Moby-Dick: “like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee”

1/ Moby-Dick is full of symbolism. I must thank Tom of Wuthering Expectations for pointing out that Ishmael is identified with water, and Ahab, with fire. 

“Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove?” (ch.1)

Ahab’s shadow and his closest companion—his Mephistopheles?—is Fedallah, a Parsee, a fire worshipper. The fire imagery—the association of Ahab with fire—is most obvious in Chapter 96 “The Try-Works”, and the rest of the book is filled with fire imagery. 

“I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what’s made in fire must properly belong to fire; and so hell’s probable.” (ch.108)

To kill Moby Dick, Ahab wants a new harpoon. To destroy what he sees as the embodiment of all evil, he turns to witchcraft. 

“… “No, no—no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.

“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.” (ch.113) 

This is something I didn’t notice in my first reading: Ahab rejects water; he’s later killed by water. 

The quote in the headline comes from chapter 119. 

2/ This is a rather odd passage:  

“It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep.

Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.” (ch.132) 

Moby-Dick is a very strange book. 

3/ I don’t know what it means, but I’ve noticed the bird motif in the last chapters of the novel. 

“… But already the sable wing was before the old man’s eyes; the long hooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with his prize.

An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin’s head, removing his cap to replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen accounted good. Ahab’s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.” (ch.130) 

And when the ship goes down, a hawk goes down with it: 

“A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” (ch.135) 

I finished rereading the book yesterday, after over 7 weeks. Shakespeare took possession of Melville, and created Moby-Dick.  

Moby-Dick: “That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate”

“Dissect him how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will.” (ch.86) 

It often puzzles me that lots of readers don’t seem to notice that there are two quests in Moby-Dick: a physical quest (Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick) and a metaphysical quest (Ishmael’s search for meaning). Ahab is not the only obsessive: he’s obsessed with a whale; Ishmael is obsessed with the whale. 

For what is the whale? Leviathan? A sea monster? A personification of all that maddens and torments? A dumb brute? A dish? A poor animal murdered to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men? Some inscrutable, unknowable thing? 

“‘All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.’” (ch.36) 

Even Ahab does not know—the whale is beyond his reach. 

Thus Ishmael seeks to know the whale, to learn everything he can—from head to tail, from blubber to skeleton—so as to grasp the meaning of Moby Dick, of the chase, of his own survival. Ahab is mad, but is Ishmael not, too, a madman? 

“Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man’s ire—by what evil magic their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be—what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,—all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael can go.” (ch.41) 

What’s the White Whale to them, indeed? But Ishmael too was part of the chase. Ishmael too went down with the Pequod—and yet he survives. What’s the meaning of that fatal chase? And his own madness? And what does it mean that he alone lives? 

But Ishmael isn’t free; his soul continues to be possessed by the madness of the old man. 

“Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. […] These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.” (ch.68) 

It was only when I got to the chapter “The Doubloon” that I realised that Ishmael’s obsession with meaning—with signs and wonders—came from Ahab. 

"But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them." (ch.99) 

Ahab seeks meaning in a doubloon; Ishmael sees hieroglyphics on the skin of a whale. 

“‘There’s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in one kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg—all tattooing—looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live he’s comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon’s Astronomy in the back country…’” (ibid.) 

Ahab sees signs and wonders on the surface of a doubloon, and on the skin of Queequeg. That remark on Queequeg might only be a passing thought for Ahab, but Ishmael later repeats it: 

“Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.” (ch.110) 

What are these mysteries in the tattoos of Queequeg, and on the skin of the whale? Do they contain answers? But Ishmael can never know, and the entire book is his quest for meaning, his attempt to strike through the mask. 

On Odissea (1968), an 8-part adaptation of the Odyssey

 

Over Christmas, my family and I watched Odissea, an Italian-language adaptation of the Odyssey in 8 episodes—not a Christmas series, I know—but what can be more Christmassy than returning home and reuniting with your family? 

According to Wikipedia, this is the most faithful version. It’s also my favourite adaptation so far, unlikely to get surpassed. Now some of you might think, is it going to be the most epic, spectacular version you’ve seen of Homer’s poem? The answer is no. But it is made by people who respect the text, and have a deep understanding of it. 

If we have to narrow down to the three main things that the Odyssey is about, I would say: the intelligence of Odysseus and his development as a character, the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope, and the education of Telemakhos. Odissea gets all three right. Most adaptations, because of time, tend to ignore the last one, but it is important in the Odyssey—why does Athena make Telemakhos travel if he learns no news of Odysseus and the trip doesn’t advance the plot?—it’s for his education, for him to learn about the father he has never known, and see how things work in a happy kingdom not torn apart by greedy suitors and disloyal servants. He also learns to be independent, away from his mother, away from home. Renaud Verley conveys well the helpless anger of Telemakhos at the beginning, and the confidence towards the end as Telemakhos fights the suitors next to his father. 

The development of Odysseus is also good, largely thanks to the performance of Bekim Fehmiu. At the beginning, he doesn’t express much on his face, making me afraid that he looks the part but isn’t quite right for the role, but this is a cautious Odysseus, a weary Odysseus, wanting nothing but to go home after 10 years of wandering and suffering. We see a different Odysseus in the flashbacks—more animated—especially in the episode of the Cyclops: a cunning Odysseus, a proud and impetuous Odysseus, causing his own downfall and the loss of his men. We see that cunning look again when he’s back in Ithake, as he watches his household and observes the enemies and calculates his moves. 

I also like Irene Papas (a Greek actress) as Penelope. Odissea makes more explicit Penelope’s recognition of Odysseus under disguise, and her test of him at the end—I slightly prefer the subtlety of Homer—but Irene Papas is so good in these scenes that it doesn’t matter. I especially like her anger as she comes to meet Odysseus after the killing of the suitors—this is something I have not considered—she has waited for 20 years, she has stayed true, but Odysseus saw her with distrust and hid from her his identity?

Among the supporting characters, I think the best cast are Constantin Nepo as Antinous and Karl-Otto Alberty as Eurymakhos. My only complaint, if anything, is that I don’t particularly like Scilla Gabel as Helen, and I wish they had done something to make Kalypso (Kyra Bester) look a bit “less human”, being a nymph, but this is trivial.  

I suspect that Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of the Odyssey is going to be similar to Bondarchuk’s adaption of War and Peace—spectacular and technically impressive, but hollow—and even worse, as it’s historically inaccurate. Odissea is similar to the 1972 War and Peace or the 1977 Anna Karenina—not the best production values perhaps, but an excellent adaptation. 

Odissea is available on Youtube (if you don’t mind the subtitles being imperfect). 

On Ulysses (1954), an Italian adaptation of the Odyssey

Filmmakers all have to make changes when adapting a literary work, which sometimes works very well, but in the case of Ulysses (1954), pretty much every single change makes the narrative worse. 

One big change is that they reduce the role of the gods. But instead of pushing it to the extreme, as in The Return (2024), removing the gods altogether and stripping the Odyssey of all mythology, Ulysses makes a half-arsed attempt: Circe (Kirke) is still there, combined with Calypso; Ulysses (Odysseus) still speaks to the dead; we still see the Cyclops; but we don’t see Athena and we don’t see Polyphemus cursing Ulysses and his men and calling for their destruction. The very thing that causes the 10 years of wandering and all the lives lost is cut; the curse instead comes from Cassandra during the war, when Ulysses destroys a statue of Poseidon. 

Another change is that Ulysses in the film is no longer a storyteller: the flashbacks are him recalling past events—regaining his memory—rather than telling King Alcinous about his adventures; and we don’t see him making up stories upon his return to Ithaca (Ithake). 

But the biggest and worst change is the way they handle the last few chapters of Homer’s poem: even if you don’t agree with my interpretation that Penelope long suspects the identity of the beggar, does a kind of double talk with him so as to keep the secret from her spying servants, and comes up with the test of the bow as a convenient way of placing a weapon in his hands, you would probably still find it disappointing that in the film, the idea of the bow comes from Ulysses—in his disguise as a beggar—rather than Penelope herself. Why is Homer’s Odysseus so desperate to return home, to reunite with Penelope? Why does he reject the power of Kirke and the promise of immortality from Kalypso and the youth of Nausicaa? Because Odysseus and Penelope are a perfect match, because they’re both intelligent and full of tricks—their like-mindedness is an important point in the Odyssey—the Penelope in the film has the loyalty and constancy of Homer’s character, but not her cleverness (except the weaving trick). The film cannot explain why he longs for her, especially when they have Penelope and Circe played by the same actress (Silvana Mangano).

Another important point is that in the Odyssey, Odysseus and Penelope test each other—Odysseus has to test her because of the warning from Agamemnon, but she also has to test him—all that is removed from the film. We don’t even see Ulysses quietly go around and observe who remains loyal and who has betrayed him in his household. 

The film seems to focus on the fun scenes, and in a way, it is fun. Kirk Douglas is a more energetic and charming Odysseus/ Ulysses than Ralph Fiennes—not because Ralph Fiennes lacks charm, but because he plays Odysseus as a weary man, haunted by war—the bow scene is especially fun. Another positive thing I can say is that, compared to the grey and drab look of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, the costumes here are more interesting, more colourful and imaginative.  

Oh well. I don’t expect Nolan’s film to be any better. 

Anyway. 

Reading and viewing plans for 2026

 

Two Pride and Prejudice series are coming up: a Netflix straight adaptation (top) and The Other Bennet Sister by the BBC (bottom). 

1/ I wrote in December 2024: 

“Even if there is little impact, I can’t help feeling an urge to fight against anti-intellectualism and inverted snobbery, against identity politics and Critical Race Theory, against philistinism and the School of Resentment. 

One of the ways to fight is reading and analysing and promoting classic books.

[…] Even if the philistines and authoritarians win, even if the public becomes increasingly ignorant of classic works because of tiktoks and a million other distractions, I will not lose—because these books I read are mine.” 

That still stands. 

Compare the reading ideas in that blog post and the recent post about my reading in 2025, I’ve done quite well, haven’t I? So for next year, I intend to: 

• Continue getting to know ancient Greek literature and culture. 
• Explore the ancient Rome. 
• Start on the King James Bible. 

These are the main reading projects. Why the Bible? some of you might ask. It’s one of the most important texts in the world, and one of the texts that shaped Western civilisation. I read Western literature not knowing any of the Biblical stories; I wander through the National Gallery not catching any of the religious references; that has to change. Shakespeare is going to look very different once I have read Ovid and the Bible.

As my interest in the Bible is literary rather than religious, I guess I don’t need to explain why I’m going for the King James version rather than something more modern.

Some other reading ideas scattering around: 

• Read more Dickens, possibly Our Mutual Friend. 
• Explore more of the 18th century. 
• Read some non-Western books (such as the Akutagawa book I recently bought on impulse in Jakarta). 
• Possibly reread Wuthering Heights.

2/ There are quite a few adaptations of classics that are currently out or soon appearing: 

• Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein: you don’t expect me to watch this one, do you? This is by one of the worst directors working today. 
• Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights: all the promos I have seen—the trailer especially—tell me that the writer-director has not read the novel. I might however watch it for a laugh. 
• Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet: no, I don’t intend to watch a film about Shakespeare when the director says she understands about a third of Shakespeare’s language and has to rely on the actor—not a Shakespearean actor and not an expert—for interpretation. 
• Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: everything tells me I’m going to hate this film—why is Hollywood scared of colours?—but bring it on, I’m ready to yell at Nolan. 
• Euros Lyn’s Pride and Prejudice (Netflix): do we really need another version of Pride and Prejudice? The perfect version exists (1995). I don’t really like Jack Lowden and Emma Corrin as Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, and don’t have any positive feelings towards Netflix—the only appeal is Olivia Colman as Mrs Bennet. I might still see it though, unless it turns out to be like Netflix’s Persuasion. 
• Jennifer Sheridan’s The Other Bennet Sister (BBC): we have another Pride and Prejudice series coming up, but this one looks more interesting as it does something different—focuses on Mary Bennet—and seems to have more colours. 
• Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility: there isn’t much to say as I haven’t seen anything about this upcoming film except the cast. Would it be as good as the Ang Lee film? Most likely not. But I don’t think anyone’s going to disagree that, much as we love Emma Thompson, she’s a bit too old for Elinor. 
• Emma Frost’s The Age of Innocence (Netflix): look, can this possibly match the perfection that is the Martin Scorsese film? Daniel Day-Lewis? Michelle Pfeiffer? Winona Ryder? We don’t need another adaptation.   

What did I miss? 

3/ I don’t really have any plans for film watching, other than that I’d like to watch more films from the 1930s. 

Moby-Dick as my Bible

For a few years after I read Moby-Dick the first time, I often picked it up to reread certain chapters or passages. I stopped after a while—there were other books—but continued to carry some passages with me over the years. 

“Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.” (ch.68)

This for instance has long been part of the blog.

Moby-Dick is one of the books that mean the most to me partly because it’s three books in one: a novel about the obsessive pursuit of a whale, a whale and whaling encyclopaedia, and a philosophical book.

“All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.” (ch.41) 

O man, beware of becoming Ahab! 

“Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!

[…] Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.” (ch.96) 

Great works of art such as Moby-Dick should not be reduced to self-help, but we love some books more than others not just because of literary merit, but because they resonate with us, because they reach something in us, because for some reason they stay with us over the years. Moby-Dick speaks to me. 

PS: Speaking of the Bible, about last month or so, I bought the King James Bible. Going to have to read it at some point.

2025: an exciting year in reading, viewing, travelling

Me wearing a Thai traditional dress. 

Literature 

In terms of reading, this has been a fantastic year. The main highlight was my discovery of ancient Greek literature: I read the Iliad and the Odyssey (and became a Homer obsessive), 4 plays by Aeschylus (5 if you count Prometheus Bound), 6 plays by Sophocles (1 left), 10 plays by Euripides, 5 by Aristophanes. Is there a more glorious period for theatre than 5th century BC in Athens? Elizabethan/ Jacobean England had Shakespeare, but here were four great writers working around the same time, and I was glad to discover that they did certain things that Shakespeare didn’t do. My favourite is Sophocles.

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn is also a very good book, not only as a companion for Homer but as a memoir on its own. 

In 2025, I also discovered Molière (funnier than Shakespeare); read David Copperfield; explored more of the 18th century with Tom Jones and Gulliver’s Travels; had my first encounter with Goethe; read Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge plays; reread a few Shakespeare plays and read part of Shakespeare After All, an excellent book by Marjorie Garber; read 4 plays by Seneca (whom I did not like) and the Aeneid (which is nowhere near as great as the Iliad and the Odyssey, come on); read more Ibsen (cold and uncompromising) and Flannery O’Connor (cold and uncompromising); read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, a living writer (shocking, I know). So many great books in a year! 

The highlight in nonfiction is The Drowned and the Saved—my favourite nonfiction writer might actually be Primo Levi. 

The main disappointment of this year—unless I forget anything else more disappointing—is about Oliver Sacks. 

Cinema and theatre 

Let’s start with Shakespeare. I saw 4 great productions: Coriolanus (2024, dir. Lyndsey Turner, with David Oyelowo in the main role), Othello (2013, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Adrian Lester in the main role), Othello (onstage at Theatre Royal Haymarket, dir. Tom Morris, with David Harewood in the titular role), and Julius Caesar (2018, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Ben Whishaw as Brutus). Watch them you must, especially the first three. David Harewood’s Othello is still at Theatre Royal Haymarket in London till some time in January. That one and Coriolanus make me glad that there are still great Shakespeare productions (just not at the Globe), that there are still brilliant directors who take Shakespeare seriously and understand the plays, that there are wonderful Shakespearean actors. 

I also saw King Lear (2018, with Ian McKellen), Hamlet (2009, with David Tennant), and Macbeth (the Roman Polanski film from 1971). Not great, but all have something interesting in them. 

Apart from Shakespeare, the main highlight of 2025 was the 1977 series Anna Karenina, the 7th and best adaptation I’ve seen of Tolstoy’s novel. Yes, I’ve seen 7—I’m insane—and would probably watch more though I don’t think anything can be as good as the 1977 series, as Nicola Pagett is the best Anna Karenina and the entire cast is perfect. If you don’t know what to watch for the Christmas and New Year season, go for this—it’s 10 episodes. 

Another highlight is that I watched more films from the 1930s, which I hadn’t known as well as the 40s-70s. 

The 10 best films of 2025 (in chronological order and not counting revisits): 

• Frankenstein (1931) 
• It Happened One Night (1934) 
• My Darling Clementine (1946) 
• Harakiri (1962) 
• Tom Jones (1963) 
• The Servant (1963) 
• Young Frankenstein (1974)
• Perfect Blue (1997) 
• Spirited Away (2001) 
• In Bruges (2008)

The list might be slightly different tomorrow (which I guess is the way things usually go with these lists). 

The best documentary I’ve seen this year is Groomed: A National Scandal (released earlier this year), which everyone should see. 

Travelling 

I’ve only just realised that I did 6 work trips this year: to Washington, DC (February); Geneva (March and July); Prague (November); Jakarta (November); Bangkok (November – December). No wonder I’m now burnt out and ill. 

More excitingly, my Washington, DC trip was my first time in the US; and my trips to Jakarta and Bangkok were my first return to Southeast Asia since I left Vietnam 16 years ago.  

This has been fun. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone! 

Update on 22/12: I forgot that in 2025, I also read Judi Dench’s Shakespeare, a delightful book that not only tells behind-the-scenes stories but also offers lots of interesting insight into Shakespeare’s plays and characters; I also discovered Hayao Miyazaki. 

Jane Austen’s 250

16/12/2025 is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. 

Over the years, I have written about her characters, ethics, and technique, and she has such a firmly established place in the Western Canon that there’s no need to praise, so I’d like to write a bit about what Jane Austen means to me.

Two recurring themes in Austen’s novels that particularly resonate with me are balance, and the difference between appearance and reality (also a major theme throughout Shakespeare’s plays)—over and over again, Jane Austen writes about misperception and misunderstanding and hypocrisy and deceit… Mansfield Park is my favourite of her novels because it explores these ideas so well, because it’s the most complex and visual of her novels, and because it also conveys the sense of displacement, akin to the experience of an immigrant: Fanny Price doesn’t quite feel at home at Mansfield Park, but also doesn’t feel at home back at her parents’ house in Portsmouth.

But lately I have realised that there have been moments when I felt something like embarrassment, or defensiveness, about Austen because she is narrow, because she doesn’t write about death, because she doesn’t write about Big Ideas—that’s so foolish—is not love a serious theme? Is not courtship? Marriage? Coming to understand yourself, and grow, through love? Picking the right husband? Resisting the pressure to accept a man you know would make you miserable? Living and having feelings again at a time when you feel you have lost your chance of happiness? There is nothing trivial about any of this. Screen adaptations and (some part of) the fandom might turn Jane Austen into romance or chicklit, but she is subtle and serious, and I do think she is better than anyone at writing about love—about falling in love, about getting a better understanding of yourself thanks to love, about adapting and improving yourself for someone you love.

In her four masterpieces—Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion—Jane Austen explores different kinds of love, different aspects, different angles. She adopts different tones. She uses different techniques. Pride and Prejudice for example is light, bright, and sparkling, with lots of dialogue. Mansfield Park is sombre, and she uses more layers and metaphors. Emma is where she masters the free indirect speech, blending the voice of the third-person narrator with the voice of the protagonist, colouring your perspective of the scene. Persuasion is autumnal, her warmest and most romantic novel. I say Austen is narrow—and in some sense, she is—but these four novels are all quite different. She is wonderful. 

It is no wonder that 250 years since her birth, over 210 years since the publication of her novels, Jane Austen is still one of the most celebrated and beloved writers. 

On being back in Southeast Asia

 

Me doing the Mahanakhon skywalk. 

I have just returned from my work trips to Jakarta and Bangkok. 

It was strange, in a way, to be back in Southeast Asia for the first time since leaving Vietnam 16 years ago. Except for the February trip to Washington, DC, most of my travels had been within Europe. It almost felt like home—many things were familiar—and yet quite alien—as I couldn’t figure out the languages the way I can guess words in European languages. Many things reminded me of Vietnam: the crazy traffic and the mopeds and the insane electric poles and the vibrant street food culture, etc. Europeans probably don’t fully appreciate their walkable cities till they travel to Asia, or America. Jakarta for instance has the worst roads I’ve ever seen: the pavements are full of gaping mouths ready to swallow up your foot if you just get distracted for a second. Bangkok is less dense, less dangerous, but still mad. There’s a constant thought that I might get hit and see my ancestors any moment. Did you know that Bangkok’s roughly the same size as London? I didn’t know either, till recently. The public transport system however is not the same; I figured out that the best way to travel around—if you’re a bit crazy like me—was to use a Grab bike (a ride on a moped), or if the distance is too great and there’s heavy traffic, to combine the skytrain with a Grab bike. 

The best part is the food. There’s food everywhere. I’m convinced that Southeast and East Asia have the best food, especially if you consider everything—starters, main courses, desserts, snacks, fruits. I barely saw anything in Jakarta, being there for only a couple of days for a conference and having a lot to handle, but I enjoyed the food (to my own surprise). 

It was even better in Bangkok. After nearly two weeks there, my feelings are mixed. For a tourist, the city has a lot to offer: there’s so much to see, to eat, to experience. I ate pad thai and green curry and grilled meat and tom yum and jackfruit and Korean fried chicken. I got addicted to Thai milk tea and mango sticky rice. I tried Bangkok’s highest skywalk—78th floor, 310m high. I visited the Grand Palace (with its temple Wat Phra Kaew), and two other breathtaking temples (Wat Arun and Wat Pho). I took boat rides and tried tuk-tuks. I explored markets and shopping malls. It’s fun, for many reasons (and perhaps the closest to being in Vietnam now that I’m no longer able to return). 

But for someone interested in human rights, it is impossible to fully embrace Thailand because of the appalling behaviour of the government, because of the way they treat refugees, because of the way they collaborate with repressive regimes in the region and abet their transnational repression. I had been writing about the IDCs (Immigration Detention Centres) in Thailand. I was in Bangkok immediately after Thailand’s extradition of Y Quynh Bdap, a Montagnard human rights activist and UNHCR-recognised refugee, back to Vietnam. I visited Vietnamese refugees in Thailand, including some currently detained in the IDC. Most people don’t know about these things, and don’t care—even China’s atrocities don’t stop people from visiting and spending money there, how could I expect people to boycott Thailand “merely” for detaining refugees and allowing them to be beaten up by other detainees, or deporting human rights activists, or assisting Vietnamese authorities’ abductions of dissidents on their soil?—so I feel conflicted about “promoting” the fun stuff in Thailand. 

Oh well. Good experience though. 

Rereading Moby-Dick: “so noble and so sparkling”

Not a comforting thought to an ignorant and slow reader like me, but Tom (Wuthering Expectations) was right when he said there’s no reading deeply without reading widely. Moby-Dick feels different—and even better—now that I have read (and immersed myself in) Shakespeare. The influence is obvious: the language, the madness and grandeur of Ahab (in whom we find the rage of Lear and Timon), the play-like chapters, the references, and so on. 

I forgot, for example, that there’s a Shakespeare quote in the “Extracts”: 

“Very like a whale.”—Hamlet. 

References abound, like the chapter titled “Queen Mab”, or: 

“… But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.” (ch.32)

And plenty of others. 

Sometimes it’s less obvious: 

“Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.” (ch.26)

Does that not make you think of Hamlet?

“HAMLET […] What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?” (Act 2 scene 2)

Both are about the contradiction in man, but Ishmael’s quote is the inverse of Hamlet’s. 

He goes on: 

“That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!” (ibid.) 

That makes me think of that moment in King Lear when Lear asks “Is man no more than this?” and realises the shared humanity between himself and a beggar, and wants to take off his lendings. But Melville—shall I say Ishmael?—isn’t just talking about shared humanity; he talks about the dignity of each individual and all humanity. He makes a stronger, more emphatic point about equality. 

____________________________________

I still don’t understand why there’s a hyphen in the title. 

Anyway, reading Moby-Dick, I get that bliss from every line as I get reading Shakespeare. One doesn’t experience that with every writer. Dickens is another one, Bleak House most of all. Nabokov. But especially Shakespeare and Melville. Much as I love Tolstoy, Chekhov, or Cervantes, there’s some barrier, some distance as I read them in translation and don’t have their exact words.  

The Aeneid: “I sail for Italy not of my own free will”

 Aeneas Defeating Turnus by Luca Giordano.

1/ At some point in the poem, after a lot of fighting, Aeneas says to the people there:  

“What unmerited misfortune, Latins, 

Could have embroiled you in so sad a war 

That now you turn your backs on us, your friends? 

[…] 

Never should I have come here had not Fate 

Allotted me this land for settlement, 

Nor do I war upon your people…” 

(Book 11) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald)

There is a much stronger sense of humans being bound by fate in the Aeneid than in Homer’s epics: in the Odyssey, Odysseus is cursed to wander for years and to finally return home without his men, and he gets help from Athena and Penelope, but he also uses his own strength and intelligence to return home and reclaim his place; in the Iliad, Akhilleus is told to have two possible destinies, and seals his fate the moment he returns to battle after Patroklos’s death; the entire Aeneid is about Aeneas being bound by fate and following the path that has been drawn for him. 

The two characters who fight against fate and therefore become more interesting are Turnus (who loves Lavinia) and Juno (the Romans’ Hera). 

The quote from the headline comes from Book 4—Aeneas says that to Dido. 

2/ There are many great passages through the poem. This one, for instance: 

“The two assailants were like fires begun

On two sides of a dry wood, making laurel 

Thickets crackle, or like snow-fed streams

That foam and roar seaward down mountain-sides

And leave, each one, a watercourse laid waste.

With no less devastating power these two, 

Aeneas and Turnus, cut their way through battle.”

(Book 12) 

I like that. At some point, I would have to check out other translations, but I’m fond of Robert Fitzgerald. 

3/ I’ve now finished reading the Aeneid, after over 2 weeks.

I like my friend Himadri’s idea about the parallels between Aeneas and Hamlet: both men have to ignore their own feelings and inclinations, to fulfil some obligations—Aeneas is to lead his people to Italy and set up a new kingdom and Hamlet is to avenge the death of his father. 

The problem with the Aeneid, however, is that Virgil doesn’t really depict the struggle. I would even say that the characters in the Aeneid don’t have much of an inner life, except Dido and maybe Turnus. I’m not judging Virgil against Shakespeare—I’m comparing him to Homer. In the Iliad, we can see Akhillleus’s wrath; we can see him develop and change; we see him refuse to fight but get drawn back into it after death of his close friend, and become a ruthless killing machine, rejecting his own humanity; but in the end, he regains his humanity as he meets Priam and thinks of his own father. In the Odyssey, Odysseus might not change as much, but he’s multifaceted and self-contradictory; he’s intelligent, resourceful, a great actor and storyteller, but also proud, dishonest, sometimes reckless and ruthless. In the Iliad, we can see Akhilleus grapple with his own mortality. In the Odyssey, we can see Odysseus calculate the steps to get home safely and watch everybody and regain his kingdom. Compared to them, I don’t think Aeneas has much of an inner life, by which I mean that we see him act but don’t see him think. 

When Virgil writes about the love story between Aeneas and Dido, he focuses almost entirely on Dido, not showing Aeneas’s struggle between his own feelings and his duty. Book 6 is the only time we come a bit closer to Aeneas, as he travels to the Underworld and comes across the ghost of Dido, and only now realises that she has died. Later on, Virgil doesn’t depict his thoughts either—I don’t even know how Aeneas feels about marrying Lavinia. How does she compare to Dido? Or his dead wife Creusa? We don’t know. 

We don’t see Lavinia either—we are told in some brief moments that she’s unhappy about having (inadvertently) caused so much suffering—but how does she feel about Turnus? Or Aeneas? No idea. 

Considering his reputation, I don’t doubt that Virgil’s a great poet—I just can’t tell as I read the Aeneid in translation—I can only judge it as a narrative. What I see is that the characters don’t have much of an inner life, generally speaking, and Aeneas is a rather bland character—he doesn’t have much of a personality. And if we look at the two characters who try to fight against fate, Juno is almost entirely defined by her anger, her hatred of the Trojans; Turnus is more interesting, he may be largely defined by anger and pride, but we do see his disappointment, frustration, doubt, and so on. 

I would say that the most vividly drawn character in the Aeneid is Dido—the story of her and Aeneas is one of the saddest, most haunting stories in all of literature. There are quite a few moments throughout the Aeneid, but the best parts, in my opinion, are Book 4 (the story of Aeneas and Dido) and Book 6 (the Underworld), followed by Book 2 (the sack of Troy) and Book 9 (Nisus and Euryalus). 

A coffee diary

Over the past few months, I’ve been getting more properly into coffee, with my French press.

As suggested by the title, I was writing down my thoughts as I was trying the coffee, which means that later I’m going to keep adding to this same post as I try new types (even though I’ve got a favourite for now). 

Lavazza Rossa: A blend of Brazilian Arabica and African Robustas. Smells good, tastes all right, with hints of chocolate. Good start for someone just getting into coffee (and setting off to become a coffee snob—can’t wait!).  

Uganda – The Coffee Gardens from Curious Roo: Arabica (Nyasaland varietal). The tasting notes are said to be mango, cherry liqueur, dark chocolate. The first impression was that it tasted a bit odd. After I changed the dosing, I enjoyed it much more though it’s still a bit odd, a mixture of tastes—perhaps this is what the connoisseur would call “an interesting taste”. 

Dragon (Brazil) from Dark Arts: A mixture of varietals, Arabica or hybrid. The tasting notes are said to be roasted almond, raisin, caramel. Much slighter taste than the Ugandan coffee. I’ve sampled this twice, after the Ugandan coffee from Curious Roo and after the Nicaraguan coffee (Mask of the Mire) from Dark Arts, and think the best option would be 5 tablespoons for 2 cups. Tastes better at 6, but has too much caffeine. I probably shouldn’t be writing about these things when I’m making coffee without a scale and still experimenting with dosing. 

Eternal Light (Colombia) from Dark Arts: Arabica (Yellow Bourbon and Caturra). The tasting notes are said to be blood orange, apricot, Earl Grey. Sharper and more acidic than the other coffee I have tried, which reminds me of the sour coffee in Norway. Best option is 5 tablespoons for 2 cups, with a bit more milk. 

Waterfall (Colombia) from Dark Arts: Arabica (Caturra). The tasting notes are said to be strawberry, black cherry, dark chocolate. Acidic. Best option is 4 tablespoons for 2 cups, a bit slight; more than that, you get a nasty aftertaste. I’m slowly getting all the different kinds of coffee confused, but I’m not really a fan of this one. 

Mix of Eternal Light and Waterfall: All right.  

Don Domingo (Colombia) from Hermanos: Arabica (Castillo). The tasting notes are said to be dark chocolate, caramel, marmalade, red grape. Best option is 5 tablespoons for 2 cups. This one is all right, less acidic than Eternal Light and Waterfall, though there’s a slightly bitter aftertaste I don’t particularly like. 

Catnip (Ethiopia) from Dark Arts: Arabica (74110, 74112). The tasting notes are said to be jasmine, apricot, candied lemon. Smells good, tastes good (4 tablespoons for 2 cups). I like this, otherwise would be disappointing as Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. Doesn’t taste acidic and doesn’t have a bitter aftertaste like Colombian coffee. This is my favourite so far.  

Mask of the Mire (Nicaragua) from Dark Arts: Arabica (Parainema, Red Catuai) and hybrid (Sarchimor). The tasting notes are said to be dates, roasted almonds, caramel. I can smell almonds. This one is all right and doesn’t have high acidity or a bitter aftertaste, but it also doesn’t have strong flavours. This one might be my second favourite.

The Aeneid: “their bows went under like a school of dolphins”

Nisus and Euryalus by Jean-Baptiste Roman.

1/ As I have heard from other people, the Aeneid has two halves: the first half is modelled after the Odyssey, as Aeneas flees from Troy and wanders for seven years searching for a new home (breaking a woman’s heart on the way); the second half is modelled after the Iliad, as Aeneas follows orders from the gods and sets up a new kingdom in Italy and has wars with local people.

As Aeneas settles in Latium, King Latinus happily accepts him because of oracles that he should marry his daughter Lavinia to a stranger/ foreigner. But Juno (the Roman equivalent of Hera) is not happy—that Troy has been destroyed is not enough, that the Trojans have wandered for seven years without a home is not enough—she hates them—she causes discord between Latinus and his wife Amata, then wakes up resentment and anger in Turnus, the main suitor of Lavinia. 

“With this she hurled a torch and planted it 

Below the man’s chest, smoking with hellish light. 

Enormous terror woke him, a cold sweat 

Broke out all over him and soaked his body 

Then driven wild, shouting for arms, for arms 

He ransacked house and chamber. Lust of steel 

Raged in him, brute insanity of war, 

And wrath above all, as when fiery sticks 

Are piled with a loud crackling by the side 

Of a caldron boiling, and the water heaves 

And seethes inside the vessel, steaming up 

With foam, and bubbling higher, till the surface 

Holds no more, and vapor mounts to heaven.

So, then, in violation of the peace, 

He told the captains of his troops to march 

On King Latinus…” 

(Book 7) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

I bet Shakespeare loved that passage. 

2/ In my blog posts about Homer, I pointed out that there were a lot more epic similes (Homeric similes) in the Iliad than in the Odyssey. In the Aeneid, there are also more epic similes in the Iliad half than in the Odyssey half. 

“[…] And they all thronged, 

Outshouting one another, round the palace. 

Latinus, though, like a seacliff stood fast, 

Like a seacliff that when the great sea comes

To shatter on it, and the waves like hounds

Give tongue on every side, holds grandly on, 

Though reefs and foaming rocks thunder offshore

And seaweed flung against it streams away.” 

(ibid.) 

Like Homer, Virgil compares the fighters to animals: 

“Now Turnus furiously this way and that 

Rode round the walls and looked for a way in 

Where there was none. As a wolf on the prowl 

Round a full sheepfold howls at crevices

Enduring wind and rain at dead of night, 

While nestled safe under the ewes the lambs 

Keep up their bleating; he, beside himself, 

Tormented by accumulated hunger, 

Jaws athirst for blood, in all his fury

Cannot reach them, rend them…” 

(Book 9) 

Here Turnus is compared to a bird (hawk or eagle, I guess), and then a wolf again: 

“And taking hold 

Of the man hanging there he tore him down 

With a big chunk of wall—as when the bird 

Who bears Jove’s bolt takes wing, lugging a hare 

Or snowy swan aloft in crooked talons, 

Or when Mars’ wolf steals from the fold a lamb 

Whose mother, bleating, seeks it…” 

(ibid.) 

Euryalus, a young Trojan, is compared to a lion, which is one of the most common images in the Iliad.  

“… Think of an unfed lion

Havocking crowded sheepfolds, being driven 

Mad by hunger: how with his jaws he rends 

And mauls the soft flock dumb with fear, and growls 

And feeds with bloody maw.” 

(ibid.) 

You get the idea. The quote in the headline also comes from Book 9. 

Pity that I can only read the Aeneid in translation—it’s probably so good to read in Latin. 

3/ Another thing Virgil has learnt from Homer is that he tries to add life to the warriors—their deaths are not just abstract losses. In Book 9, for example, he gets us to spend time with Nisus and Euryalus, to know them and see their friendship. When they die:  

“The attackers’ heads, indeed—a ghastly sight—

They fixed on spears, and lifted, and bore out 

In taunting parade: Euryalus and Nisus.”

(ibid.) 

It’s an awful image—we feel the sorrows of Trojans: 

“They stood in sorrow, moved by those grim heads 

Impaled and dripping gore—heads too well known 

To their unhappy fellows…” 

(ibid.) 

Virgil also adds a scene of Euryalus’s mother wailing as she sees her son brutally killed, beheaded, and unburied. It’s heart-rending. 

However, generally speaking, I still think Homer is better: in the Iliad, every death matters, every one that dies is an individual. All the fighting and killing in the Iliad were gruelling and tough to read after a while, but Homer got me to care about the characters, especially the Trojans, and got me to like Hektor and take an interest in Akhilleus—Virgil doesn’t really have me interested in the characters and their war. 

I’m going to refrain from commenting on Aeneas till I’ve finished reading the whole poem.

Brief thoughts on Othello (Theatre Royal Haymarket), dir. Tom Morris and ft. David Harewood

Yesterday I was thinking about killing myself. But weeks ago, I had bought a ticket for Othello at Theatre Royal Haymarket, so today I went. 

I was in tears by the end.

The best part of the production was David Harewood’s performance. The first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre in 1997 (shocking, I know), he now returns to the role when he’s more, er, “declined into the vale of years”, and delivers a great performance. Here is a noble Moor, here is a dignified and strong general, and yet he makes one feel uneasy when he says “My life upon her faith”, and later “Perdition catch my soul/ But I do love thee. And when I love thee not/ Chaos is come again.” He plays Othello with dignity, and with vulnerability. When Iago puts poison in his ear, he cracks, all collapses. His threat to kill Iago and his changed behaviour towards Desdemona are terrifying. But Othello is not a base little man—the nobility is there—one leaves the play feeling pity and sorrow for a noble man ensnared and corrupted by a villain. The play belongs to Othello—to David Harewood. 

I’m not sure if I prefer him or Adrian Lester in the role.

I also like Tom Byrne as Roderigo and Vinette Robinson as Emilia. Generally speaking, Tom Morris respects the text—no nonsense, no gimmicks—it’s interesting to see Iago’s wife played by a black actress, which gets you to see Iago in a different light. However, I think Tom Morris makes a few questionable choices. Sometimes he uses a bit too much stage effects, which is distracting, and sometimes the staging is slightly odd, such as when Desdemona (Caitlyn Fitzgerald) is praying and preparing for bed onstage at the same time as Roderigo wounding Cassio and getting killed by Iago. Especially questionable is the removal of Desdemona seemingly returning from death and exonerating Othello—we hear a sound effect instead of Desdemona, and she does not speak—why? 

But my main problem with this production is Toby Jones as Iago. I guess you could argue that he approaches the role differently, which is fine, considering that Ian McKellen and Bob Hoskins and Rory Kinnear are very different Iagos and all great. I came across a theatre forum thread in which people were discussing this production and a few of them said Toby Jones played Iago as a weakling, or a little weasel, who’s constantly bewildered that his plans are working. You might think it works, you have to see for yourself. My problem with his performance is that I don’t think he conveys a sense of menace except till the very end, when he says “What you know, you know.” 

So do I think this is a great production? No, my favourite is still the one from 2013, with Adrian Lester as Othello and Rory Kinnear as Iago. 

Do I think it’s worth watching? Yes, David Harewood is magnificent and the final scene would wreck you.  

The Aeneid: “She prayed for death/ Being heartsick at the mere sight of heaven”

 

Painting by Nathaniel Dance-Holland. 

1/ After fleeing Troy, Aeneas and his people wander for some time and stop in Carthage. In Books 2-3, he tells his story to Queen Dido of the Phoenicians. 

“The queen, for her part, all that evening ached 

With longing that her heart’s blood fed, a wound 

Or inward fire eating her away.

The manhood of the man, his pride of birth, 

Came home to her time and again; his looks, 

His words remained with her to haunt her mind, 

And desire for him gave her no rest.” 

(Book 4) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

What does that remind me of?

“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her that she did pity them.” 

(Othello, Act 1 scene 3)

Dido confides in Anna: 

“‘[…] I shall say it: since that time

Sychaeus, my poor husband, met his fate, 

And blood my brother shed stained our hearth gods, 

This man alone has wrought upon me so 

And moved my soul to yield. I recognize 

The signs of the old flame, of old desire. 

But O chaste life, before I break your laws, 

I pray that Earth may open it, gape for me 

Down to its depth, or the omnipotent 

With one stroke blast me to the shades, pale shades 

Of Erebus and the deep world of night! 

That man who took me to himself in youth 

Has taken all my love, may that man keep it, 

Hold it forever with him in the tomb.’” 

(ibid.) 

Poor Dido. Why do we fall in love? To love is to make ourselves vulnerable to grief and heartache. She yields, she hopes, she opens up herself to Aeneas, only to have her heart broken as Aeneas follows his fate and leaves her for Italy. 

In this chapter, Aeneas still feels like a blank—one wishes Virgil depicted more of Aeneas’s struggle between his feelings for Dido and his sense of duty, as he sets out for Italy to found a new kingdom for the Trojans so that “Priam’s great hall should stand again”—but Virgil focuses on Dido and his depiction of her passion and heartbreak is deeply moving. 

“… At that sight, what were your emotions, Dido? 

[…] Unconscionable Love, 

To what extremes will you not drive our hearts! 

She now felt driven to weep again, again 

To move him, if she could, by supplication, 

Humbling her pride before her love—to leave 

Nothing untried, not to die needlessly.” 

(ibid.) 

One can’t help thinking though that Venus is cruel—she knows the fate for Aeneas, she knows his mission—why does she make Dido fall in love with him? (Don’t say the Greek/ Roman gods represent impulses, or forces beyond our control—I know, but in the world of these poems, they are characters). 

2/ Whereas Homer often mentions time (the Trojan War lasts 10 years; Odysseus takes 10 years to go home, of which one year is with Kirke/ Circe and seven years is with Kalypso), Virgil does not. He might even be a bit blurry on time and geography (but then the Aeneid wasn’t quite finished when he died). 

Apparently people disagree about how long Aeneas stays in Carthage. In the first five chapters (confusingly called books), there are four references to time. In Book 5, after leaving Carthage and landing again in Sicily, Aeneas organises some competitions to mark the one-year anniversary of his father’s death, meaning that there’s a gap of one year between Anchises’s death in Sicily and the second time Aeneas passes through Sicily on the way to Italy. In Book 1, Dido asks Aeneas to tell his story, saying “now the seventh summer brings you here”, which marks the beginning of their love affair; but in Book 5, during the funeral games, Iris appears in disguise and says to the Trojans “We’ve seen/ The seventh summer since the fall of Troy.” 

Does this mean that Aeneas only passes a couple of months in Carthage—let’s ignore the distance between it and Sicily—or does it mean that Virgil makes a mistake, Aeneas is meant to arrive in Carthage in the sixth summer of his wanderings, and he stays there for almost a year?

Personally I’d like to think that there’s no mistake and Aeneas stays in Carthage for only a month or two: there’s no indication that Aeneas leaves Sicily immediately after his father’s death, and his time with Dido sounds like summer. But this passage adds to the confusion: 

“Now in no time at all 

Through all the African cities Rumor goes—

Nimble as quicksilver among evils. […]

In those days Rumor took an evil joy 

At filling countrysides with whispers, whispers, 

Gossip of what was done, and never done:

How this Aeneas landed, Trojan born,

How Dido in her beauty graced his company, 

Then how they reveled all the winter long

Unmindful of the realm, prisoners of lust.” 

(Book 4) 

Unless we dismiss Rumour altogether, this sounds like Aeneas stays in Carthage for about a year. 

3/ In Book 6, Aeneas goes to the Underworld, which is obviously modelled after Book 11 of the Odyssey. Compared to Homer however, Virgil describes in greater detail the path to, and the look of, the Underworld.  

“The path goes on from that place to the waves 

Of Tartarus’s Acheron. Thick with mud, 

A whirlpool out of a vast abyss 

Boils up and belches all the silt it carries 

Into Cocytus. Here the ferryman, 

A figure of fright, keeper of waters and streams, 

Is Charon, foul and terrible, his beard 

Grown wild and hoar, his staring eyes all flame, 

His sordid cloak hung from a shoulder knot…”

(Book 6) 

It is a horrifying place. 

“Now voices crying loud were heard at once—

The souls of infants wailing. At the door 

Of the sweet life they were to have no part in, 

Torn from the breast, a black day took them off 

And drowned them all in bitter death…” 

(ibid.) 

It is more visual, and detailed. 

In both poems, the protagonists travel to the Underworld and meet the dead people they know. In the Odyssey, there are four great moments: Odysseus meets Agamemnon, who tells the story of his murder (which becomes the basis for the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides); he meets Akhilleus (Achilles), who dies with glory but now says he would rather live an ordinary life than “lord it over all the exhausted dead”; he meets Aias (Ajax), who hated him in life and continues to hate him in death, refusing his gesture of conciliation; and he also meets his mother, who he hasn’t realised is dead, and tries to hug her in vain. The last three moments are extremely moving. Homer gets us to think about the people who have been in our lives: those we love and those we hate, those we may have been like and those we hope not to be like.

The Underworld scene in the Aeneid has one great moment, but it is deeply moving as we have been with them from the beginning: Aeneas meets the spirit of Dido, not having realised that she’s dead, and she doesn’t speak to him. 

No wonder some people think Book 6 is the most moving one in the Aeneid.