CONCLUSION - THE FURTHER SHORE.

In the end I am still left with an answer to the following question: did Palinurus - after he fell into the sea with his tiller and a big part of the stern - opt for (as Connolly writes) ‘the’ or (infinitely more likely) for ‘an’ ‘unknown shore’? In other words: was the shore that once he should reach, a purposeful destination, or still vague and less purposeful the moment he decided to leave? A question I asked earlier but I did not answer as it went at that moment beyond the boundaries of the project, but a good thing to keep in mind.

Finally I consider the choice between these two options as a key narrative issue - with on the background the substantive contrast between the attitudes of the concealed, soft, melancholic critical pessimism versus the savage, strong activist critical pessimism of all the various interpretations of the Aeneid.

For me it has been a great experience to see how in course of the project both critical pessimistic interpretations of the Aeneid has been elaborated by the two groups into their two very different series of works. And it was fascinating to see, as also participant L already noted, with sand - the dunes in one final work and the sandcastle in the other - as connector.

As a post scriptum I would like to add to my conclusion some words of G.R. Austin about W.F. Jackson Knight and his Virgilianism. 'He', Jackson Knight, 'seems always to have been stretching out his hands in longing for some further shore; he makes us conscious that such a shore exists, even though we may not travel in his company'. This raises the question for me whether our melancholic or activist critical pessimistic dream can ever become a melancholic or activist critical optimistic dream.

I tend to say no as an answer to this question. There is no doubt that the Aeneid - as Jackson Knight brought in - is an attack on Augustus and autocracy, and as a work of art not only on the ruler and his autocracy of Vergil’s own time. Savage or concealed, history proved that Augustus and his successors did not respond to Vergil’s urgent call when the author put an exclamation mark and a dash at the end of verse 835 of the sixth book. Nor did the rulers and their people and nations after them.

Seen in this light the shore can be seen as a symbol for the vulnerability of the individual who does not wish to enter a promised land or to go through with the slaughter necessary to possess it. In which the ‘an unknown shore’ is the destination for the dreamy deserter, and the ‘the unknown shore’ for the dreamy resisting actvist.

(ndk, July 22th 2021)