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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