My First book ever selected and published by an independent press. I knew that one day I would have my own book published. It is not arrogance disguised as confidence. Writing has always been part of who I am.
The Glass and the Flame is a fugue of the heart, woven from multiple strands of longing and sorrow into a polyphony of eros and psyche. I have learned that you can write the felt without being met.
The axiom that “you are who you are” is not necessarily true in my writing. Rather, I am what I write.
In terms of Orwell’s reasons for writing, I write from aesthetic enthusiasm and sheer egoism. Neither political purpose nor historical impulse belongs to my work.
If you dare, walk with me in the garden where Eros freely roams with Psyche.
It’s September, and fall will arrive soon. In fact, the cooler temperatures are already its harbingers, and I am all for it. How’s the weather in Rome? And how are your projects coming along? Last time I heard, you were working on a translation of a certain book from English into Italian. Are you still working on it? Can you tell me what the book is about?
I want to show you my prose poem I wrote yesterday. It’s one of my recent experiments with story-like poems. I write poems that read like prose. The best thing about prose poems is that there is no complication of characters with existential dilemmas and metaphysical questions about who they are—questions that not many people care about. But these days, too many poems and stories can read like ideological catalogs, social agendas, or personal traumas that are not easy to read and take to heart. While I get that shared traumatic experiences may help those who find themselves therein, that is not my cup of tea. I don’t want to write about my ethnicity or race in the context of living in America as an Asian immigrant woman. I don’t want to be labeled as an “ethnic” woman writer whose work is shelved outside of the so-called mainstream book sections in bookstores. That is why I admire someone such as Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote The Remains of the Day. His background does not prescribe the consciousness, subject, or voice he is permitted to inhabit; you would not necessarily know that a Japanese-British man wrote it in posh British English. There are no boundaries of race, gender, or age in the language of the mind and heart. You can be whoever you want to be and show the world the way you are.
Today’s letter reads like a rant from an anxious woman irritated by a boisterous party of popular or best-selling writers. So be it. I do not want to be restrained in the realm of written words where I can be myself. I do not like being boxed in by what people expect me to be and write, because that is not who I am. You would find it a bit hard to relate to my literary zeal to write the truth about myself because you would not feel the pressure of ink in your own color, but that is okay. I do not expect you to understand my stance. However, I would be incredibly happy to see you on my side when people scoff at my poems and prose.
Dreaming of a dusk on the Aventino Hill looking over Rome with you,
First, let me confess that I have not yet read the translation of The Aeneid by McGill and Wright. Maybe I will after I finish reading Robert Fagles’s translation. So, while it would be unfair for me to judge which translation better serves readers of the twenty-first century, I can say that Fagles’s translation of Virgil’s epic narrative of Aeneas reads like a prose poem to me, simply because its language and arrangement suit my taste.
This essay is not for general readers but for readers with an academic background in Latin. Therefore, for general readers such as myself, its comparison of the original Latin with the English translations—in terms of metrical structures, the choice of words, and their juxtaposition—may not ring a bell. My interest in reading The Aeneid comes from a purely personal curiosity: I want to understand why Aeneas is the way he is, breaking the hearts of the women who loved him dearly. In that regard, Fagles’s translation chimes the bell of my heart and soul because his words are poetic and, at the same time, go straight to the heart. Take a look at these translations:
Fagles:
“Wars and a man I sing—an exile driven on by Fate, he was the first to flee the coast of Troy, destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil.”
Robert Fitzgerald:
“I sing of warfare and a man at war. From the sea-coast of Troy in early days He came to Italy by destiny To our Lavinian shores, A fugitive, this captain . . .”
McGill and Wright:
“I sing of arms and of a man displaced by Fate, the first to leave the coast of Troy for Italy and its Lavinian shores.”
Fagles’s version of “Wars and a man I sing . . .” clearly expresses Virgil’s intention to sing about a man destined to put duty before feeling. By placing the mainstay of The Aeneid—the fate of the man—at the beginning, Fagles conveys to his readers that Aeneas was not born to be a romantic figure, or even a heroic star, but to be a man torn between what he wants and what he must do.
Through Fagles, we hear Virgil sing of Aeneas, a demigod and an excellent soldier: the embodiment of the Roman ideal, whose pietas and gravitas signify personal virtue as well as martial prowess. But Virgil was not a soldier; he was a poet. Bernard Knox, however—the classicist who wrote the introduction to Fagles’s translation—brings the crack of a horsewhip to it. A former U.S. Army captain and World War II veteran, Knox had literally followed in the footsteps of Antony and Octavian during the Italian campaign. He must have carried Euterpe and Calliope with him—the Muses who had also stood behind Virgil thousands of moons before.
Book I begins in the middle of Aeneas’s journey to his fated destination of Italy. Virgil seems to sympathize with the man who surrenders his personal feelings to the public duty of building a new Troy, as arranged by the Fates. Gods can interfere but cannot change his fate. It’s a case of Thus Spoke Zarathustra—but who is Zarathustra here? Aeneas, or Virgil speaking through him?
If it’s Aeneas who speaks, then he does so through Virgil as his advocate for the glory of fulfilling pietas with gravitas. Cupid is not for him, but for Dido, who became enamored with a man whose vulnerability was braided with virility, clothed in beauty. Then Juno’s absurdly violent rage against the Trojan general, who laments his fate, forces him to wander across the seas through the vicissitudes of gain and loss, loss and gain. But that doesn’t mean Aeneas is a man of steel, because when Venus appears to him in disguise as a wanderer, he rebukes her for behaving like an immortal rather than a mother, even when she is trying to help her son.
Book I presents Aeneas as a man who agonizes over the conflict between his desire and pietas, born of a mortal father and an immortal mother. It is the dual nature of man: physical and spiritual. This could later be applied to the Christian teaching that the will is strong, but the flesh is weak. In Virgil’s view—his imagination still cloaked in the Republican toga, albeit under Emperor Augustus—Aeneas was the model Roman man and soldier who placed honor and valor before beauty and love. He was Virgil’s kind of man, one who would build the grandeur of Rome.
Book I ends with a scene in which Dido, the queen of Carthage—Juno’s beloved land—is infatuated with Aeneas after Cupid sprinkles powdered amour upon her. This is Venus’s machination to secure protection and refuge for Aeneas and the Trojans. Would this be a plot of Fate too? Then, does it mean that Venus is also a gambit in Fate’s chess? Then, what is the meaning of living a life in the mirage of hope?
Two things stayed with me after reading Barry Schwabsky’s essay “In the Reckless Hour,” about the recent English translation of Cesare Pavese’s The Leucothea Dialogues—henceforth, the Dialogues. The first was an existential question: How do we ask mortal questions through stories about the immortals? But don’t let the question weigh on you more heavily than it should. We have always asked essentially the same questions in different ways.
The Dialogues are twenty-seven short dialogues that bring the Greek gods and goddesses back into the human condition—under law, mortality, and fate—and question why things are the way they are: unfair, absurd, and cruel. What makes the gods and goddesses so deeply engaged in human affairs, and so human that they alter human fates? If they cannot show their strength in the realm of Fate, are they truly superior? These Greek divinities could not care less about humans unless humans offer them satisfying sacrifices to feed their divine egos. Even Shakespeare’s Oberon and his wife are more sympathetic than their Greek counterparts. Free will is unthinkable because Fate takes precedence. Humans are toy soldiers manipulated by Fate and deployed by the gods. Are they worthy of being worshipped? If they are, it is only out of fear of punishment in the form of unfortunate events in human life: the gods play their war games with human lives as pawns to see who will prevail. They do not interfere with human affairs but govern them. Then we do not have to work so hard or hope for anything better if our fates are predetermined. John Calvin must have felt the same way I do—and perhaps Pavese did, too.
Regarding the translation of the Dialogues from Italian into English, Schwabsky is a strict examiner who questions whether the recent English version is a translation made without fully understanding the book. He also believes that its plain language lacks Pavese’s dark grandeur and the gravity of his language. Although I have not read the Dialogues yet, I can’t say whether I agree with his opinion. But I am a proponent of using plain language to make difficult themes and ideas accessible to general readers, so that knowledge can be shared and enrich their minds rather than remain exclusive to academics.
This essay is apposite to my current reading of Vergil’s The Aeneid, in which a man’s destination is already predetermined, while everything he does seem like an act in a script written by the divine. Then what is the meaning of being human, and what is the purpose of living? If some people are fated to suffer the most violent pain and cruel injustice, would our hopeful search for the meaning of life be merely another futile act of living?
I am reading The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles. Today I set off for Italy as a ghost to find the faults of the man who was irresistible to women and to examine his fate: everything seems to exist to fulfill his destiny—to found a city that would one day lead to Rome, whose influence would last for thousands of years. But then I see the image of him carrying his old father on his back, with his young son Ascanius at his side and his wife Creusa behind him as they flee burning Troy. That is why I have always wanted to know more about him. Is he really an egoist or a victim of fate?
But first, I needed to know about the whys and wherefores of the man, Troy, and Italy. Reading the introduction was necessary. This was unusual for me because I usually skip introductions and read the book with a tabula rasa in order to form my own understanding of its content. Not the Aeneid. Not Virgil. Not Robert Fagles. For me, The Aeneid, Virgil, and Robert Fagles form a trinity. The epic has survived for two millennia. A second trinity shaped Aeneas’s identity—pietas (duty), gravitas (seriousness and moral weight), and auctoritas (authority earned through public service). It is even tattooed into his very identity as pius Aeneas—“pious Aeneas.” This is not solely religious but also conveys a sense of duty toward values deemed admirable and essential to being an admirable Roman man and soldier.
Knox told readers his own story about why the Sortes Virgilianae and Virgil’s work entranced him. He was also destined to become a reader and a soldier of Virgil, both literally and figuratively. As a U.S. Army captain during the Second World War, he and the Italian partisans marched through regions of Italy once crossed by the armies of Octavian and Mark Antony. King Charles I was no exception to the Virgilian way: during the civil war, he read Virgil and tried to discover his destiny by playing the Virgilian lottery. This involved picking a passage from The Aeneid at random and interpreting it in light of his own situation—a literary equivalent of bibliomancy. It was regarded not merely as superstition but as a guide to what might happen and what one should do. Of course Knox did it too.
Now that I am finally aboard the ship with Aeneas as I begin Book I, I want to decide whether to try the Virgilian lottery and join the king and the captain. But first, I want to see whether Aeneas deserves my accusation that he is a heartless man who, under the aegis of his sacred pietas, makes the women who loved him—his wife Creusa and Dido—face their fates.
I thought the heat had gone and had prepared for autumn clothes, but it was a vain hope. It was a trick of nature. The heat persists, and it is very hot. So, I have been staying in the living room with my cats because it is the coolest room and has an air conditioner. I hear that the heat wave has hit Italy, too. I hope you are okay.
I just finished reading Elizabeth Taylor’s A View of the Harbour. It is about an English coastal village called Newby, where people’s lives are interwoven through weakness, treachery, and misunderstanding, for which they pay with loss and departures. It is written in the third person—an omniscient point of view that sees all and knows all. The perspective often shifts to that of the elderly, bedridden Mrs. Bracey, who watches people as if she were watching a television soap opera. But she can’t see the stories behind the people she watches, and, in fact, she doesn’t care. I wonder if God would be like her. He sees us from above but doesn’t want to interfere with our affairs, even when we want him to, because God couldn’t care less about them unless they relate to his worship.
It seems that the sea always provokes the passion smoldering beneath conventions and norms, stirring the urge to let the flame ride the crest of the waves, clash furiously against wave upon wave, and then become one with the deep blue. In this regard, the sea alters none of it: human instinct, desire, the primitive id. The harbour is the superego because we know what we should and shouldn’t do under the community’s safe-harbor rule. Seen from the sea, the harbour is prudence.
These are the things that came to mind after reading the book. I suspect that this multiplicity of interpretations is what Taylor wanted. In the post–Second World War era, people had lost their collective values and systems of belief, leaving them in an existential dilemma. But the sea doesn’t know it. The harbour keeps all of it inside, like a graceful swan with her legs paddling frantically beneath the water to preserve her poise.
What do you think? Do you want to read the whole book? If you do, you will feel as though you are watching a British television drama, with various characters who seem ordinary yet harbor extraordinary secrets, and stories that unfold without ostentatious romance, extravagant affairs, or dashing bravado. For me, it’s viewable because it is relatable.
Are you coming to California after the heat has subsided on both sides of the ocean? Let me know, and we can plan something together, like Prudence and Geoffrey in the book.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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