Category Archives: Translating Metamorphoses

Health, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Pole Vaulting

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Imbolc                                                   Black Mountain Moon

Working on Latin today. A plateau pole-vaulted. For the first time, I worked from the text in Perseus alone, writing nothing down, looking up words in the usual click-on-the-word style with Perseus, but assembling the translation in my head, then typing it into my Evernote file for Medea and Aeson. This is the private equivalent of sight reading and I’m becoming facile at it, at least in Ovid.

If you were here in the room, I’d ask for a high five. This feels like a culmination, a passing through one of the key doors on my way to the amateur classicist tower. Still a good ways to climb, but I’m far beyond the half-way point. Amazing.

Another positive note. After each night’s sleep and each nap, I get a reading on my resting heart rate thanks to my Basis watch, my 2014 birthday present. Before leaving Minnesota I had my resting heart rate down to a 62-67 bpm average, leaning more toward 62. Which is pretty good for a guy in his late 60’s. After being without exercise for almost two months, I began again last month and my heart rate showed up in the 70-73 range and stubbornly stayed there. Just when I had begun to get frustrated with it, it began to drop. Now, I’m running 67.

Feels like a victory, especially at 8,800 feet.

Art and Culture, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

A Childhood Fascination

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Imbolc                                                Black Mountain Moon

First Latin session since November 14. Greg and I used Skype and, as a result, for the first time in over 4 plus years, actually saw each other. I’ve moved back into Ovid, Caesar just didn’t keep my interest.

Right now I’m in book VII, translating the story of Medea and Aeson. Aeson is the father of Jason, he of the Golden Fleece, and Medea’s husband.  Jason asks Medea to make his father younger, “Subtract years from me and add them to the years of my father.”

The Metamorphoses is  like a prism for Greek mythology. Greek myths and epic poetry shined out of the classical and heroic eras into the mind of Ovid. He collected their light, gave it his own cynical twist, then shined the light on to developing Western culture, especially during and after the Renaissance. To read the great poem in his own language and to grapple with making his Latin meaningful in contemporary English plants each one of these stories deeply into my own memory.

Where does it take me? I don’t really know, but I do know that the world of Augustan Rome and the world of Greek mythology has fascinated me since I was little and has not ceased to fascinate me even as I push well into my third phase.

 

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Back At It

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Imbolc                                  Black Mountain Moon

I’ve found my rhythms. Back at Latin, going to turn today back to Ovid from Caesar. Writing. I’m 4,000 words plus into Superior Wolf and my brain is buzzing, following trails here and there with characters, research, narrative structure. Working out is back, too, 6 days a week right now. I’m not where I was in terms of fitness, not sure how the altitude has affected me, but I’m improving and that’s the key. The whole fitness area is still in flux, but I have a pattern I’m using.

A new element, too. I’m going to make some art. Not sure what quite yet, though I’ve got some ideas and lots of material. When my center room work space gets finished, I plan to get at it. There’s also, with art, the research and work with art history, theory. Not there yet in that work, but it will come.

Even, if you managed to get through my long posts under Beyond the Boundaries, Original Relation and Reimagining Faith, you’ll know, my reimagining project has finally begun to take off. Why now I’m not sure, but there you go.

This blog, of course, has remained a constant.

Now, if we could just sell that house.

Art and Culture, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses

Classic

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Samain                                                                              Closing Moon

Back to the Latin over the last few days. It’s surprising how much like weight lifting and cardio-vascular work outs studying a language is. It needs constant effort. I let go of the discipline of daily translation for about a month and my ease of work with the language suffered considerably. I’m back to it now, but it’s a challenge, will take awhile to get the flow back.

(Philemon and Baucis)

Surprised myself on Friday by telling Greg that I’m hoping for a synthesis between my study of Latin and my study of art history. I thought I was doing this to implant the stories of the Metamorphoses in my head. Turns out I have an additional agenda.

What would the synthesis look like? Not sure right now, but one obvious route in is to look at all the art inspired by Ovid, then translate all the relevant stories (I did several for the Titian exhibition at the MIA) and learn the backstory about artists, paintings, the myths, and the Augustan context for Ovid’s work. Somewhere in there is probably something pretty interesting.

Latin, Memories, Myth and Story, Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

Regret, like resistance to the Borg, is futile. In all ways but one.

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Fall                                                                                Falling Leaves Moon

Not sure why, but today I told Greg, my Latin tutor, why I was doing this. Or, maybe I’ve told him before and don’t remember, but I don’t think so. (Of course, by definition, how would I know?)

The story begins with my traipsing off to college, already doubting my Christian faith for a number of reasons, not the least of which was what I perceived as a holding back by my native Methodism of (to me at that point) elegant proofs for the existence of God. I got them from the local Catholic priest. I didn’t know that he re-iterating Aquinas.

It was not far into my first history of philosophy class that we dismantled each one, piece by piece. Oh. My.

Philosophy set my mind on fire week after week. I signed up for Logic in the second semester and the second history of philosophy segment. Even though I left Wabash I had already earned half a philosophy major’s worth of credits in my freshman year.

All this excitement led me quickly to the conclusion that I wanted to be able to read German, so I could pursue Kant, Hegel and Heidegger in their native language. So, I signed up for German, too. From my point of view it was a disaster. I struggled in every aspect of it and was faced with getting a D at the end of the second semester. That was not going to happen, so I dropped it.

A youthful decision, one I regret. It took me 45 years to get back to a language; but, I decided I wanted to challenge myself, see if my conclusion, defensively drawn in 1966, that I could not learn a language, was in fact true. It was not true.

Now I have a deeper regret, that I didn’t pursue German further and that I didn’t do Latin and Greek while in college, too. The classics and art history seem to be my natural intellectual terrain, but I never took a course in either one. Regrets are pointless, of course, the retrospective both wallowing in a past now gone and not retrievable, but I believe there is one good thing about them.

They can be a goad to action now, or future action. That is, we don’t have to repeat the actions we regret. We can change our life’s trajectory. So, I intend to spend the third phase of my life, as long as body and mind hold together, pursuing the classics and art history, doing as much writing about both as I can.

 

Colorado, Latin, The Move, Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses

Moving on

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Lughnasa                                                                           College Moon

It’s been another full tilt day. Business meeting in the morning, then shed cleaning. We worked, ate lunch, napped, and worked some more. Geez. I told Kate after this experience that I believe we should do the same in our new place. Every 20 years just like here.

We’re over half done with packing and decluttering, the momentum seems to be shifting now.  More like we’re moving toward Colorado than away from Minnesota.

In my Latin yesterday with Greg we decided I would keep on with every two week sessions, reading Caesar and Ovid and whoever else, I think Vergil’s Georgics, too. Apparently at my particular place in the learning curve reading and more reading, grappling with each nuance is the way forward. After the amount of time I’ve invested so far, I’ve decided to go all the way. I want to become a fluent reader of Latin. That’s a ways away, but no longer imaginary.

It’s odd, I realized, but every two weeks for one hour is 26 contact hours in a year. A language class for a 12 week quarter would meet at least 3 times, usually 5 with a lab, which is either 36 or 60 hours a quarter. We’re not even doing a full 26 because we have sessions that we miss or extend for three weeks. That means I’m advancing ok given the number of contact hours of teaching.

Plus, while it’s certainly luxurious to have a personal teacher, a tutor, there is additional learning from being with a group doing the same exercises-a class. All this is self-talk, really, about taking 4 years plus to get to this level. Seems like a long time to me. But maybe not.

 

 

 

Latin, Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses, World History

De Bello Gallico

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Lughnasa                                                                           College Moon

I asked Greg (Latin tutor) for something new, a different arrangement. He wrote back and suggested I start reading Caesar’s De Bello Gallico. That’s not quite what I had in mind, but I decided I’d try it before our time together next Friday. I’ve already translated 20 lines. It goes quicker than Ovid, prose rather than poetry explaining part of that I imagine. Translating made me feel like I’d made real progress. Probably Greg’s point in recommending it.

The commentary I’m using for Caesar suggests reading in the Latin word order first. That’s very hard with poetry because Latin poets move words around based on rhyme scheme and meter, as well as for dramatic effect. With Caesar however it gave me, for the first time, a feel for Latin as a foreign language rather than a puzzle created by unfamiliar words. Reading in the Latin word order means thinking the way a Latin writer and reader would.

There is a subtle irony involved in reading Caesar for me, two in fact. The first is that Caesar was the first real Latin text I ever began to read, way back in Miss Mitchell’s class in high school. (Yes, speaking of ancient times, that was 1964 and 1965.) The second and more profound one for me is that it is through Caesar and through De Bello Gallico, Of the Gallic Wars, that we have a great deal of our knowledge of the ancient Celts. Gaul = Celt. And, it was Caesar who invaded Briton. Between Caesar and Tacitus, a Roman historian, we have the bulk of the written accounts about the Celts, how they lived, fought, worshiped.

I’m going to keep translating both Ovid and Caesar, though I’ll finish Caesar long before I finish the Metamorphoses.

 

Art and Culture, Dreams, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Aesthetic Comfort Food

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Lughnasa                                                                     College Moon

Again, the quiet. I haven’t put a full push on with the Latin before today, but I could see the end of the Apollo and Daphne story and wanted to get there. So, I’m mentally fatigued, ready for some deep sleep, maybe some interesting chunks of rem.

Book illustrations, especially 19th century illustrations, give me a warm feeling. If they’re good. Sort of aesthetic comfort food. Not great in large doses, but every once in a while, just what’s needed.

 

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Latin

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Lughnasa                                                               College Moon

Finished up the story of Daphne and Apollo. As Daphne changed into a laurel, Apollo grabbed onto her branches and threw his arms around her trunk, feeling her agitated heart still beating there. He declares his love to the tree (Classical humor) and then proclaims the laurel dedicated to him. It will henceforth adorn great achievements including triumphs in Rome and stand before the door to the house of the great Augustus.

(Apollo Daphne Appiani)

On Friday I’m going to renegotiate my relationship with Greg. Not sure what comes next but what we’re doing has become repetitive. I would like now to have a task, an assignment, a sort of final paper, something I could work on over a given period of time and then show to him. Don’t really know what I’m talking about here, but I feel ready to move to a different level or a different set of tasks. Something.

More on this later.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Summit In Sight

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Lughnasa                                                                 Lughnasa Moon

Not as smooth as last session. Now the tutorials seem to go, smooth and relatively mistake free, then clunky, filled with uncertain work. The plateaus were, in the past, obvious and as they were overcome, the terrain of the past was visible. With this plateau, and it sure seems like one in its stubbornness, the past seems to vary from session. That means knowing what needs more attention is difficult.

(Caspar David Friedrich)

This feels like the climb toward the peak where hypoxia can set in, without warning, and force a climber back down if they’re climbing without oxygen. Eventually acclimation triumphs over the thin air or the distress makes it necessary to leave the climb. In this case the peak matters enough to stay up here until acclimatization takes over.

To overextend this metaphor, the view from the peak will be enough to satisfy. That is, book after book of Latin now accessible. Yes, this peak has already been climbed many times, but as any dedicated climber can tell you, until you’ve reached the peak yourself, the mountain isn’t yours.