The Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem written by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC. It tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy and became the ancestor of the Romans. It comprises nearly 10,000 lines dactylic hexameter. The first half of the book tells of the travels he and his fellow Trojans go through. The other half deals with battling the Latins and defeating them.

Aeneas was already known in Greco-Roman legend as he was a character in the Iliad. Virgil took the character and created a compelling national epic that tied Rome to the legends of Troy, explained the Punic Wars, glorified Roman values, and legitimized the Julio-Claudian dynasty as descendants of the founders, heroes, and gods of Rome and Troy.

Virgil begins his poem with a statement of his theme (Arma virumque cano ..., "Of arms and the man I sing ...") and an invocation to the Muse, falling some seven lines after the poem's inception (Musa, mihi causas memora ..., "O Muse, recount to me the causes ..."). He then explains the reason for the principal conflict in the story: the resentment held by the goddess Juno against the Trojan people. This is consistent with her role throughout the Homeric epics. [wiki]

Now onto my actual ideas on this great work of Western literature. For starters, Virgil grew up in a small town and was taken in by the wealthy to study in the great cities of his day. He's regarded as one of Rome's greatest poets, even being popular in the middle ages, where Dante Alighieri uses Virgil the poet/writer as one of the main characters for his Divine Comedy, another great classic of Western literature. He is described as a tall man, very learned but he spoke like a commoner of his day.

I read the Robert Fagles translation from 2006. It's got a strong modernist sensibility without being too easy to read or understand. I also read Fagles' modern translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey and it should be noted that there is a continuity of style and particular words in usage throughout all three works. I recommend this version for a first read. I'm also interested in reading a more literal and/or different translations, as well as these are the kind of books that I'd like to reread in order to understand more about it and enjoy again.

The beginning of the Aeneid is very slow. In that sense its a lot different from the Odyssey, which is fast-paced. There's the sacking of Troy, the Trojan horse, lots of wandering and sailing, Queen Dido, Sicily, Underworld, and lastly, war. However, the events that happen in the Aeneid are so similar to the Odyssey and the Iliad that you could say that the Aeneid is Virgil's take, putting both the Iliad and the Odyssey together in his own story. After all, he used Homer's works as the template for his creativity here.

One of the most compelling moments is when Aeneas falls in love with Queen Dido but ends up leaving her in order to fulfill his destiny, as prophesized by the gods. It's presumed after they get lost together during a hunting expedition that they have sex, which Dido takes as an indication of marriage between them. However, Jupiter sends Mercury [these gods have different names but are roughly equivalent to the Greek gods] to send Aeneas out to sail, to focus on his task. Her heart crushed and thrown in the garbage, Dido commits suicide, stabbing herself upon a pyre with Aeneas' sword. How tragic.

The fighting in this book is intense, full of heroes fighting valiantly. It's not quite as powerful psychologically as the Iliad but that's my take. The speeches taunting the other champions are aplenty but I found it a little flat compared to the epic chest-beating in the Iliad. The actual fighting was more interesting to me especially the female warrior Camilla, a warrior virgin. It's interesting because I've been reading these epics like Beowulf and Homer and none of them have any female warriors in particular. That really stood out to me. Early feminist overtones? It was sad to see her die to treachery.

Also, it should be noted that during the time of this writing Rome was going through a lot of changes with the Fall of the Republic and the Final War of the Roman Republic having torn through society and many people began to think twice about the "Greatness of Rome". But then the new Emperor Augustus Ceaser brought on an era of prosperity and peace through the reintroduction of traditional Roman values, which Virgil highlights with the utmost detail in the Aeneid. The abrupt ending suggests that Virgil died without finishing the work.

This is one of those all time great books that should be a must-read for anyone interested in great literature. The story itself is grand, eloquent, and contains very expressive and beautiful lines and themes. Although the original text was written in Latin, it comes across very well in English to my young modern mind. Sometimes these epics from the early ages come across sort of flat. Not so here in Fagles' translation, where although it isn't a literal translation, he has taken care to update the writing without losing its edge, its expressive quality. This is why I enjoyed reading it [and Fagle's other translations] so much. Yes, its a very long work and lots of lines and words with little spacing, but it's just so good that reading it is a breeze, a pleasure, stimulating intellectually and aesthetically. Take as long as you need because although its a slow-burn, its fantastic.

Check out my Fagle's translation reviews for the Iliad and the Odyssey below
http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-iliad.html
https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-odysee.html

Nocturnal Poisoning

Black metal, Dark Ambient 

Nocturnal Poisoning is the debut release by the American black metal one-man band Xasthur, released in 2002. The CD version of the album was limited to only 2,000 copies, making it a novelty. In my last post, which can be read here, I talked about how I got into black metal and a review for the first black metal record I listened to, Leviathan's debut release. It's ironic how I got into black metal on Holy Week and the week Notre Dame Cathedral got burned. I'll remember this week in 2019 for sure. 

Xasthur's first record Nocturnal Poisoning is a nightmarish beast. I first heard of Scott "Malefic" Conners when I saw the Noisey documentary on one-man black metal bands. Scott seemed like quite the troubled guy, much more messed up, and depressed than Wrest from Leviathan, who was also featured in the documentary. He seemed autistic, although I'm not quite sure if he is or not. One thing for sure is that he's an excellent musician. That's what got me interested in listening to Xasthur, Leviathan, and Striborg, all three one-man black metal projects. 

The guitars on this record are extremely distorted, fuzzed out walls of sound. Its as if he had two or more guitar tracks at all times, like a hurricane of guitar noise. The whole atmospheric walls of guitar distortion is a black metal staple, something I learned about from listening to Darkthrone, a 90's secondwave black metal group from Norway. Its that stereotypical high pitched, distorted tremolo guitar riffing that is so characteristic of black metal. It sounds great, especially with aggresive, fast blast beats on the drums. 

The drums used here are nothing all that impressive. In fact, I believe it to be a drum machine based on reviews I've read but they work. They aren't exceptional, and if Conners got a real drummer, or played real drums himself, the sound of the drums would've been much heavier. With drum machines, you always have a sense of something missing. The beats could sound great technically and fit all the songs but it's missing that human soul, to beat the living shit outta drum heads. You need real drums for metal, especially black metal, a genre that thrives off the raw visceral feel of rock and roll. The bass sound on this record is almost nonexistent, not good! 

The vocals are okay. They weren't exceptional. The lyrics are your typical post-1990's black metal fanfare-hate,  souls, hateful souls, yeah we get the idea. The vocals have a lot of fuzz and distortion attached, something that sounds quite good on King Crimson's first album, on the tune 21st Century Schizoid Man. However, the way fuzz is used on these black metal vocals are extreme, like the fuzz is at eleven and the vocals are at seven. The vocals are used sparingly and you can't understand any of them without a print off. Go figure.

The best thing musically about this record other than guitar [I love black metal guitar] is the keyboards. I would say Conners is best at guitars and keyboards, that's where he shines. The keyboards add a sense of dark ambiance that I haven't heard in most metal. Most metal uses keyboards as a cringe operatic and classical thing, not so here. The keyboards add more layers and layers of sound walls, adding to the guitars and overall atmosphere. 

The music is crushingly depressing. You could call this genre depressive suicidal black metal [DSBM for short], and after listening to the whole record you get a sense of uneasiness. "What am I listening to? Is this any good? Who would enjoy this?" That being said, this music is one hell of an acquired taste, as is black metal in general. This album doesn't really have riffs I can remember, its just drones and endless drum loops. I believe the album would get better after multiple listenings but the first one left me puzzled. The production on this record is better than your typical lo-fi black metal, that's one of the record's redeeming qualities. In fact, the production is so good that it sounds like a movie. 

All that being said, this record shows you how dark black metal gets. It's depressing. The vocals are painful to hear, painful in the sense that they are like cries of agony, screams of agony actually. I was inspired to listen to Xasthur because I found Conners to be the non-stereotypical black metal musician. He wasn't over the top, he doesn't write satanic lyrics or wear corpsepaint, and when he was interviewed in the Noisey documentary, he seemed like a genuine person-not fake. I realized from that interview that he was a troubled person and that shows in his music. I think I'd be down to check out more of his album releases and/or demo tapes. I've come to find that a lot of the really great black metal music comes from demos and EP's, as well as album releases. I'd be interested to see where Conners would go musically from here. I would definitely put him on my list of third wave American black metal, and one man black metal projects. It's impressive that he recorded all this on his own. Although I find the music arrangements to be not totally awe-inspiring, he is doing something unique, of his own here, that stands apart from his peers, other black metal musicians.

Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is a pop thriller by science fiction [cyberpunk especially] mastermind Bruce Sterling. It has no science fiction elements per se but there are some ideas that I've seen in Sterling's sci fi works here. The one that comes to mind is that nothing ever works out as planned. Don't even bother planning things because it will never turn out the way you want it. Shit happens.

The story is about a guy named "Leggy" Starlitz, who's running a Spicegirls-esque scam. He has seven girls from seven countries (the G-7, the American one, the French one, etc), and they go around touring, singing, and dancing, selling tons of merchandise but no records. The scam is going to the Middle East, where Leggy becomes a part of the criminal and political establishment, as an all girls pop group manager. Oh, and the girls can't sing, they're just lip syncing at shows. 

Leggy has just one rule for the group. The whole scam ends on Y2K. Written in 2000, this book fully captures what it was like at the beginning of the millennium. The novel takes a different course in the master narrative when Leggy's ex-lover [a lesbian with whom he had a threesome with, that spawned a child] leaves their kid with Leggy, in Istanbul. This is when Leggy realizes he has to change as a person, become a good father in his own way, while going through his own personal life. You could say Y2K is used as a midlife crisis here. 

Sterling makes good use of references here. Everything from Dragonball, Saliormoon, Celion Dion, heavy metal [which has the same meanings in every language, the language of distorted guitars and screaming vocals] Brian Eno, and tons of European philosophers that even I myself haven't heard of [I'm a big reader of philosophy but these seemed to be modern European philosophers], and Gabriel Marquez. You can see that Sterling knows a lot and that he can show off when he wants to. That's fine and dandy but some of the references can go over your head if you're not familiar with the terrain.

The master narrative, as Leggy tries to explain to his daughter is understood to be Leggy's own personal life story and everything contained within it. Leggy tells his daughter [who's 11 years old] that if you want to understand the world and people, you have to understand language. Never does this make any more sense than in a novel. However, this can also be applied to real life, where language is pretty much a science. The way you speak with your English in America can get you anywhere you want to go in life. 

The narrative takes a climatic turn when Leggy and Zeta, his daughter go off to Mexico to find Leggy's dad. They find him in some dump in the middle of nowhere, in an abandoned building. They had no ID, passports, money, or anything other than the clothes on their backs. "This is how most of the world lives. Most of their lives on the back page." Leggy says something to that effect and after seeing his dad his midlife crisis seems to be almost over. There's a lot of talk during this section about the atomic bomb testings and such. Apparently Leggy's father worked with the government as a code talker. But after this Leggy still has to deal with the G-7 girls, his pop group. 

Once he goes back to the Middle East he finds out the guy he made a deal with to manage the band while he was away didn't do a good job with the girls. Despite it all being a scam, one of Leggy's rules was "don't let any of the girls die". And two of them had died at this point in the novel. As you can imagine, they don't get along. Not to mention the fact that the business associate is also a heroin and arms deals trafficker with ties to government. 

The ending is very anticlimactic. In fact, Y2K passed very easily and painlessly for Leggy and he goes to a somewhat normal life after that. The novel is very funny, sometimes too funny. In fact the last couple sentences, there is a funny joke. Leggy's Russian buddy says they should do an all girls group from impoverished and war-beaten countries, and they wouldn't make any money from the group. And that in fact, they would pay people to lose money for them. That's pop for you. 

This is my third Bruce Sterling novel I've read and wrote about. Check out my other reviews below.

https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2018/12/holy-fire.html 
https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2019/01/schismatrix-plus.html