Criminal Words! (how I miss Latin!) (a fun post)

Here's what happens when you're teaching college these days:  humorous cultural references go right over the head of many of your students.

This was brought home when I was teaching a humour writing class (ages 18-50), and started with a survey of the greatest skits of all time.  

Remember this one?  Wayne and Shuster (probably our best export from Canada) and the infamous

 Rinse the Blood off my Toga.

Frank goes into Cicero's Bar (I have to snicker at that alone!) and strolls up to the bar:

Frank:  "Give me a martinus. 

Cicero:   "You mean a martini."

Frank:  "If I want more than one, I'll ask for it!"

Zing!  Over the head of everyone in my class.   

Honestly.  Did they all miss the Latin slogan on Roger Ramjet?  (let's see who remembers, in the comments)

Now, I went to high school in the mid-70s, when Latin had pretty well disappeared in BC and Ontario high schools.  However, I had an Italian mother, and a Brit father who was a lover of Latin and the arcane.  So early on, when learning street Italian, I got a taste of the Latin basics.

Things like (feel free to correct my spelling):

Nil illegitimi carborundum

(a Dad favourite, which he translated to: Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down

Which brings me to this nifty little book that I was given a few years back.

LATIN FOR ALL OCCASIONS, by Henry Beard.

Truly, I wonder how the rest of the world manages without these handy translations.  (Notice I've chosen ones that might be especially useful to my er family.)

      I have a catapult.  Give me all the money or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.

Catapultam habeo.  Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

 

     Look at the time!  My wife will kill me!

Di! Ecce hora! Exor mea me necabil!

 

    I didn't expect you home so soon!

Non sperabam te domum tam cito revenire!

 

    Do you by any chance happen to own a large, yellowish, very flat cat?

Estne tibi forte magna feles  fulva et planissima? 

 

    Things to say to your Lawyer:  You charge how much an hour?

Quantum in una hora imputas? 

 

   Watch out - you might end up divided  into three parts, like Gaul.

Prospice tibi - ut Gallia, tu quoque in tres parte dividaris.

 

   You and whose army?

Tutene Atque cuius exercitus?

 

   What did you call me?

Quid me appellavisti? 

 

 And finally...bringing it back to me...

A comedian, huh?

ita vero  esne comoedus? 

                                          (Any errors in spelling are mine.)

 

Next  time I'll talk about how not a single person in my college  fiction writing class could tell me the plot of Gone with the Wind, because nobody had seen it.  (Let alone read it.)  <Hits head against desk>

Melodie Campbell laments the demise of cultural references while writing wacky stuff in the True North.  The Toronto Sun called her Canada's Queen of Comedy.

Quis custodiet ipsos custode?

             I like democracy.  Churchill famously noted that it’s the worst form of government other than all the other forms that have been tried.  Yet there’s no better way to decide who should be in charge, since people are constantly trying to undertake that responsibility all on their own.  Everywhere you look, there’s some new effort by individuals and their affiliates to impose their ideas and prescriptions for behavior on everyone else. 

            Plato, who admittedly had some pretty interesting concepts, thought philosophers were the ideal rulers, since they knew a lot, which he believed meant they possessed greater honor and virtue.  Okay Plato, you might be right about the first part, but not so fast on the second.  While I had some excellent philosophy professors, nothing distinguished them as particularly virtuous.  I mostly recall bad haircuts and idiosyncratic choices in clothing.  Moreover, they hardly ever agreed on anything, and could easily come to blows over the relative merits of Apollonian vs. Dionysian principles.  Partisan battles pale in comparison.  

Some believe fervently that the government should stay out of the bedroom, which I think is a fine idea since it’s hard enough to get a good night's sleep without sharing the space with a bicameral legislature.  But there are lots of conflicting opinions about who should be doing what behind closed doors, and so far democracy has done a pretty good job sorting that out. 

          Many, like Jefferson, believe the best government is one that governs the least.  Except for those things they think should be governed.  George W. Bush told us he was “The Decider”, a chilling thought.  Much better to throw it open to everyone for a vote.

Since this forum’s pre-occupation is writing and publishing, it’s important to note that readers are the constituency.  They vote with their eyeballs and wallets.  Naturally, there are plenty of editors and publishing outfits who believe there are books that people ought to be reading, and would love nothing more than to enforce their preferences.  Worse, there are politicians and advocates who are heavily invested in what ought not be published.  They believe they are doing this to guard us from harmful subject matter or points of view.  Well then, who is going to guard us from them?

It's only relatively recently that the complicated, frustrating and messy democratic process has delivered us a reading culture that encompasses Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto and Tropic of Cancer.  But it’s no time to be complacent, because that could all disappear if we let it.

If you’ll permit me to paraphrase a line misattributed to Voltaire, I may think your writing stinks, but no one should stop you from writing it.  You might believe this a noble thought, but it’s also the height of practicality.  Censorship, either political or commercial, is the slipperiest of all slippery slopes.  Freedom of expression protects all of us from the biases and preconceptions of some theoretical decider.  To me, this is such self-evident genius, it’s breathtaking that anyone would argue to the contrary.

I know for some it’s a professional responsibility, but I will never give a book a bad review, at least not publicly.  To paraphrase another bit of wisdom, if you can’t say something nice, put a sock in it.  Mind you, I think the world would be a better place if everyone loved my books.  It would certainly be a better place for me and my self-esteem.  But aside from questioning a reviewer’s taste and good sense, a one-star review is the price of doing business.  I just don’t want to do such a thing myself.

       As Churchill said, democracy isn’t perfect.  Mistakes happen.  Hitler, Hugo Chavez and Hamas were democratically elected.  But I agree with William Buckley that “I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”  Or for that matter, The Christian Coalition of America.  I also don’t want them to decide what we should write, read or publish.  Same goes for The Association of Nobel Laureates in Literature (if it existed), or the head of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Libertas perfundet omnia luce.