Peace - Elm trees and empty dreams

Matthew King · 06 Jun 2007, 15:39 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: automatthew at gmail.com (Matthew King)
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:39:10 -0500
Subject: (urth) Peace - Elm trees and empty dreams
Message-ID: <CAE39466-06FD-47F7-AD68-CCC37DD40EF4 at gmail.com>

Caveat lector:  spoilers for Peace below.

The elm tree that falls in the first line of Peace is planted on the  
grave of Alden Dennis Weer, the book's narrator.  As the Sergeant  
says in The Pirates of Penzance, "This is perplexing."

Leaving aside the mystery of a story told by a ghost, is there any  
significance to the tree being an elm?  I cannot find, in the  
archives of this list, any discussion on this particular topic.

Googling for elm folklore found this tidbit:

http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythfolk/elm.html
It is interesting to note that both the yew's and the elm's mythology  
is intimately bound up with death and the transition into the  
Underworld, and that both woods were used to such deadly effect in  
mediaeval warfare. Elm's connection with death does not end there, as  
its wood is traditionally used to make coffins, though the wood's  
durability underground may also play a part in this choice. Perhaps  
people who knew elms well were reminded of their own mortality when  
remembering the elm's reputation for dropping large boughs without  
warning on otherwise still, warm days; "Elm hateth man, and waiteth"  
as the old saying goes.
-----

More to the point, and the reason for this post, is the elm tree we  
encounter in Virgil's Aeneid.  Full disclosure:  I haven't read The  
Aeneid yet.  I made the connection when listening to some lectures  
from The Teaching Company.

In Book VI, Aeneas visits the underworld to consult with the spirit  
of his father, Anchises.  The Cumaean Sybil leads him to the  
underworld and guides him through it.  "Just in the gate and in the  
jaws of hell," as Dryden translates, Aeneas finds an elm tree.   
Here's the relevant passage from Dryden:

http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.6.vi.html
Full in the midst of this infernal road,
An elm displays her dusky arms abroad:
The God of Sleep there hides his heavy head,
And empty dreams on ev'ry leaf are spread.
Of various forms unnumber'd specters more,
Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door.
Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands,
And Briareus with all his hundred hands;
Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame;
And vain Chimaera vomits empty flame.
The chief unsheath'd his shining steel, prepar'd,
Tho' seiz'd with sudden fear, to force the guard,
Off'ring his brandish'd weapon at their face;
Had not the Sibyl stopp'd his eager pace,
And told him what those empty phantoms were:
Forms without bodies, and impassive air.
-----

Here's the same passage in a modern translation by A. S. Kline:

http://www.tkline.freeserve.co.uk/VirgilAeneidVI.htm
In the centre a vast shadowy elm spreads its aged trunks
and branches: the seat, they say, that false Dreams hold,
thronging, clinging beneath every leaf.
And many other monstrous shapes of varied creatures,
are stabled by the doors, Centaurs and bi-formed Scylla,
and hundred-armed Briareus, and the Lernean Hydra,
hissing fiercely, and the Chimaera armed with flame,
Gorgons, and Harpies, and the triple bodied shade, Geryon.
At this, trembling suddenly with terror, Aeneas grasped
his sword, and set the naked blade against their approach:
and, if his knowing companion had not warned him
that these were tenuous bodiless lives flitting about
with a hollow semblance of form, he would have rushed at them,
and hacked at the shadows uselessly with his sword.
-----

Now, we know Wolfe is familiar with The Aeneid, if only from his  
borrowing of the Cumaean.  Peace could well be described as a book of  
"empty dreams", with "tenuous bodiless lives flitting about".

If the elm before Acheron did inspire the elm upon Alden, I wonder  
whether we might find in Peace some traces of Briareus, Geryon, and  
the others.  Note that Dante, guided by Virgil, meets these monsters  
in the Inferno (which I also haven't read).

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