The Poet's Truth

Thus far we have seen the poet-figures in the poem, Orpheus and the Georgic poet, as essentially parallel, most especially in their

nonmaterial goals and in their idealized vision of the past. For Orpheus this idealized past is embodied in Eurydice; for the Georgic poet it is embodied in the Golden Age. Orpheus and the Georgic poet are parallel also in daring. Orpheus is courageous in descending alone to the fearfulness of hell and in never abandoning his ideal of Eurydice. Instead he sings forever of his sorrow pure and uncompromised, at her loss. His music, like that of the nightingale to which he is compared (4.511–15), does not solace suffering but rather preserves it. The beauty of his song, at variance with the tragedy of which it sings, makes a beautiful thing of tragedy itself. Beauty is a value that the poet lends to the present. Similarly the Georgic poet terms himself daring (1.40, 2.175, 4.565). He too, throughout the Georgics, memorializes a retrospective ideal in his vision of the Golden Age. Both of these figures are different from Aristaeus, who never looks back but only forward—to success, to power, to apotheosis. If Eurydice does in some way embody an ideal, whether of nature or of the past, Aristaeus surely does not observe that fact. Much less, then, can he mourn it.^[49] From Orpheus' point of view, as well as from the Georgic poet's, Aristaeus would necessarily appear obtuse, ignorant of the true value of things, indifferent to beauty, without insight or pity. He expresses neither understanding nor regret; he does not see the consequences of the tale of Proteus for himself. These must be interpreted for him by his mother.^[50] (We remember that the original request that the poet makes of Caesar is that he have pity. Aristaeus never pities, but only succeeds.) In sum, Orpheus and the Georgic poet have some parallel visions and also differ in similar ways from Aristaeus.

If, however, we wish to understand the poet's truth, we must appreciate an important distinction between Orpheus and the Georgic poet, for they do not see entirely the same vision. The Georgic poet's truth, as reflected in his creation of the Aristaeus epyllion, with its myth of Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice and

[49] See Miles, 270f., for good remarks on the indifference of Aristaeus to Eurydice's fate.

[50] Contrast Putnam, Poem of the Earth, 11f., who feels that Aristaeus achieves a "unity of physical strength and mental understanding."

also with its image of the bougonia, reflects a vision more penetrating and subtle than that attributed to Orpheus.

Orpheus' song, as we have seen, is powerfully moving, sad, and nostalgic, as expressed in 4.464–66, 471–74, 481–84, and 510. His vision seems to linger on sorrow since he sees in Hades scenes of particular pathos (4.475–77). He sings what he sees, and consequently his song is continually of loss. Although there is a haunting, sorrowful beauty to his song, it is perhaps limited by its lack of complexity. Orpheus seems more interested in the past and in the tragic than in the true.

The Georgic poet's vision is subtler and more inclusive than that of Orpheus, for the Aristaeus epyllion, which he creates, expresses ambiguity and exchange, not only loss. The Georgic poet's vision is of the exchange of calf for bees, of death for life, of loss for gain. To the question of how to perceive the relative value of these terms he has no explicit answer, although the deaths of the calf and of Orpheus and Eurydice are presented with pathos, while the bees merely exist, undifferentiated and unreflective. They do not elicit the poet's (or, consequently, the reader's) involved sympathy. Orpheus and Eurydice perish definitively, while new bees take the place of those lost.

The poet intends to reveal true things (2.45–46) and not trite things for the thoughtless (3.3–4). He wants, therefore, something true and new, and he does not aim at vacuas mentes ("idle minds"). He explicitly disdains commonly told myths (3.4–8). The myth of Aristaeus and Orpheus as told here is his truth: a new myth, especially for Romans, a myth that embodies the oppositions between power and beauty, profit and art, material and spiritual in their society. It shows the brutality of victory and the pathos of loss, for the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice is only imperfectly redeemed by the birth of the impersonal swarm of bees. Aristaeus, while ultimately successful, appears unreflective, insensitive, and without regret. Although responsible for the deaths of his original bees, of Eurydice, and of Orpheus, he voices no understanding of guilt nor regret for his actions once their consequences have been revealed to him. Significantly, the poet engages the reader's sympathy with the victims—with Orpheus, flawed as he too is, with Eurydice, and

with the struggling calf—and thus expands the reader's sensibility. The reader learns identification with victims and losers, and thus learns compassion and pity. The poet does not suggest an alternate route to survival or victory, for there is none. That is to say, he does not propose the elimination of Aristaeus and what he stands for. The effect of his poem is rather to suggest compassion in confronting the truth of experience, to make readers sensitive to loss, and to create a "community of pity."

To appreciate the value of the poet's truth, we must observe that the outcome of the poem affects the figures in the poem differently from the way in which it affects the readers. Neither Aristaeus nor Orpheus learns a lesson, but readers can; for the fates of Aristaeus and Orpheus are related and meaningful to us, if not to them. The poet has shaped the poem to show the immediate triumph of material man—Aristaeus or the analogous figure of Caesar—while simultaneously eliciting from the reader an appreciation of and pity for Orpheus (and similarly for Proteus, Eurydice, and the nightingale) as a figure of poetry, music, and beauty. The Georgics, through its representation of the Golden Age and most especially through the story of Orpheus, expands the reader's awareness of life's ambiguity, his sensitivity to loss, and his capacity for sorrow. Hence the sensitive reader becomes morally superior to Aristaeus and Cyrene, who never experience or express regret. Moral superiority, however, does not bring change; it is not an exhortation to action. It merely makes possible the apprehension of tragic conflict.

Aristaeus is successful and forfeits the reader's sympathy. While he has the immediate triumph, since he and not Orpheus is allowed atonement, and while his questions have answers (4.321–25) as opposed to those of Orpheus (4.504–5) and Eurydice (4.495), which do not, he nevertheless does not triumph through merit:

haud quamquam ad meritum poenas, ni fata resistant^[51
] (4.455)

[51] Reading with Conington, Page, and Wilkinson ad of the Palatine MS for ob (although the latter is more frequently attested), since, as they argue, it gives better sense. Wilkinson's remarks are found ad loc. in his translation, Virgil: The Georgics (Harmondsworth and New York, 1982).

This vengeance against you—if fate did not
interpose—far short of your deserts.

Aristaeus has Proteus to reveal causae (4.532) and Cyrene to teach praecepta (4.534–47). Thus fate is not just.^[52] On the other hand, the loss of Orpheus, with what he represents of sentiment and beauty, is not solaced. The poem ends, as the reader is made to feel, in unresolved and unresolvable tragedy: in the loss of Orpheus and Eurydice and in the defeat of their love. Orpheus perishes somehow wrongly, since Hades does not know of pity or forgiveness:

nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda
(4.470)

The hearts that know not how to be touched by human prayer

ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere Manes
(4.489)

Pardonable indeed, if Death knew how to pardon.

Yet the beauty of Orpheus' song, with its memory of Eurydice, endures eternal, through the song of the Georgics . The tragic vision of the Georgics is undermined only by the beauty of the poetry that sings the tragedy.

Since the tragedy of Aristaeus, Orpheus, and Eurydice is not resolved by the poet, the poem is not protreptic. Art is useless, and therefore, as noted above, it does not occur in the theodicy of Book 1, since it has no practical value. The poem simply shows the truth. Neither consoling nor false, it is tragic and true. The poet tells the truth and therefore is truly audax ("bold" 4.565). To Page this adjective signifies only that Virgil was the first to sing pastoral poetry in Latin; but perhaps it relates rather to his function as poet overall. In the opening of Book 3 he had already described his projected poetic achievements in heroic terms:

[52] See Wilkinson, Georgics, 120, who also notes that the experience of Orpheus is not presented as just. Spofford, 56ff., ruminates on the great role of luck and status, as opposed to justice, in the destiny of Aristaeus and observes: "Complication about justice is beginning to be developed in the Georgics " (58).

temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim
tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora.
primus ego in patriam mecum, modo vita supersit,
Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas;
primus Idumaeas referam tibi, Mantua, palmas.
(3.8–12)

Now, I must venture a theme will exalt me
From earth and give me wings and a triumph on every tongue.
If life enough is left me,
I'll be the first to bring the Muses of song to my birthplace
From the Aonian peak; the first to wear the Idumaean palm for Mantua.

At 4.565 the term audax is even emphatic, since it is juxtaposed to Caesar's military feats, which are not described as requiring courage (4.560–62). While Caesar triumphs over the volentis ("willing" 4.561) and his enemies are imbellem ("war-worthless" 2.172), the poet's challenges are awesome. (We recall Orpheus' descent to the sorrow and fearfulness of hell, where he sees the king explicitly described as fearful [regem . . . tremendum 4.469].)

The truth of the poet's myth of Aristaeus and Orpheus is confirmed in the epilogue, for the relationship there described between the historical figures Caesar and Virgil^[53] is analogous to that between Aristaeus and Orpheus. While we see in the epilogue the poet's graceful acknowledgment of Caesar's success in the political world, we see also his magnificently subtle assertion of his own difference from the farmer and the conqueror, those more conventional embodiments of Roman virtue:

illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat
Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti,
carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa,
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi.
(4.563–66)

[53] This is emphatic, for the name Vergilius appears only here (4.563) in the entire corpus of Virgil's works.

This was the time when I, Virgil, nurtured in sweet
Parthenope, did flower in pursuits of inglorious ease,
And dallied with songs of shepherds and, by youth emboldened,
Tityrus, sang of you in the shade of a spreading beech.

The clear echo in the concluding verse of the Georgics of the first verse of the first Eclogue

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi
(Ecl. 1.1)

Tityrus, you, lying under the covert of your spreading beech

further corroborates the political ramifications of the relationship between the poet and Caesar.^[54] Caesar is immediately victorious, yet the Georgic poet has a power other, perhaps even greater, than his. Through his poetry he suggests to his readers how to perceive, interpret, and value experience. In structuring the readers' visions of experience he creates their values. Caesar aspires to divinity, but the Georgic poet concludes his poem by affirming his own characteristic and enduring boldness and song (4.565–66). Nevertheless, we cannot take as wholly ironic the poet's derogation of his own achievements in relation to Caesar's (studiis florentem ignobilis oti, carmina qui lusi ), for the poet is not deluded with respect to his own power in the political world. As we have seen, despite his beautiful song, Orpheus is impotent in the world. Similarly, for the Georgic poet the mission of pity, while in one sense daring, is also easy and even self-gratifying, as poet and readers risk feeling complacent in their superior sensibility, while the world's conflicts remain unresolved and its losses inadequately redeemed.

[54] This allusion to the Eclogues returns us to a world "in which the spiritual polarity of the political and poetic worlds and the nullificatory impact of the former on the latter are affirmed and exhibited (esp. Ecl. 1, Ecl. 9, Ecl. 10)," Boyle, 80.