Out of Context

By CAROLINE ALEXANDER
Published: April 6, 2011 

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/opinion/07alexander.html?hp

THE 9/11 memorial in New York, still being planned, is to
be dedicated on the 10th anniversary of the attack.
Intended as a place for commemoration, reflection,
education and solace, the memorial and museum will serve
as a repository for the remains of the victims.
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Stefanie Augustine
Some families of the victims have criticized the planned
memorial because they are offended by the prospect of
sharing the resting place of their loved ones with
museum-going strangers. Because the structure will be
built seven stories below the spot where the twin towers
once stood, visitors will have to venture underground to
pay their respects, a prospect that also is not
comforting.

But one feature of the National September 11 Memorial and
Museum seems above reproach: a quotation from Virgil’s
“Aeneid” that will be inscribed on a wall in front of the
victims’ remains.

The memorial inscription, “No day shall erase you from the
memory of time” is an eloquent translation of the original
Latin of “The Aeneid” — “Nulla dies umquam memori vos
eximet aevo.”

The impulse to turn to time-hallowed texts, like the
classics or the Bible, is itself time-hallowed. In the
face of powerful emotions, our own words may seem hollow
and inadequate, while the confirmation that people in the
past felt as we now feel holds solace. And the language of
poets and great thinkers can be in itself ennobling.

But not in this case. Anyone troubling to take even a
cursory glance at the quotation’s context will find the
choice offers neither instruction nor solace.

Virgil’s epic relates the trials of the unhappy Trojan
hero Aeneas, who, as Troy burns, flees with the remnants
of his family and people to his ships and the sea,
eventually winding up in Italy, where it is his destiny to
lay the foundation of what will become Rome.

The immediate context of the quotation is a night ambush
of the Rutulian enemy camp by two Trojan warriors, Nisus
and Euryalus, whose mutual love is described in terms of
classical homoerotic convention and whose deaths represent
one of the epic’s famously sentimental set pieces. Falling
on the sleeping enemy, the two hack away with their
swords, until the ground reeks with “warm black gore.”
Stripping the murdered soldiers of their armor, the two
are in turn ambushed by a returning Rutulian cavalry
troop. As each Trojan tries to save his companion, both
are killed, brutally and graphically. At this point the
poet steps in to address them directly:

“Fortunati ambo! si quid mea carmina possunt, nulla dies
umquam memori vos eximet aevo.”

“Happy pair! If aught my verse avail, no day shall ever
blot you from the memory of time.” (The translation here
is from the famously literal Loeb edition.) At dawn’s
light, the severed heads of the two Trojans are paraded by
the enemy on spears.

The central sentiment that the young men were fortunate to
die together could, perhaps, at one time have been
defended as a suitable commemoration of military dead who
fell with their companions. To apply the same sentiment to
civilians killed indiscriminately in an act of terrorism,
however, is grotesque.

It is no easy duty to commemorate the dead. Possibly
others have performed it worse, and at least some, worth
studying, have done better. In Britain, the dreadful task
of fixing an inscription for the million military dead in
the wake of World War I fell to Rudyard Kipling — a task
made especially delicate given the loss of his own son in
the war. The simple quotation he selected, “Their name
liveth for evermore,” reflects the same pledge of
determined remembrance as the 9/11 memorial effort. But
whereas the Virgilian quote dissolves on inspection,
Kipling’s choice, from the 44th chapter of Ecclesiasticus,
becomes more profound as its context becomes clearer.

“Let us now praise famous men,” begins that chapter of
Ecclesiasticus, but it in fact goes on to evoke those who
died obscurely, as well as those who died having performed
great deeds; both will be remembered by their descendants.
A long work, Ecclesiasticus is sure to hold something
jarring for everyone; but overall, in context, the
selected verse remains sound:

“Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall
not be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace; but
their name liveth for evermore.”

The disastrous 9/11 memorial quotation was, evidently,
never intended to be more than a high-sounding,
stand-alone phrase, never intended to lead visitors to any
more profound thoughts or emotions.

Finding words that do justice to a momentous event is
always difficult — especially so, perhaps, in the age of
Internet trawling, when a wary eye needs to be kept for
the bothersome baggage that may be attached to the
perfect-sounding expression. There is an easy mechanism,
also time-hallowed, for winnowing out what may be right
from what is clearly wrong: it’s called reading.

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Caroline Alexander is the author, most recently, of “The
War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s
‘Iliad’ and the Trojan War.”

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