A woman in the shadows in a great epic poem

This novel is another stone – and there are many already, thanks to the efforts of the Raig Verd publishing house – to build the universe Ursula K. Le Guin in Catalan and to understand the scope of the work, so varied, of one of the most important authors of Anglo-Saxon fantasy. Lavinia It doesn't belong to any of the famous cycles; it goes its own way, like its protagonist. It's more of a historical novel than a fantasy, and at the same time, it's an exercise in rewriting history. The Aeneid of Virgil. If in the twelve-book epic the character of Aeneas's wife has not a single line of dialogue and is always in the shadow of the Trojan warrior, Le Guin wanted to put her at the center and gave her the voice she lacked in the classical world. Part of the book's merit lies in this gesture. Originally published in 2009, it belongs to the wave of works that challenge the flatness of patriarchal tradition and, in a creative way that doesn't negate but enriches it, assert that history cannot have been written or starred in solely by men. In the epilogue she wrote at the end of the novel, the author declares her unconditional love for Virgil and says that what she intended was only "a meditative interpretation suggested by a minor character in his story, the unfolding of a clue."

Le Guin gave Lavinia powers that connected her to the afterlife and wrote several scenes with the ghost of Virgil, which help the daughter of the king of Laurentum understand her destiny. Virgil explains that, to marry, she must wait for a Greek warrior who will arrive in Latium, southwest of present-day Rome, with whom she will experience the adventure of a lifetime. Lavinia accepts this challenge and waits for Aeneas, whom she marries, but the rejection of the suitors from Latium will provoke a war and a duel to the death between the leader of the Trojans and Turn, the queen's nephew and the leading candidate to marry Lavinia.

The novel is sophisticated from a narrative point of view: there are no breaks or chapters, but the action makes numerous leaps forward and backward in time that provide fundamental information and show us the future life of Lavinia and Aeneas with their son and the proto-Rome that is beginning to emerge. This gives it depth and prevents it from being just another novel, although it also adds a certain density.

To write it, Ursula K. Le Guin, in addition to reading The AeneidHe immersed himself in the world of pre-Roman culture and religion, a rather mysterious and not so well-studied world, but enough to build a more than attractive backdrop: the customs of a pagan society (where "pagan" comes from page(what lives on the farm) the feminine rituals in the middle of the forest and the offerings to the guardian gods of the houses and villages. The descriptions of daily life are delightful and entirely believable, thanks to the artistry of a writer who can just as easily invent a galaxy as explain how some Etruscans sacrifice a black lamb on an altar in the middle of the forest. It is a simple agricultural society, dominated by the rhythm of the seasons, which is thrown into turmoil when war arrives. The gods are not active or anthropomorphic beings, like the Greek gods, but rather spirits of the houses and hills who accompany men and women with a presence that is more benevolent than cruel. Like Le Guin's Virgil, a dying ghost who transforms Lavinia into an immortal character, rather than a woman of flesh and blood.