Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Tracing Fires
As a Latin student who has been translating the Aeneid all semester, the line in chapter eleven of the first part of Jude the Obscure reading “[t]he sight of it, unimpaired, within its screen of grass and nettles, lit in his soul a spark of the old fire” (73) brought a line from Vergil’s work immediately to my mind, before even the helpful interference of the note at the back of the novel. The full sentence from the Aeneid is “Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.” Dido, Queen of Carthage, is speaking to her sister, Anna, saying, in rough translation “I recognize the trace of old flame.” But this line from the Aeneid is hardly singular in Jude the Obscure – Hardy seems to be quoting one or another Latin or Greek author in every paragraph. But in this case (and, indeed, perhaps in many others), I think that the allusion itself deserves more attention than just a brief nod towards its origin and a confirmation that Hardy was fond of the passage, as provided by the endnotes.
What seems more important to me is what happens to Dido both before and after she utters those so-memorable words, and how that might foreshadow certain occurrences in the text of Jude the Obscure. Dido, of course, is the same “self-immolating female” referenced in OMF, which other allusion, by itself, gives some interesting meaning to the reference in JtO. But it is not enough to know that Dido met with an unhappy end at her own hand (and indeed she did – though it is worthy to note that she stabbed herself pre-immolation, for those who desire accuracy). How did she get there, and what does “the trace of old flame” have to do with it? The story goes that Dido was married, happily, to a man named Sychaeus. Unfortunately, he was a rich man, and Dido had a covetous and evil brother, Pygmalion. Long-story-short, P kills S and Dido flees to distant lands with her sister and some faithful members of the Tyrian court. She founds Carthage and remains a virtuous widow for some time, fending off hordes of suitors who are attracted to her beauty, wealth, independence and charisma. Things are looking good for Dido. Then, Aeneas, son of Venus, comes along, stopping in Carthage on his way to found the glorious Roman race. Venus, who is the goddess of love, after all, makes Dido fall in love with Aeneas so she won’t kill him. That’s the part where Dido speaks the famous line. She’s in love, she has a new city, everything is going great! And things seem like they’re getting better for Jude, too, at this point in the novel. Unlike Dido, he’s not feeling the return of a long-denied propensity for romantic love, but he is indeed feeling a rekindling of passion – the passion for learning that Arabella had briefly damped.
But this classics student simply can’t let the reference end there. After all, I know what happens to Dido next. She and Aeneas come to some kind of agreement in a cave during a storm, which she calls “marriage” and he seems to pretty much call “convenient.” But, she is blissfully happy for a time, reveling in her newfound love. Can we predict a similar course for Jude, from this allusion in the text of the first part? From what I’ve read so far, it seems to hold true. Not only is Jude’s love of learning rekindled for a while, but he even begins to feel a new romantic love, as Dido does. But what’s up next for Dido? Oh dear, trouble ahead! Aeneas gets the word to move on from no one less impressive than Jupiter, and abandons Dido, reminding her classily that they were never really married in the first place. Dido promptly begins to go insane, and plots her own death, in part to ease her pain and in part to get back at Aeneas by uttering a really nasty deathbed curse. She builds a pyre of all the stuff he left behind, then climbs on top of it and falls on his sword. The pyre is burnt, and Dido is last glimpsed as a silent shade in the underworld. I predict an unhappy, tragic end for Jude. Possibly (probably!) he’ll be abandoned by at least one person that he loves… He may even kill himself. Hardy’s use of that particular phrase, so strongly suggestive of the line from the Aeneid, seems to me to be a very deliberate foreshadowing. I guess we’ll see how clever I think I am after I’ve read the rest of the book.
What seems more important to me is what happens to Dido both before and after she utters those so-memorable words, and how that might foreshadow certain occurrences in the text of Jude the Obscure. Dido, of course, is the same “self-immolating female” referenced in OMF, which other allusion, by itself, gives some interesting meaning to the reference in JtO. But it is not enough to know that Dido met with an unhappy end at her own hand (and indeed she did – though it is worthy to note that she stabbed herself pre-immolation, for those who desire accuracy). How did she get there, and what does “the trace of old flame” have to do with it? The story goes that Dido was married, happily, to a man named Sychaeus. Unfortunately, he was a rich man, and Dido had a covetous and evil brother, Pygmalion. Long-story-short, P kills S and Dido flees to distant lands with her sister and some faithful members of the Tyrian court. She founds Carthage and remains a virtuous widow for some time, fending off hordes of suitors who are attracted to her beauty, wealth, independence and charisma. Things are looking good for Dido. Then, Aeneas, son of Venus, comes along, stopping in Carthage on his way to found the glorious Roman race. Venus, who is the goddess of love, after all, makes Dido fall in love with Aeneas so she won’t kill him. That’s the part where Dido speaks the famous line. She’s in love, she has a new city, everything is going great! And things seem like they’re getting better for Jude, too, at this point in the novel. Unlike Dido, he’s not feeling the return of a long-denied propensity for romantic love, but he is indeed feeling a rekindling of passion – the passion for learning that Arabella had briefly damped.
But this classics student simply can’t let the reference end there. After all, I know what happens to Dido next. She and Aeneas come to some kind of agreement in a cave during a storm, which she calls “marriage” and he seems to pretty much call “convenient.” But, she is blissfully happy for a time, reveling in her newfound love. Can we predict a similar course for Jude, from this allusion in the text of the first part? From what I’ve read so far, it seems to hold true. Not only is Jude’s love of learning rekindled for a while, but he even begins to feel a new romantic love, as Dido does. But what’s up next for Dido? Oh dear, trouble ahead! Aeneas gets the word to move on from no one less impressive than Jupiter, and abandons Dido, reminding her classily that they were never really married in the first place. Dido promptly begins to go insane, and plots her own death, in part to ease her pain and in part to get back at Aeneas by uttering a really nasty deathbed curse. She builds a pyre of all the stuff he left behind, then climbs on top of it and falls on his sword. The pyre is burnt, and Dido is last glimpsed as a silent shade in the underworld. I predict an unhappy, tragic end for Jude. Possibly (probably!) he’ll be abandoned by at least one person that he loves… He may even kill himself. Hardy’s use of that particular phrase, so strongly suggestive of the line from the Aeneid, seems to me to be a very deliberate foreshadowing. I guess we’ll see how clever I think I am after I’ve read the rest of the book.
