas.  Now accept my thought on how we will do this:  the royal son, beloved by his father, has been called to the city of the Phoenicians and he is preparing to go, whom I care about the most, bringing gifts of Troy remaining from fire and sea; I will hide him drugged into sleep upon high Cythera or upon Idalium in a temple sacred to me, whereby he will not be able to know my deceit or to interfere in the midst of them.  You shall for one night, no longer, by cunning assume his appearance and don the boy's face, since it is well known to you, in order that, when Dido takes you in her royal lap amid the table and the Lyaean wine, when she gives you and embrace and plants a fragrant kiss, you shall breathe into her the invisible fire and poison of love and she will not know."  Cupid obeyed the words of his beloved mother and he doffed his wings and laughing he strode the walk of Iulus.  But Venus diffused quiet and rest into Ascanius' limbs, and taking him to her bosom the goddess bore him to the groves of high Idalia, where the soft, sweet marjoram flowered and breathed its sweet shade, embracing him.  

And now for Cupid to have his fun...along with more feast descriptions that would make an epic fantasy author weep for the ability to describe the feast so:

Iamque ibat dicto parens et dona Cupido
regia portabat Tyriis, duce laetus Achate.
Cum venit, aulaeis iam se regina superbis
aurea composuit sponda mediamque locavit.
Iam pater Aeneas et iam Troiana iuventus
conveniunt, stratoque super discumbitur ostro.
Dant famuli manibus lymphas, Cereremque canistris
expediunt, tonsisque ferunt mantelia villis.
Quinquaginta intus famulae, quibus ordine longam
cura penum struere, et flammis adolere Penatis;
centum aliae totidemque pares aetate ministri,
qui dapibus mensas onerent et pocula ponant.
Nec non et Tyrii per limina laeta frequentes
convenere, toris iussi discumbere pictis.
Mirantur dona Aeneae, mirantur Iulum
flagrantisque dei voltus simulataque verba,
[pallamque et pictum croceo velamen acantho.]
Praecipue infelix, pesti devota futurae,
expleri mentem nequit ardescitque tuendo
Phoenissa, et pariter puero donisque movetur.
Ille ubi complexu Aeneae colloque pependit
et magnum falsi implevit genitoris amorem,
reginam petit haec oculis, haec pectore toto
haeret et interdum gremio fovet, inscia Dido,
insidat quantus miserae deus; at memor ille
matris Acidaliae paulatim abolere Sychaeum
incipit, et vivo temptat praevertere amore
iam pridem resides animos desuetaque corda.

And now happy Cupid goes obeying his mother's words, bearing gifts to the Tyrians, happily following the lead of Achates.  When he arrives, the queen has placed herself on a couch in the middle with golden tapestries about her.  Now father Aeneas and the Trojan youths come together and recline upon a crimson tapestry.  Servants give them water for their hands, and baskets of bread and they brought out napkins with clipped tufts of hair.  Within there are fifty maidservants, in a long line, whose task it was to lay out the food and to worship the household gods with flames, one hundred other women servants and men servants of similar age, they are the ones who load the table with the feast and hand out the goblets.  Likewise also the Tyrians, crowding through the happy doors, come together, biddened they recline on the embroidered couch.  They admire Aeneas's gifts, Iulus, with the glowing face of the god and his feigned words, and the cloak and robe embroidered with yellow acanthus.  Especially unfortunate, plagued by future doom, her mind unable to be satisfied, Dido burned with gazing and by the boy and the gifts was equally moved.  When he embraces Aeneas he hung on his neck and satisfies the great love of his pretended father, he seeks the queen.  Dido's eyes and her heart hang wholly on him and sometimes fondling him on her lap, the unfortunate woman unaware how a great god sat there.  But mindful of his Acidalian mother, gradually he begins to remove the memory of Sychaeus from Dido and trying to surpass with a loving love for Aeneas a spirit for some time unstirred and a heart now having become unaccustomed to love.

And now that Love has struck Dido, the action falls toward the final scene of Book I, where she asks Aeneas to tell of his adventures from the Fall of Troy to his arrival here in Carthage.

Postquam prima quies epulis, mensaeque remotae,
crateras magnos statuunt et vina coronant.
Fit strepitus tectis, vocemque per ampla volutant
atria; dependent lychni laquearibus aureis
incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt.
Hic regina gravem gemmis auroque poposcit
implevitque mero pateram, quam Belus et omnes
a Belo soliti; tum facta silentia tectis:
'Iuppiter, hospitibus nam te dare iura loquuntur,
hunc laetum Tyriisque diem Troiaque profectis
esse velis, nostrosque huius meminisse minores.
Adsit laetitiae Bacchus dator, et bona Iuno;
et vos, O, coetum, Tyrii, celebrate faventes.'
Dixit, et in mensam laticum libavit honorem,
primaque, libato, summo tenus attigit ore,
tum Bitiae dedit increpitans; ille impiger hausit
spumantem pateram, et pleno se proluit auro
post alii proceres. Cithara crinitus Iopas
personat aurata, docuit quem maximus Atlas.
Hic canit errantem lunam solisque labores;
unde hominum genus et pecudes; unde imber et ignes;
Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones;
quid tantum Oceano properent se tinguere soles
hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Ingeminant plausu Tyrii, Troesque sequuntur.
Nec non et vario noctem sermone trahebat
infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem,
multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa;
nunc quibus Aurorae venisset filius armis,
nunc quales Diomedis equi, nunc quantus Achilles.
'Immo age, et a prima dic, hospes, origine nobis
insidias,' inquit, 'Danaum, casusque tuorum,
erroresque tuos; nam te iam septima portat
omnibus errantem terris et fluctibus aestas.'

When the first lull in the feasting comes with the removal of the tables, they set up great bowls full of wine and they wreathe it with garlands.  Noise fills the palace and their voices roll in the spacious hall; they hand down lamps from the gold-paneled ceiling and being lit the lamp's flames conquer the night.  Dido demands the bowl heavy with gems and gold and fills it with unmixed wine, which Belus and all from Belus were accustomed to drink; then silence was made in the hall:  "Jupiter, for they say that you give the laws for hosts, may you wish this day to be happy for the Tyrians and those who had set out from Troy and may you want our children to remember this happy day.  May Bacchus the giver of joy and good Juno be present and may you, O Tyrians, celebrate this favorable union."  She speaks and she pours the sacrifical wine onto the table and then after the libation has been poured, she first touches it, just barely, with the top of her lip; then chiding she gives it to Bitius; he quickly guzzles it, splashing the frothing wine over himself, after which the other nobles follow suit.  Long-haired Iopas plays his gilded harp, which great Atlas taught him.  He sings of the wandering moon and the sun's eclipses, from what source the human race and animals came, causes of rain and lightning, of Arcturus and watery Hyades and the twin Triones; why the winter suns hasten so much to dip themselves into Ocean, or what delay hinders the lazy nights.  The Tyrians redouble their applause and the Trojans follow.  Likewise, unfortunate Dido was drawing out the night with varied conversation and she was drinking deep draughts of love, asking much about Priam, much about Hector, now what Aurora's son's armor was when he came, now about the type of Diomede's horses, about how great was Achilles.  "Rather that you come and from the first speak to us, guest, of the beginning of the treachery," she said, "of the Greeks and the cause of your wanderings; for this is now the seventh summer that has carried you on every land and sea."

And with this, my 1994 translation of Book I comes to a close.  I have come to enjoy editing and posting this 20 year-old translation more than I realize, and perhaps after a short break, I will test my rusty Latin translation skills and present a prose translation of the other books in the months and years to come.  Later, I'll post my thoughts on the overall story of Book I, more in the vein of an appreciation than anything else.

2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist announced

This past Friday, the longlist for the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced (the shortlist of six will be announced April 8).  Four of the titles I've read before (three in translation, one in Spanish) and this looks to be a promising list.  After Easter, when I will start buying books again, I'll look into covering at least the finalists, time permitting).

Sinan Antoon, The Corpse Washer (Arabic; translated by the author) Yale University Press

Hassan Blasim, The Iraqi Christ (Arabic; trans. Jonathan Wright) Comma Press

Julia Franck, Back to Back (German; trans. Anthea Bell) Harvill Secker

Sayed Kashua, Exposure (Hebrew; trans. Mitch Ginsberg) Chatto & Windus

Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo (Japanese; trans. Allison Markin Powell) Portobello Books (I read this last year as The Briefcase; 2012 Man Asian Prize finalist)

Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Man in Love (Norwegian; trans. Don Bartlett) Harvill Secker

Andrej Longo, Ten (Italian; trans. Howard Curtis) Harvill Secker

Ma Jian, The Dark Road (Chinese; trans. Flora Drew) Chatto & Windus

Andreï Makine, Brief Loves that Live Forever (French; trans. Geoffrey Strachan) MacLehose Press

Javier Marías, The Infatuations (Spanish; trans. Margaret Jull Costa) Hamish Hamilton (Read in Spanish when it came out; also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award, to be announced this week)

Hubert Mingarelli, A Meal in Winter (French; trans. Sam Taylor) Portobello Books

Yoko Ogawa, Revenge (Japanese; trans. Stephen Snyder) Harvill Secker

Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir, Butterflies in November (Icelandic; trans. Brian FitzGibbon) Pushkin Press

Jón Kalman Stefánsson, The Sorrow of Angels (Icelandic; trans. Philip Roughton) MacLehose Press

Birgit Vanderbeke, The Mussel Feast (German; trans. Jamie Bulloch) Peirene Press

Aeneid translation notes, Book I, lines 561-656

Now the story of Book I is beginning to draw to a close.  The scattered Trojans have arrived, almost as supplicants, to the Libyan shore and Queen Dido has come to render her judgment.  From here, the story begins to turn into a tragedy of the sort that centuries later the likes of Shakespeare could turn into something poignant.  However, this is but one of the many twists and turns in the narrative of "that man marked by his piety"; other facets are soon to come to the fore.  What I recall from first reading this in Latin 20 years ago is that while on the surface the love story that is introduced in the final 200 lines of Book I can seem rather stilted by modern standards, there is a symbolic level, between nascent Carthage and the Rome-to-be, that adds more layers to what transpires.  While this section stops just short of the introduction of the love angle, there are signs here of what is to come when Aeneas and Achates emerge from their cloud hiding to greet their lost comrades.

Tum breviter Dido, voltum demissa, profatur:
'Solvite corde metum, Teucri, secludite curas.
Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt
moliri, et late finis custode tueri.
Quis genus Aeneadum, quis Troiae nesciat urbem,
virtutesque virosque, aut tanti incendia belli?
Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni,
nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol iungit ab urbe.
Seu vos Hesperiam magnam Saturniaque arva,
sive Erycis finis regemque optatis Acesten,
auxilio tutos dimittam, opibusque iuvabo.
Voltis et his mecum pariter considere regnis;
urbem quam statuo vestra est, subducite navis;
Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur.
Atque utinam rex ipse Noto compulsus eodem
adforet Aeneas! Equidem per litora certos
dimittam et Libyae lustrare extrema iubebo,
si quibus eiectus silvis aut urbibus errat.'

Then Dido briefly with a downcast look said:  "Dismiss fear from your hearts, Trojans, shut out grief.  Harsh necessity and the newness of the realm force me to make such things and guards to watch far and wide the boundary.  Who does not know of the followers of Aeneas nor of the city of Troy, of the valor of its men or the fires of the great war?  We Phoenicians do not have such hard hearts nor does the sun bridle his horses so far away from Carthage.  Whether you do go to mighty Hesperia and the Saturnian lands or if you choose the summit of Eryx and Acestes for a king, I will help send you all on your way with my wealth.  Or is it your weill to settle in this realm as equals?  The city which is being built, it is yours; draw up your ships, there will be no difference between Trojan and Carthaginian to me.  And oh would that your great leader himself would appear.  Indeed, I will send out reliable men throughout the shores and I will order them to search the extreme limits of Libya, if, as a castaway he is wandering in any of my woods and any of my towns."

 I had to fill in a gap of a couple of lines and I reworded a couple of phrases here, but on the whole this is what I wrote in 1994.  I think the loftiness of Dido's speech can be seen here in my translation, but some of it is perhaps a bit much, at least for those who read this and don't hear the intonations of the original.  Now for Aeneas' sudden appearance at this audience:

His animum arrecti dictis et fortis Achates
et pater Aeneas iamdudum erumpere nubem
ardebant. Prior Aenean compellat Achates:
'Nate dea, quae nunc animo sententia surgit?
omnia tuta vides, classem sociosque receptos.
Unus abest, medio in fluctu quem vidimus ipsi
submersum; dictis respondent cetera matris.'  

Vix ea fatus erat, cum circumfusa repente
scindit se nubes et in aethera purgat apertum.
Restitit Aeneas claraque in luce refulsit,
os umerosque deo similis; namque ipsa decoram
caesariem nato genetrix lumenque iuventae
purpureum et laetos oculis adflarat honores:
quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi flavo
argentum Pariusve lapis circumdatur auro.

Tum sic reginam adloquitur, cunctisque repente
improvisus ait: 'Coram, quem quaeritis, adsum,
Troius Aeneas, Libycis ereptus ab undis.
O sola infandos Troiae miserata labores,
quae nos, reliquias Danaum, terraeque marisque
omnibus exhaustos iam casibus, omnium egenos,
urbe, domo, socias, grates persolvere dignas
non opis est nostrae, Dido, nec quicquid ubique est
gentis Dardaniae, magnum quae sparsa per orbem.
Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid
usquam iustitia est et mens sibi conscia recti,
praemia digna ferant. Quae te tam laeta tulerunt
saecula? Qui tanti talem genuere parentes?
In freta dum fluvii current, dum montibus umbrae
lustrabunt convexa, polus dum sidera pascet,
semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt,
quae me cumque vocant terrae.' Sic fatus, amicum
Ilionea petit dextra, laevaque Serestum,
post alios, fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum.

Their spirits were raised by these words and brave Achates and father Aeneas for some time were eager to break out of the cloud.  Achates first spoke of Aeneas:  "Goddess-born, what purpose now surges in your soul?  All are safe, you see, ships and comrades received.  One is missing, which we saw ourselves sink in the middle of the sea; the rest correspond to your mother's words."  Scarely had he finished when suddenly the cloud that poured around them parted and dissolved in the open sky.  Aeneas remained and in the clear light his face and shoulders shined like a god's; and indeed Venus herself breathed on her son's beautiful locks and added the ruddy glow of youth and joyous grace to his eyes:  such beauty as the hands of an artist add to ivory, or where silver or Parian stone is surrounded by yellow gold.  Then he addressed the queen, unexpected by everyone, he suddenly said these words:  "In your presence, I, the man whom you are seeking, am present, the Trojan Aeneas, saved from the Libyan sea.  Oh, only you have pitied the accursed hardships of the Trojans, which us, the remnants left by the Greeks, exhausted now by misfortune everywhere on land and on sea, lacking everything, a city, a home you offer to share, it is not in our power to pay fully the gratitude worthy of you, Dido, nor in the power of whatever of the Trojan race there is anywhere, which are dispersed across the great world.  To you may the gods bring, if they regard the name of piety, if justice counts for anything anywhere and if to their minds is a conscious to itself a virtue, a fitting reward.  What so happy of an age produced you?  What so marvelous of parents have borne such a lady?  While into the sea rivers flow, while the shadows traverse the mountains, while the sky feeds the stars, your honor, your name, and your praise always will remain, whatever lands call me."  Saying this, Aeneas sought the right hand of Ilioneus and the left hand of Serestus, next the others, and brave Gyas and brave Cloanthus.

 I loved the metaphors employed here to describe the emergent hero.  It may be a bit too much again for some, but it is beautiful-sounding to me.  Now on Dido's greeting of the hero and the dinner plans that follow:

Obstipuit primo aspectu Sidonia Dido,
casu deinde viri tanto, et sic ore locuta est:
'Quis te, nate dea, per tanta pericula casus
insequitur? Quae vis immanibus applicat oris?
Tune ille Aeneas, quem Dardanio Anchisae
alma Venus Phrygii genuit Simoentis ad undam?
Atque equidem Teucrum memini Sidona venire
finibus expulsum patriis, nova regna petentem
auxilio Beli; genitor tum Belus opimam
vastabat Cyprum, et victor dicione tenebat.
Tempore iam ex illo casus mihi cognitus urbis
Troianae nomenque tuum regesque Pelasgi.
Ipse hostis Teucros insigni laude ferebat,
seque ortum antiqua Teucrorum ab stirpe volebat.
Quare agite, O tectis, iuvenes, succedite nostris.
Me quoque per multos similis fortuna labores
iactatam hac demum voluit consistere terra.
Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.'

Sic memorat; simul Aenean in regia ducit
tecta, simul divom templis indicit honorem.
Nec minus interea sociis ad litora mittit
viginti tauros, magnorum horrentia centum
terga suum, pinguis centum cum matribus agnos,
munera laetitiamque dii.

At domus interior regali splendida luxu
instruitur, mediisque parant convivia tectis:
arte laboratae vestes ostroque superbo,
ingens argentum mensis, caelataque in auro
fortia facta patrum, series longissima rerum
per tot ducta viros antiqua ab origine gentis. 

 
Sidonian Dido stood agape at first sight, then at the many misfortunes of the man, and she said thus from her mouth:  "What misfortune, goddess-born, pursues you through so many dangers?  What force drives you to these dreadful shores?  Are you that Aeneas who to the Trojan Anchises kind Venus bore in Phrygia by the waters of Simois?  And indeed I recall that Teucer, coming to Sidon, expelled from his country's borders, seeking Belus to help found a new kingdom; when my father Belus was ravaging fertile Cyprus and it was held defeated under his sway.  From that time on, it has been known to me the misfortune of the city of Troy, your name and the names of the Greek kings.  Although Teucer himself was an enemy, he extolled the glories of Troy and he often wished that he had been born of the race of the ancient Trojans.  Oh, therefore, come, young men, enter into my house.  Fortune also tossed me about in many similar hardships until at last it would have it that I halt here on this land.  I know from my evil misfortunes to not ignore those suffering seeking help."  Thus she recalled; at the same time, she led Aeneas to her regal abode, at the same time she orders a sacrifice in the temple of the gods.  Meanwhile, she moreover sends twenty bulls to the comrades on the shore, a hundred great bristling hog backs, a hundred fat lambs with their mothers, as gifts and to celebrate the day.  However, in the inner part of the palace was being prepared with regal luxury, and in the halls they prepared a banquet feast; in the house the tapestries were worked with skill and was of proud purple, an enormous display of silver is on the tables, engraved with gold the brave deeds of her ancestors, a very long succession of deeds through so many heroes back to the beginnings of her people.

George R.R. Martin has nothing on feast descriptions here...

Aeneas (neque enim patrius consistere mentem
passus amor) rapidum ad navis praemittit Achaten,
Ascanio ferat haec, ipsumque ad moenia ducat;
omnis in Ascanio cari stat cura parentis.
Munera praeterea, Iliacis erepta ruinis,
ferre iubet, pallam signis auroque rigentem,
et circumtextum croceo velamen acantho,
ornatus Argivae Helenae, quos illa Mycenis,
Pergama cum peteret inconcessosque hymenaeos,
extulerat, matris Ledae mirabile donum:
praeterea sceptrum, Ilione quod gesserat olim,
maxima natarum Priami, colloque monile
bacatum, et duplicem gemmis auroque coronam.
Haec celerans ita ad naves tendebat Achates. 

Aeneas (parental love could not indeed suffer his mind to stand fast) sent swift Achates back to the ships, so that he should take this news to Ascanius and to lead him to the city; all of the care of the father were for dear Ascanius.  He ordered for gifts snatched from the ruins of Troy, a figured robe stiff with gold and a veil woven with the golden acanthus, the arrangement of the Greek Helen, which she had taken from Mycenae when she was leaving for Troy and her unholy marriage, a fabulous gift of her mother Lyda; the sceptor that the oldest of Priam's daughters, Ilione, held, and a necklace strung with pearls and a double crown with gems and gold.  Achates, given these orders, hastened his way toward the ships.

Vergil makes a surprising mistake here; Helen flees from Sparta, not Mycenae.  Again, the descriptions are purposely redundant in order to create a larger rhythm here, one that perhaps is largely lost on modern readers used to fewer descriptions of things being collected into a group.

The next scene will show Venus intervening again in the affairs of her son, yet this time it would seem to go against the destiny that Jupiter foretold.  If I have the time, in the next few days, I'll post the final 100 lines of Book I in a single post, or perhaps split it in twain. 

Interesting article about changes in reading related to the digitalization of text

A couple of days ago, I saw a link to an article by Franco Moretti called "Changes."  Much of what he said resonated with me, even when I did not always agree with the points being made.  Of particular interest is this bit from the introduction:

The first thing that happens, when a literary historian starts using computers to think about literature, is that the object of study changes. Not just the tool; the object itself. “The objects studied by contemporary historians” have this peculiarity, Krzysztof Pomian observed some time ago, that “no one has ever seen them, and no one could ever have seen them […] because they have no equivalent within lived experience.” He was thinking of things like demographic evolution and literacy rates, and it’s true, no one can have a “lived experience” of these “invisible objects,” as he also calls them; our objects are different of course, they are literary ones, but they too have no equivalent within the usual experience of literature.

 I remember a similar discussion regarding the shift of object study when I was in grad school and our class was discussing E.P. Thompson's Customs in Common, in particular the shift in temporal and spatial values as English society shifted from a predominantly oral culture to a predominantly print one in conjunction with the introduction of accurate mechanical clocks.  There are certainly some parallels that can be made between our times and those of early modern to early industrial European societies.  Yet I am uncertain if Moretti fully argues his case in this article, as there were times that I felt that more could have been said about the possible parallels that I note above.  Regardless, it is a thought provoking article and certainly worth one's time and consideration.

Because this blog needs occasional weirdness...

 Inspired or deranged? I leave it up to you to decide...