Re: History of constructed languages

On Friday, April 8, 2005, at 08:17 , Sally Caves wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ray Brown" <ray.brown@...>
>
>>>> Inferno -
>>>> Canto VII, line 1: Papè Satàn, papè Satàn aleppe!
>>>> Canto XXXI, line 67: Raphèl may améch zabì almì!
>>>>
>>>> (Note: à = a-grave; è = e-grave; ì = i-grave)
>>>
>>> And few can decipher these utterances.
[snip]

>> _papaî_ is an exclamation in Classical Greek, showing either pain
>> (whether
>> mental or physical), surprise or scorn. It is found in the works of
>> Aiskhylos (Aeschylus), Aristophanes, Herodotos and Plato. In Dante's time
>> it would have been pronounced /pa'pe/ but I doubt very much that the word
>> had survived in spoken Greek. Whether Dante knew the word or not depends
>> upon how likely he was to know about the Greek Classics.
>
> I wonder if it can be read ambiguously as a distortion of _papa_, "Pope,"
> thus introducing blasphemy: Pope Satan! Pope Satan!  Or Father Satan!
> Even
> if not, the suggestion is there.
IMO it is difficult not to see a suggestion of _papa_ (whether "pope" or
"daddy" is another matter). I do not, however, see how this is blasphemous.
  The popes have contained among their numbers both great saints and great
sinners. Dante even has two or three popes down in Hell   :)

Anyway, to a dweller of the infernal world, I guess Satan would be "daddy"
  or 'pope."

> My only dual language edition merely says that it is "apparently a threat
> against the travellers and a warning to Satan below."  Must get new
> edition.
> But if Satan is a kind of anti-Pope, as he is the anti-Christ, this make
I don't think an 'anti-Pope' in the normal sense of the word.

[snip]
>> And at least one commentator has seen these words as distorted French:
>> "Paix, paix! Satan! Paix, paix! Satan! allez!"
>
> Ha!  I've seen that, too.  But I can't remember what source I was looking
> at.  Do you have it at hand?  Or are you operating from memory?
If I understand my footnotes correctly (my edition is solely in Italian),
it is due to Benvenuto Cellini. The final [ts] in 'paix' (originally
spelled _paiz_ <-- Lat. pace(m)) and 'allez' did fall silent during the
13th cent, so it's just posible. But it does beg the question of how
familiar Dante was with the Langue d'oil of northern France (we know he
was familiar enough with Langue d'oc of the south).

My notes say that a Giuseppe Venturi of Verona took the words as Hebrew,
meaning: "Here, here, Satan, here, here, Satan Emperor." I don't know what
our Semiticists would make of it.

it is interesting that 'Satàn' is not the normal form of the word for
Satan; 'Satanasso' in Italian and the Latin (and Greek) is Satanas
(vocative: Satana), with the first two as short. But the indeclinable form
'Satan' does occur in the Vulgate of Samuel 2 (otherwise known as
"Secundus Regum"). This, together with the stress of the final syllable,
does suggest 'mock Hebrew'. If the line from Canto XXXI is assumed to be
mock Hebrew, then I do not see why this line could not also be.
===============================================

On Friday, April 8, 2005, at 09:02 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> Sally Caves skrev:
>
>> No disrespect to the Pope, today, on his funeral.  Pax.
>
> In any case Dante was referring to an earlier Pope,
> now long dead, and they weren't all saintly you know.
Or, indeed, in La Divina Commedia itself to several popes, all of whom are
now long dead & some of whom Dante put into Hell.

Ray
===============================================
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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