In Virgil's epic The Aeneid, Lavinia of Latium is a
minor character. She doesn't even show up until the last six books of the poem,
and when she does arrive, it's to serve as a sub-par Helen Of Troy, driving men
to battle simply by what she represents. Aeneas needs to marry her to secure
his position in a strange country, while Turnus, a local king, isn't willing to
step aside for a group of foreigners. The epic ends with Aeneas slaying Turnus
in a rage after Turnus surrenders to him. There's no mention of the wedding
that must've followed, the life Lavinia would've had with the stranger who
basically conquered her country in pursuit of her, or what she felt about any
of it.
Which isn't Virgil's problem—it's a long
poem, but there's a lot of ground to cover, and the feelings of one teenage
pawn are easy to overlook. In Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin's elegant homage, the title
character takes center stage, narrating the events that lead to Aeneas' arrival
and the war, then going past The Aeneid to show the foundation of Aeneas and Lavinia's
city, his eventual death, and the fates of their children. Le Guin explains the
complicated relationship Lavinia has with her mother—driven near-mad with
grief over the death of her sons—and her father, a loving, supportive
parent who pushes aside his responsibility at the moment where strength is
needed most.
The trickiest part of writing a novel in the
shadow of such a well-known work is justifying the existence of something that
could easily be dismissed as just a higher-minded version of fan fiction. Le
Guin, a justly revered author in her own right, handles this by directly
acknowledging Virgil's poem; Lavinia meets the poet's dying shade while
visiting a forest shrine, and he tells her future in a series of haunting,
elegiac dialogues. There's a strong indication that the Lavinia in Le Guin's
book is the one from Virgil's poem—that she and the world she describes
are a living fictional construct that exist because of the poet's creation.
It's the sort of playfulness that could've come off as gimmickry, but in Le
Guin's capable hands, it creates an extra layer of life.
Lavinia succeeds largely because its author approached it
with no greater intention than paying tribute to a source material she found
deeply inspiring. Le Guin's usual concerns—the vagaries of fate, the
necessity of balance—never feel shoehorned in, and the result is a book
that honors its source while being fully satisfying as a standalone. It's good
for the soul, really; two masters dueting over a 2,000-year gap without ever
missing a note.