![]() ![]() ![]() A baby becomes a hero, a hero a kind of child, the ancient wanderer a modern migrant. For Hadas, the contemporary skyline sits on a classical horizon, and the birth of a child reverberates both with the ancient world and the political shocks of the 21 stcentury. Sharply intelligent and sublimely learned Rachel Hadas, one of our most distinguished poets and translators, frames all but one of the Poems for Camilla with epigraphs from Virgil’s Aeneid. Tenderly, cleverly, fiercely, she writes these poems for a newborn granddaughter, juxtaposing an epic tale of a warrior with a girl’s life just begun. Against the jolts and jars of history, she asserts life’s quiet miracles, including, in her case, the generational continuity extending from her revered father to the beloved grandchild to whom this book is dedicated. The good news, as Hadas reminds us with her characteristic humanity and intelligence, is that individuals and societies often survive crises rather than succumbing to them. Just as Virgil wrote against the backdrop of the self-conflicted, imperial turbulence of Rome, Hadas examines our republic as it veers off into possibly irreversible disorder. ![]() Rachel Hadas’s remarkable new book treats the Aeneid as a commentary on our times. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |