Friday, November 6, 2020

Reading Lucretius with Bailey’s translation

For more than three weeks I’ve been preoccupied with putting Lucretius on my blog accompanied by Bailey’s translation. Why am I doing it? To improve my Latin. I see it as a counterpart to exercises prescribed in Gavin Betts’ LATIN a complete course (First published 1986. The impression I have got was published in 1992, I must have bought it as I was preparing to return to Prague): ‘The reading in the .2 sections [i.e. ‘Latin reading’ sections] should not be attempted with one finger on the appropriate page of the key … A full translation of the entire exercise should be written down before the key is consulted at all. It is only by learning to analyse the forms of Latin words and patiently working out the construction of clauses and sentences that progress can be made. When you have completed your version, compare it with the key. If you have made mistakes, chase up the point of grammar involved and be sure you understand exactly why and how you went wrong. Next, read over the Latin, preferably aloud, until you are able to translate it without referring to your own version, the vocabulary or anything else.’

Translating Latin is hard work; and after all this prescribed labour one is left with the ability to make one’s own translation of the Latin text! – when all important Latin texts have been translated into English not once, but several times, by specialists well prepared for the task in public or grammar schools, and then at Oxford or Cambridge. When I decided to learn Latin in Prague, I decided to learn it so as to understand it directly, without translating it in my head into Czech. I learnt it from English, German, and French text and exercise books. Using the keys to shed light on the prescribed readings, I chased up the points of grammar, grasped the forms of all the words and so as to get clarity into their functions in the given sentence. I did not give in until I understood the sentence simply in Latin.

Actually, this is what I am doing, in principle, with every text of Lucretius I put on my blog. But why am I typing the text? It does good to my brain. After all, I have been doing the same with Plato for years. Consider how many parts of brain are thus occupied, how many new nerve connections must be constantly formed.

I begin by reading the given text aloud. This involves the visual cortex, auditory cortex, and the part of the motor cortex that controls the activity of the speaking apparatus. Then I type the text, which involves, on top of all that, the part of the motor cortex that controls the movements of hands and of fingers. This activity of all these brain centres is all the time focused on, and brought into one in, my understanding of the text. There is nothing in the brain itself, in so far as its anatomy and its functions can be registered by the instruments used in neurophysiology, that can register my understanding. Yet, my understanding of the text is the only activity of which I am conscious, which I consciously perform. Of all the intricate interaction of this part of me with the activity of my brain centres I am completely unaware, and yet it must be taking place – in my subconscious.

Let me now try to illustrate the sequence of tasks, which I undertake in presenting Lucretius on my blog. The text I have chosen for this purpose is the section that follows the section presented in my last post. It is a short section, in which Lucretius turns in an unexpected direction; after a series of sections, which he devoted to the birth of human language, he speaks of how men first came to fire.

Firstly, I read aloud the text in Bailey’s Oxford edition of Lucretius:

Illud in his rebus tacitus ne forte requiras,

fulmen detulit in terram mortalibus ignem

primitus, inde omnis flammarum diditur ardor.

multa videmus enim caelestibus incita flammis

fulgere, cum caeli donavit plaga vapore.

et ramosa tamen cum ventis pulsa vacillans

aestuat in ramos incumbens arboris arbor,

exprimitur validis extritus viribus ignis,

emicat interdum flammai fervidus ardor,

mutua dum inter se rami stirpesque teruntur.

quorum utrumque dedissse potest mortalibus ignem.

inde cibum coquere ac flammae mollire vapore

sol docuit, quoniam mitescere multa videbant

verberibus radiorum atque aestu victa per agros.

(1091-1104)

This gives me a rough picture of it.

Then I read Bailey’s translation: ‘Herein, lest by chance you should ask a silent question, it was the lightening that first of all brought fire to earth for mortals, and from it all the heat of flames is spread abroad. For we see many things flare up, kindled with flames from heaven, when a stroke from the sky has brought the gift of heat. Yet again, when a branching tree is lashed by the winds and sways to and fro, reeling and pressing on the branches of another tree, fire is struck out by the strong force of the rubbing, anon the fiery heat of flame sparkles out, while branches and trunks rub each against the other. Either of these happenings may have given fire to mortals. And then the sun taught them to cook food and soften it by heat of flame, since they saw many things among the fields grow mellow, vanquished by the lashing of his rays and by the heat.’

In most cases Bailey’s translation confirms the picture I get by my first reading of the Latin text.  Not this time, for I understood it differently. The original rough picture I got was the following: ‘Lucretius seems to begin by rejecting the idea of the lightening as the only source of fire. For trees moved by winds, branch rubbing branch, can start fire as well. (It showed men how to generate fire without waiting for a lightening as its source.) Finally, the sun taught men to cook, for they observed that many things in the fields were made soft by its heat.’

I wrote this rough outline before I read Bailey’s translation, which I normally don’t do. Normally I just read the text, it sinks into my subconscious, and against its background I read Baily’s translation. This time I tried to make the effect of the first reading explicit because of my writing this post. I shall discuss the difference between my and Bailey’s understanding of the text as I shall proceed.

Incidentally, the opening sentence gives a good example of what the English spellcheck does to the Latin text: “requiras” became “requires”. The spellcheck intervened twice more: “ramosa” was turned into “ramose”, “mutua” became “mutual”. I must read the text very attentively to catch and eliminate these spellcheck interventions. Which is good for my brain; within a month I will be 82.

Let me now type the text with Bailey’s translation:

Illud in his rebus tacitus ne forte requiras,

‘Herein, lest by chance you should ask a silent question,’

According to Bailey’s interpretation, Lucretius does not express the question he suspects the reader (presumably Memmius to whom Lucretius dedicated his poem) might be tacitly asking (‘how did the fire get to the mortals?’); he pre-empts the question by answering it:

fulmen detulit in terram mortalibus ignem

primitus, inde omnis flammarum diditur ardor.

Bailey: ‘it was the lightening that first of all brought fire to earth for mortals, and from it all the heat of flames is spread abroad.’

How did it happen that I interpreted these three lines differently: ‘Lucretius seems to begin by rejecting the idea of the lightening as the only source of fire’? I took the sentence introduced with the subjunctive ne forte requiras to mean ‘lest you want, by chance, me to say [that] it was the lightening that first of all brought fire to earth for mortals, and from it all the heat of flames is spread abroad’. My ‘seems to begin’ indicates my uncertainty; I read the section three times before I ventured interpreting it.

Next come the following two lines:

multa videmus enim caelestibus incita flammis

fulgere, cum caeli donavit plaga vapore.

Bailey translates: ‘For we see many things flare up, kindled with flames from heaven, when a stroke from the sky has brought the gift of heat.’ He presumably takes it as a confirmation and explanation of Lucretius’ claim that the lightening was the first source of fire for men.

I understand these lines as an explanation of why Lucretius did not want to say that the lightening was the first source of fire. I take them to mean: ‘For we see many things incited by the heavenly flames to shine, when a stroke from heaven donated some heat’. Unhappy with the vapore, I found in the critical apparatus that vapore is Lachmann’s conjecture; in the two principle codices, was written uaporis, which I take with caeli. I thus take these two lines as explaining why Lucretius did not want to say that the lightening was the primary source of fire for men: ‘For we see many things incited by the heavenly flames to shine … ‘ I don’t think Lucretius could heave meant to say that ‘we see many lightnings donating from heaven some heat’.

Next comes a long sentence expressed in five verses:

et ramosa tamen cum ventis pulsa vacillans

aestuat in ramos incumbens arboris arbor,

exprimitur validis extritus viribus ignis,

emicat interdum flammai fervidus ardor,

mutua dum inter se rami stirpesque teruntur.

Bailey translates: ‘Yet again, when a branching tree is lashed by the winds and sways to and fro, reeling and pressing on the branches of another tree, fire is struck out by the strong force of the rubbing, anon the fiery heat of flame sparkles out, while branches and trunks rub each against the other.’

In these five lines, as I understand it, Lucretius points to an alternative first source of fire to men.

Next comes a pregnant one-liner:

quorum utrumque dedissse potest mortalibus ignem.

Bailey translates: ‘Either of these happenings may have given fire to mortals.’

In this line, as I take it, Lucretius explicitly states that one or the other, i.e. the lightening or the mutual rubbing of branches and trunks of trees, could have been the first source of fire.

Then come the last three lines:

Inde cibum coquere ac flammae mollire vapore

sol docuit, quoniam mitescere multa videbant

verberibus radiorum atque aestu victa per agros.

Bailey translates: ‘And then the sun taught them to cook food and soften it by heat of flame, since they saw many things among the fields grow mellow, vanquished by the lashing of his rays and by the heat.’

The contrast between the gentle flammae mollire vapore (‘soften by heat of flame’), and equally mild mitescere (‘to become soft or mild,’ ‘to grow mild’), and the violent verberibus radiorum atque aestu victa (‘vanquished by the lashing of his rays [i.e. sun’s rays] and by the heat’, is worth noting. It becomes less startling if we read it against the background of Lucretius’ astronomy, to which I should like to devote a post or two. But first, in the following sequence of posts, I shall give its due to Lucretius’ ‘historical sociology’.

I finish by reading once again the Latin text aloud, in hexameters, marking the necessary elisions and hopefully correcting all the ‘spellchecks’:

Illud in his rebus tacitus ne forte requiras,

fulmen detulit in terram mortalibus ignem

primitus, ind(e) omnis flammarum diditur ardor.

multa videmus enim caelestibus incita flammis

fulgere, cum caeli donavit plaga vaporis.

et ramosa tamen cum ventis pulsa vacillans

aestuat in ramos incumbens arboris arbor,

exprimitur validis extritus viribus ignis,

emicat interdum flammai fervidus ardor,

mutua d(um) inter se rami stirpesque teruntur.

quor(um) utrumque dedissse potest mortalibus ignem.

inde cibum coquer(e) ac flammae mollire vapore

sol docuit, quoniam mitescere multa videbant

verberibus radior(um) atque aestu victa per agros.

Despite my arthritis, restless legs syndrome, and insomnia, Lucretius and Bailey gave me a glorious time with this post.

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