It is my eternal regret that I never took Latin in high school. I've made a few stabs at becoming self-taught, but it's not as easy as, well, something that is easy to teach yourself.
The gymnastics involved in medieval logic is, I think, what makes the middle ages so appealing to those who study it earnestly, and is the reason that period texts read so endearingly poeticly -- the author's needs and desires are always transparent through the attempts at what passed for objective narrative. (If one even believes that the medieval mind cared about objectivity.)
As for translating things across continents and words across languages.... there is a wonderful line towards the beginning of _Ada_ by Vladimir Nabakov in which he takes a jab at the bad nineteenth century renderings of Russian novels into English by talking about Anna Karenina being 'transfigured' into English. I've always loved this observation -- that by translating, we, by nature, transform.
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Date: 2003-10-21 10:58 pm (UTC)The gymnastics involved in medieval logic is, I think, what makes the middle ages so appealing to those who study it earnestly, and is the reason that period texts read so endearingly poeticly -- the author's needs and desires are always transparent through the attempts at what passed for objective narrative. (If one even believes that the medieval mind cared about objectivity.)
As for translating things across continents and words across languages.... there is a wonderful line towards the beginning of _Ada_ by Vladimir Nabakov in which he takes a jab at the bad nineteenth century renderings of Russian novels into English by talking about Anna Karenina being 'transfigured' into English. I've always loved this observation -- that by translating, we, by nature, transform.