Category Archives: Latin

Garden, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Workin’

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Beltane                                                                       Beltane Moon

Flagged off my Latin tutor for this Friday.  Bees, garden, retreat, finishing Missing combined to soak up my good work time.  To do well at the Latin I have to have a full day; it takes me awhile to turn on the neural network that recognizes cases, remembers Ovid’s peculiarities and enjoys the play of connotation and denotation.  Once I get in that place, which may take as much as a morning, then I can translate faster, with more facility.  But.  I need that unbroken time.  Just the way I work.

Rain kept me out of the garden last Thursday so I’ve got to out there right now and plant potatoes and chard.  The garden’s looking good, daffodils and tulips, bleeding heart and hosta, pachysandra and maiden-hair ferns greeting the strawberry blossoms, the asparagus spears, the green shafts of the allium family:  onion, shallot, garlic and the small leaves of the emerging beets.

Today, too, is another round in the Can I keep Gertie in the yard game?  I added another wire and plan yet more moves.  I’m smarter; she’s more persistent.  An equal match so far.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

A Comment-ary

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Spring                                                                  New Beltane Moon

An interesting proposition.  Greg, my Latin tutor, and I have talked off and on about  writing a commentary for new learners of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  Today he asked me to think about it with an eye toward moving our teacher-student relationship more toward collaborators.  It sounds fun and worthwhile to me.

Ovid’s text serves as the headwaters for most of Greek mythology as it enters the Western literary stream.  In that sense it is an important work in the historical study of Western literature.  A great read, too, it’s full of stories, captivating narratives that have a major twist at the end, so it is, as well, an excellent example of Western literature itself.

And commentaries last.  A good commentary on The Metamorphoses, even one that covers only part of the 15 books, could introduce students to this elegant citizen of Augustan Rome for decades, even centuries to come.

Humanities, Latin, Writing

Just Plain Fun

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Spring                                         Bee Hiving Moon

Kate has a tendency to get into work outside and not stop.  She just keeps going, head down, tasks to complete.  I admire that but don’t find it in me when I work outside, even though I enjoy that work, too.

On the other hand, when I get into Latin, my head down, keeping going button gets pushed. The next word.  The next phrase.  The next sentence.  Stay at it.  The puzzle part of it keeps me at it, pushes me forward.

Same thing happens when I do research.  One more item. Something new may be on the next page.  In the next book or web page.

Writing can go long, too, but it’s a bit different.  There, the imagination engine runs as long as its fuel gets dredged up, is there to use.  When it’s gone, it’s gone.  No explanation, no reason.  Just gone.

Yes, I can free write past that moment sometimes, that is, pick a different idea, go after it, dislodge a different source, maybe my off-shore oil or the North Sea fields, but just as often, more often, the well has run dry for the moment.

The joy here is that I still love it, all of it.  Latin, research, writing.

The outside work I appreciate, need in the same way I used to need meditation, contemplative prayer.  The inside, head work, is just plain fun.

Humanities, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Latin

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Spring                                                New Bee Hiving Moon

Worked on Latin this morning.  Greg (tutor) wants me to prepare for sight reading.  That is, I read the Latin out loud, then translate it, using my memory of the work I’ve done in preparation.  This is very demanding and requires, for me at least, going through the same material at least twice, once checking out definitions and grammar, putting together a more or less good literal translation, then going back over the same material a second time–which is what I did this morning.

(Pentheus has real mommy issues.  That’s mommy to his right.)

The second time I check my first translation with my notes and sight reading, correct for errors, display considerable frustration where I miss obvious things or, more fruitfully, where I identify things I just don’t get and then try for an idiomatic translation.

I’m still not what I’d call fast or reliable, but I’ve improved a good deal over the place I started two years ago.

At my age I have to block out the mornings completely so I can get into flow with these projects.  I’m no good with shifting out of them into something else.  Maybe I never was, now I’m sure I’m not.