5 December 2013
Only for Classicists who like Cicero and Euripides
Scurra nescioquis in interrete scribens conatus est repertorium efficere in quo probra inveniri possint omnia quae in dies effundit domnus apostolicus. Facetus est hic, et illum lepidum Caius Valerius dixisset. Mihi praeter modum et hic et ille et quae scripta sunt probra placent. Hoc tantum addere velim ... assonantiam et alliterationem mihi cordi placere. Ex experimento 'narcissisticos narcoleptas' fortasse insusurrem. Seu potius ad Iasonem coniugi blanditias edentem et litteras i et s vomentem respiciam (o misos, o megiston echthiste ...ktl) et talibus - 'sisypheis semisocinianis' - vel similibus flagellis eiusdem domni hostes quoslibet omnes verberem. Eis polla ete Despota! Oves proculdubio oles!
Dear Father,
ReplyDeleteMy Latin is not up to the task of translating very much of this; would it be possible for you to provide a translation for those of us who are Latinically challenged? :-)
Dear Elizabeth
ReplyDeleteI am sorry! It must be very irritating. There are reasons why I preferred to put it in the obscurity of a dead language rather than in plain English. We live in a dodgy world. Not to say a dangerous one.
Perhaps I should have put the heading, at least, in English. That would have made it just that tadge less irritating. So I will now make that alteration. Again ... do forgive me. I won't do this sort of thing very often, and, believe me, you aren't missing much! Best wishes
John Hunwicke
Dear Fr. Hunwicke,
ReplyDeleteI have been missing you sorely and daily for the last 1.5 years, and the last nine months in particular. Your return to blogging may save me a visit to Oxford (although I sincerely hope not).
O sacerdos optime facundissimeque,
ReplyDeletePro modulo meo conatus sum repertorium istum repperi studere, sed mundus virtualis tam nebulosus est tamque obscurus ut nondum paginam istam invenire praevalui. Quaerentem, si potes sine maculo tibi, ut adiuves humiliter te precor.
My complaint is about your Greek transliteration. I can’t read that Englishizing stuff. Where are the breathings? Which are Etas and which epsilons? I think we should be told.
ReplyDeleteOn a slightly more serious note, welcome back indeed to the blogosphere after your temporary sojourn in the twilight of Brigadoon. I was getting worried I might need to start waking once in every hundred years, well, okay, maybe every hundred days, to read you.
Father, we spoke on the telephone just the once, I think, and I was so foolish and incompetent as to lose the contact details you were good enough to give me. The posting name is new btw – I was advised to set up a gmail account as the easiest way to post on The Rad Trad’s site. So I did. I have tried to contact you through the Ordinariate in your part of the world. I thought of trying again via the Oratory, but haven’t done so yet. But now that that singular effect of an unusual object of Presbyterian prayer seems to have worn off your blog, I can just post the question that has been pressing on my chest.
You have drawn attention in the past to certain differences between the original of the ‘Liturgia Horarum’ and its vernacular rendering in the (non-US English) ‘Divine Office’. I thought these were very telling. Mostly office hymns, I think you said.
I don’t own the Latin books – not for the summer anyway. Yes, I know I could order them. But I haven’t so far.
Here’s my issue. Back in the summer I was forced to pick up the third volume in order to have something to read before Lauds on Fisher-More (on the 9th July, obviously). The single proper lection for both great martyrs, the brightest lights in the darkness of their schismatic days of persecution, was a letter from S Thomas More to Margaret Roper. Nice and homely, but not very theological. Nothing about, still less by, S John Fisher. Would you mind satisfying my curiosity about the Latin original’s contents at this point? I recall it is a ‘memorial’ in the universal section, to which the duplicated reference in the national proper refers you. My point is that the reading in the English translation is an original English document; I think it reproduced at least some of the original spellings, but maybe not the capitalization. So which is the original, here? The translated volume is not translating the Latin book at this point, but, is it simply printing the best English version of a text also present in the Latin – you know that I suspect not – OR is it making a substitution? Does the Latin original have a reading that actually, either,
a). contains any theology, or
b). mentions the martyred bishop on his feast day?
I shall try not to make any further value judgments until I can access this information. And, sorry to be unseasonal, but this has really been bugging me.