Some Thoughts on Reading Harry Potter in Latin
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26-35_a_firmage_harry potter.qxp 1/8/2007 2:49 PM Page 26 SUNSTONE The moment America yields to its neurotic impulse to become a Christian nation, instead of being a nation that respects and values Christianity, Harry Potter and the rest of our imaginative life will join Darwin on the scaffold erected each year by the Kansas City school board to toast great ideas. THREE CHEERS FOR CICERO SOME THOUGHTS ON READING HARRY POTTER IN LATIN By Edwin Firmage Jr. AST CHRISTMAS, I DECIDED TO Dominus et Domina Dursley, qui vivebant in brush up on my Latin. I say brush aedibus Gestationis Ligustrorum numero quat- L up, but vigorous scrubbing with tuor signatis. By the end of the first page, I steel wool designed to remove heavy rust was hooked. I finished the book two weeks would be more accurate. As an undergrad- later. Following are some reflections on uate, I studied Latin, as well as a number of reading a twentieth-century children’s classic other dead languages, but had not done done into the language of Cicero, two thou- much with it in the almost twenty-five years sand years dead. since. After a couple of weeks’ review with a well-thumbed copy of Wheelock, I was HAT INITIALLY SURPRISED ready to begin my first big Latin read in me most is the fact that the decades. Providentially, at that very mo- W book could be done into Latin. ment, my kids were cleaning out their rats’ It’s a testament to the timeless quality of J. nest of a bookcase and came across a copy K. Rowling’s writing, as well as to the bril- of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in liance of Needham, her Latin translator, Latin (Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis, that the book reads beautifully and fluently, translated by Peter Needham, Bloomsbury despite the occasional appearance of twen- Publishing, 2003) that had been given us by tieth-century problems such as Uncle my dad, who is prone to buying strange things in London book- Vernon’s car (autocinetum), the traffic jam (vehicula impedita) in shops. In school, I had never gone in for translations of English which it gets stuck, and motorcycles (birotulae automatiariae), kids’ books into Latin and Greek. But, being older now and flying and earthbound. more fun-loving, I opened the book and began reading: But more is at work here than “just” timeless writing and clever wordsmithing. Perhaps reports of the demise of Latin, I EDWIN FIRMAGE JR. makes his living, or tries to, as began to think, have been exaggerated. The more I reflected on a fine art photographer in Salt Lake City, Utah (res est this, the more positively perfect Latin, among all dead lan- sacra miser). He studied classics at Princeton and guages, seemed to be for this sort of thing. I imagined reading holds an M.A. in Ancient History and Mediterranean Harry Potter in my Sumerian and Hittite classes at Berkeley, Archaeology from U.C. Berkeley, where he was a and I pondered if it were done in Hittite, would we use all 315 Mellon Fellow. From 1986–1989, he was a Rotary Foundation cuneiform characters, complete with Akkadian and Sumerian scholar at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is the author and logograms, or would we opt for the chicer look of the hiero- publisher of Red Rock Yellow Stone, an award-winning combina- glyphic Hittite inscriptions? And, speaking of hieroglyphics, tion of photographs of the American West and haiku from Japan. how would Harry Potter work as part of a new, conversational PAGE 26 DECEMBER 2006 26-35_a_firmage_harry potter.qxp 1/8/2007 2:49 PM Page 27 SUNSTONE approach to teaching Middle Egyptian in place of the Tale of the Greeks their due, Greco-Roman. Harry Potter in Latin Sinuhe and The Shipwrecked Sailor? The fact that the humor in makes sense to us because, generation after generation since at these last two sentences will be lost on readers who have not least the eighth century, European culture has made the cul- spent years trying to learn Ancient Near Eastern languages and ture of Rome its own. Roman culture is the source to which literatures is in itself instructive. Clearly, when we’re speaking Europe has returned again and again when it needed to reani- of languages and their associated cultures, there are degrees of mate its flagging spirit. When new words, new ideas, new legal morbidity. Sumerian, Hittite, and Egyptian (Old, Middle, and forms, new philosophies, new architectural models, and new New) are all in the class of things, like the Monty Python ways of analyzing the real world were needed, Europe did not parrot, that would not voom if you put 4,000,000 volts create these from scratch, but rather dug deep into its own through them. Roman past for the solutions. During the Renaissance alone, Latin and Latin culture, by contrast, are still very much with for example, some 10,000 new words, and with them thou- us, even those of us who do not call Vatican Hill home. sands of new concepts and untold numbers of new institu- Classical Latin just refuses to die. No doubt many thought it tions, came into the English language, and the vast majority of dead when uncouth Germans of various persuasions overran these were direct borrowings from Latin. Thousands of addi- Gaul, Spain, and Italy. The Empire did die, but Roman culture tional Latin words had already entered the language in the lived on and actually ended up conquering the conquerors. Middle English period. Through his Bible translation, Wycliffe The Franks, to take one instance, overran Gaul, giving it the singlehandedly contributed about a thousand. Also during the new name (France, Frankreich) by which we still know it. Yet Middle English period, English adopted some 10,000 new so completely did Roman Gaulish culture absorb the barbarian French words, which of course themselves stem mostly from horde that less than a dozen words of Frankish origin survive Latin sources. These too also represent more than just vocabu- in contemporary French. Gaul, that nation of Astérixes, was lary items as isolated phenomena. Words embody concepts, the medieval equivalent of the Borg of Star Trek, assimilating practices, beliefs, institutions, and the like. The fact that everyone who crossed its path. Roman Gaul, complete with as- English found a need for these words indicates the profound similated Franks, was again listed as an endangered species transformation of European society that was then underway. when an invasion of strapping blondes from Norway hit the And the fact that the borrowings come ultimately from Latin shores of Omaha and Utah beaches in the ninth century. Like suggests where a lot of this new cultural equipment originates their Frankish cousins, however, the Norsemen, or Normans, as well: Rome. too, were totally assimilated. By 1066, when they had had To put these Latin influences into perspective, consider that enough of continental easy living and set off to obliterate all the lexicon of ancient Sumer as we know it consists of about things bright and beautiful in Britain, these quondam-Vikings 3,700 words (it’s admittedly incomplete). The modern Hebrew were no longer speaking Old Norse but French, a new-fangled lexicon contains about 20,000. The contemporary English lex- derivative of Latin. icon numbers between 50,000 and 60,000 entries. What these The purpose of the preceding CliffsNotes review is to illus- comparisons reveal is the extent to which our English vocabu- trate the fact that a lot of what made Roman culture great in lary has increased in both size and expressive range due in no Cicero’s day continued to make it great for centuries, long after small measure to Latin influence. people stopped reading Cicero. One reason that Harry Potter Renaissance linguistic borrowings are just the tip of the ice- in Latin is not only possible but is positively good reading is berg when it comes to Latin influence on European culture. that something of ancient Roman culture hung on through There have, in fact, been four great turnings to Roman culture. countless invasions and disasters and lives on in Europe and The first had already taken place in the eighth century when its colonies today. Charlemagne, in the process of trying to resurrect the Roman Unfortunately, however, except in a few isolated monas- Empire, realized that to build such an empire he would need teries where the inmates sought relief from the tedium of to have the same tools the Romans had used. He needed a lit- ceaseless scripture reading by an occasional illicit dip into the erate and educated administration, a language capable of han- classics, people did stop reading Cicero. Despite the stubborn dling the complexities of empire, and a legal system that was survival of some basic elements of classical culture in Europe, equally sophisticated and flexible. He found them all in clas- people today would not be reading Harry Potter, or Oxford edi- sical Rome. Thus began the first of Europe’s Romanizing re- tions of Cicero for that matter, if other events had not occurred naissances. to bring the classical authors back to life. The story of that res- The Carolingian Renaissance contained all of the elements urrection not only explains how we get a Latin version of that would mark the three subsequent great awakenings of Harry Potter that reads as naturally as if J. K. Rowling were European culture. It came at a time of incipient political ex- Cicero’s daughter, but also how European culture came to be pansion and development, which in turn were made possible and why it, not the fabled empires of the East, was to be the by the reintroduction of Roman institutions.