Re: Reactions to the secret vice (was: Steg's wonderful sig.)

At 9:36 am +0100 10/11/99, Irina Rempt-Drijfhout wrote:
>On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Patrick Dunn wrote:
>
>> I was just teasing about the Latin; I am fond of it, of course, but I'm
>> fully aware that many people just aren't.  And, I'm convinced, Church
>> Latin is damned ugly -- classical Latin, on the other hand, is pretty.
>
>Strange; with me it's the other way around: medieval Latin is pretty
>(Church Latin, of course, being one of the less pretty flavours of
>medieval Latin)
Church Latin ugly or less pretty?

What, pray, is ugly or un-pretty about the simple yet powerful Latin of the
'Stabat mater'?  What is ugly about the 'Salve Regina'?

What is either ugly or un-pretty about Hilderbert's "Me receptet Sion illa"
or Aberlard's moving "O quanta qualia illa sabbata?"

And the magnificent "Exsultet jam angelic turba celorum" at the Easter
Vigil still sends a shiver down my spine, especially as it reaches it's
climax with the series of profound and mysterious sentences begining with
'O' - including the startling 'O necessarium Ade peccatum......O felix
culpa.....  It's difficult to think how the profound mystery of what, to
Christians through ages, is the most solem night of the year - O vere beata
nox - could be better expressed.

And so one could carry on & on.

>and classical Latin is affected ;-)
Indeed, and consciously so.  Classical Latin was a conlang, consciously
fashioned out of the proto-Romance of the ordinary people and modelling
itself on the literary traditions of the Greeks.

It's difficult to describe Classical Latin as pretty with all its heavy
syllables.  The effect the Romans wanted to produce - and IMO did produce -
was that of solemn majesty befitting imperial Rome.

The poets could produce light touches & doubtless some poetry is pretty.
But when I think of Vergil, who I rank as the greatest of the classical
age, 'pretty' is not the word that springs immediately to mind.

While I'm fond of the Classical language, I like the freshness and
liveliness of medieval Latin.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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