A new novel about Lavinia written by Ursula Le Guin has just come out. Read Salon’s reviewhere.
“Oh Lavinia,” says the ghost of a poet to the title character of Ursula K. Le Guin’s new novel, “Lavinia,” “You are worth ten Camillas. And I never saw it.”
The ghost is Virgil, the great Latin poet whose masterpiece, the Aeneid, tells of the founding of Rome by Aeneas, a Trojan rendered homeless by the fall of his city to the Greeks. Lavinia — daughter of Latinus, king of the Latins — marries Aeneas at the end of his wanderings, but their wedding isn’t depicted in the Aeneid; Virgil died before he could finish the poem. Instead, the last scene ends in war, with Aeneas killing the prince of a neighboring tribe and a rival for Lavinia’s hand. (Camilla, an Amazon-like warrior queen, is another heroic casualty in the battle over who will rule the Latins.) Of Lavinia herself, the real Virgil wrote only that she blushed (as befitted a virtuous maiden) when her wedding was discussed. She never gets to say a single word.
Against all odds, in this age of flashy, bold and individualistic protagonists, Le Guin’s Lavinia feels paradoxically tranquil and vivid. Devoted to her father, who shares her love of “the ever-recurring rituals,” she must get by without the love of her mother, Amata, who has never forgiven Lavinia for surviving the epidemic that claimed her two sons. The drama of the novel hinges on Amata’s mad determination that her daughter marry Turnus — her nephew, a replacement for her lost sons and perhaps the object of less acceptable yearnings as well. An oracle tells Latinus that he must marry his daughter to a foreigner, and when Aeneas and his Trojans arrive, it is obvious to everyone but Amata who the bridegroom should be. Le Guin’s Aeneas is Virgil’s: an impressive man of honor and courage whose commitment to duty often requires him to conquer his own heart. War breaks out when the bellicose, strutting Turnus vows to defy Latinus’ wishes.
As for Lavinia, though no one (besides her father) takes her personal wishes much into account, she distrusts Turnus from the beginning; he lacks Aeneas’ great quality, his “piety.” When she is promised to the Trojan, she feels not love (as she’s never really met Aeneas), but a transcendent sense of destiny. “To hear myself promised as part of a treaty, exchanged like a cup or a piece of clothing, might seem as deep an insult as could be offered to a human soul,” she observes, but her betrothal leaves her paradoxically liberated. “I felt the same certainty I had seen in my father’s eyes. Things were going as they should go, and in going with them I was free.” The restraints of “religion and my duty to my people,” bonds that Le Guin’s earlier character, Tenar, found oppressive, are for Lavinia “part of me, not external, not enslaving; rather, in enlarging the scope of my soul and mind, they liberated me from the narrowness of the single self.”