Daniel Mendelsohn, by contrast, didn’t immediately leap to a modern “application” of the Aeneid—like the person (we all know the type) whose response to everyone else’s pain is to be reminded of his own, which he then wants to narrate at length—but rather wrestled with the poem on its own terms for years before finally realizing that the experiences of our time actually bring to light something real and true about this great poem that would have been invisible to those among our ancestors who most warmly venerated it.
