Note from the editor:
Toby Chen ’25 gave the following speech in the Modern andClassical Languages Honor Tea. In it, he reflected on his four years of Latin experience and presented a nuanced answer to the untimely, troublesome question of why one should study Latin, a dead language. Toby kindly provided the following draft; no edits were made to preserve his speech’s originality.
“Ne cede malīs,” yield not toadversity. This is our school’s motto. But why can’t we just say it in English? You see, a big part of being a student in Latin is about convincing your peers, and yourself, why you chose to study “a dead language.” Sure, I get a more insightful understanding of the grammatical constructions and literary traditions behind the aforementioned proverb and other phrases such as “in medias res,” or perhaps I get to correct people when they pronounce the word “dulce” in Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum est as “dulche” (yeah... classical Latin always has a hard c), but what does Latin have to offer beyond these fragmented apparitions?
My first moment of awe this year began with encountering line 168 of Virgil’s Aeneid Book 1: “intus aquae dulcēs vīvōque sedīliasaxō, / Nymphārum domus” — within [the cave,] the home of the nymphs, are sweet waters and seats in the living rock. Aeneas was blown off course by the winds
due to Juno’s wrath and came to the serene cove of Libya. I was blownoff course by the tension between the tragic narrative looming from above and the peaceful details of the present; by the syntagmatic freedom that Latin offers, which places the word “seats” literally between “living” and “rock;” and, finally, by the creative, anthropogenic interpretation of natural phenomena. Thus, I was inspired to write my own lyrical poem with omitted punctuation, ambiguous dependent clauses, and Virgilian imagery:
I searched for the train’s scream rippling
across the meadows candid chairs live
in pebbles sprinkling on my back
icy relics quiet as a dragonfly says
my palm ran out of lines
Virgil’s verses predate Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of defamiliarization as well as Lynn Hejinian’s prioritization of the poetic line over the prosaic sentence. These names may sound familiar to you if you have taken Mr. Kim’s CL Creative Writing class. What struck me the most was how modern and seemingly experimental ideas in creative expression resonate extensively with moments in the Aeneid.
Understanding Latin unlocked acertain kind of consciousness for me. It’s very hard to pinpoint exactly what it entails. I guess it’s my appreciation of the classical mythology, motifs, and literary lineage that remain nested within many modern works, as well as my awareness of this language’s unusual, linguistic nature. Such consciousness offers a plethora of classical techniques that allows for, as stated earlier, an expression of my modern self, and a deeper recognition of ancient literature.
Let’s take a look at the scene where Laocoon,who warned the Trojans against the Trojan horse, was killed by two serpents sent by the gods, “bis medium amplexī bis collō squāmea circum / terga datī superant capite et cervīcibus altīs” (twice the serpents enfold Laocoon’s torso, twice the serpents wrap their scaly backs around his neck and tower over him with their head and tall necks). The enjambment and lengthy anaphora, sustaining a phonetically demanding clause; the tmesis of “circumdatī,” promoting aprotracted and meandering morphology; and the serpentile semantics altogether conjure an immense sense of suffocation at all levels of linguistics, compelling the readers to survey this smothering spectacle, while literally as well as figuratively running out of breath as they finish reading this extended idea. The very nature of Latin itself amplifies the reader’s fear of these serpents, and it cannot be adequately captured through translation.
From Virgil’s symbolist reification of the abstract concept Rumor as a monster to the allegorical narrative in Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist; from Julius Caesar’s illusive objectivity in his Commentaries on the Gallic War to Ernest Hemingway’s lean prose as a means of dissecting wars’ violence, Latin still breathes life among contemporary literature. More importantly, it seeps into my personal means of expression. Gratias tibi ago, thank you for listening.
