The Primacy of Vision in Virgil's Aeneid

Chapter 2: Ruse and Revelation: Visions of the Divine and the Telos of Narrative

chapter 2 Ruse and Revelation visions of the divine and the telos of narrative n And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold! Bring me my Arrows of desire! Bring me my Spear! O Clouds, unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire! I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.1 william blake, ‘‘Jerusalem,’’ from Milton In the preface to his Milton, William Blake offers a lyric precursor to his longer edition of Jerusalem.2 Blake brings the fantastic visions seen in the Old and New Testament books of prophecy down to earth, specifically to England . By intentionally intertwining British topographical features with Bib24 Ruse and Revelation lical references, he transforms the world of prophecy into a clear and present reality for his British reader.3 Blake couches his poetic program in the form of a question. He asks whether the divine presence could have appeared in England and then proposes a related agenda for action: the prophet will struggle to transform England into Jerusalem, the land that the Lamb once physically occupied.These rhetorical questions obliquely establish the Lamb of God as a voyant-visible, depicted in a country that, though initially dark and foreboding, is to be positively refashioned as Jerusalem in the midst of England. Blake’s decision to work toward this goal of transforming England into a new holy land, shown by the repeated imperatives of the third stanza, is effected through the very thought of such a vision of the Lamb. Like Blake’s Lamb of God whose ‘‘countenance divine’’ inspires, Virgil’s gods sometimes participate in the narrative of the Aeneid and motivate Virgil ’s characters. In this chapter, I shall discuss the manner in which the gods are seen by and see human beings. Divine intervention demands and provokes swift human response, and the sight of a god moves the poem toward its telos.4 I will consider how a character’s sight of the gods—particularly Aeneas’ vision of Mercury—affects his actions. In Aeneas’ encounters with the divine, visual aspects of the narrative tend to outweigh words, particularly as the epic progresses. A god’s presence provokes response more than do a god’s verbal instructions.Visual deception, in such cases, is justified insofar as it points to the poem’s telos. I have divided the presentation of this topic into three sections. The first encompasses passages in which the gods are involved with some form of visual deception; for example, the gods’ appearances may be altered. In the second section of the chapter, I shall consider visual encounters with the supernatural that are not deceptive. In such cases, the gods are correctly perceived as divine beings by their human contacts, and vision of the divinity validates divine communication. The expected result is immediate human compliance, not merely religious awe.5 For Aeneas and Turnus, the degree to which each responds to the vision of a god tells us something about each character’s reliance upon and compliance with visual stimuli. Finally, I shall use the third section of this chapter to examine how Octavian /Augustus appears as an example of a semidivine character and offers a living example of the ideal voyant-visible. The structural position of visions of and allusions to Augustus in the Aeneid does not so much inspire Aeneas to fulfill his destiny in refounding Troy as it foreshadows the refounding of Rome by Augustus. Aeneas is not cognizant of the importance of the figure of the emperor whom he beholds, but his vision of him nevertheless justifies 25 the primacy of vision in virgil’s Aeneid ex post facto the poem’s telos. Let us begin, however, with a discussion of another encounter in which Aeneas is not fully aware of whom he beholds, namely, his own mother, in Book 1. seen/unseen Virgin Mother After Aeneas has regrouped his people on the Libyan shores, he and Achates explore the nearby area. In doing so, Aeneas encounters his mother,6 who is disguised as a virgin huntress, much like Athena’s appearance to...