The Truth of Poetry - Virgil's Aeneid 8 CD set

It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. . . .

He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences between the truthful and the poetic

. . . He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of POETRY and TRUTH.

-          Edgar Allen Poe

Gil Bailie in this series recorded in 1995 explores the relationship between truth and poetry via Virgil’s Aeneid. This series was conceived as a complement to the Poetry of Truth series based on the Gospel of Luke. In these two texts, Luke’s Gospel and Virgil’s Aeneid, written only a few decades apart the perspective of the Judeo-Christian revelation is compared to the classical myth of origins composed as an paean to Augustus Caesar and the pax romana.

Into the world Virgil’s poem was written to glorify was born, in a lowly cattle shed in a dusty outpost on the edge of the Roman empire a different kind of king. At the intersection of these stories there occurs an event that has become the axis about which human history now turns. At the trial and crucifixion of Jesus the administrator of the pax romana confronts the one who says, “for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth”, and Pilate responds, “What is truth?”