Saturday 28 July 2012
Friday 27 July 2012
latin won't let me go
I’m picking up some research work I began 35 years ago and never had the time or opportunity to do more than write some preliminary reports. And this revising means I have to brush up my Latin. For the first time in my life I’ve been able to make a very reasonable shot at translating some of Julius Kaiser’s war reports. He doesn’t exactly write a glowing account of the Britons he faced when he raided the south coast. The men, he says, grow their hair and moustaches long but shave off all the rest of their bodily hair. Then they cover themselves wth woad which turns their skin sky blue. Ten or a dozen brothers share their wives with each other in a very friendly kind of open marriage arrangement. When a woman gives birth, the father is considered to be the mother’s original husband. They didn’t teach that at any school I went to.
And that’s not the only thing they didn’t teach us. The latin primers introduced us to ‘hasta’ a spear and ‘gladius’ a sword. (But not to ‘vagina’, which is the correct term for a sword’s sheath. I learned that one day when I was singing the Proper of a Latin High Mass. ) In short, we were taught a rather restricted version of the language in an imaginary setting which was supposed to inspire us to emulate the Romans and their great empire. (We, the British, did rather better with our Empire, of course. Or so we were led to believe.)
What I’m finding now is that working with carefully chosen scraps of genuine classical Latin, I’ve once again become very sensitised to nuances of meaning. I’m asked ‘Are you free next week?’ – and I find myself saying ‘I shall be free next week’ or, if pushed, ‘I *will* be free next week’. But that’s next week. In the future. Which requires a future tense of the verb. Today I am free. Am I free tomorrow? Perhaps, by the end of tomorrow I shall have been free – a Future Perfect tense. Perhaps, even, a perfect future. But then I should remember (is that a subjunctive?) our English came to us in ‘three keels’ and more across the dark North Sea. We are no longer constrained. We are free. Free today. And free tomorrow?
francis cameron, oxford, 27 july 2012
Wednesday 18 July 2012
up with the curtain
we live in a world of showbizz, as I see it, that is. the most highly regarded entertainers are paid sums far in excess of ministers of state doctors nurses schoolteachers and professors. so let us sit back and enjoy it. an incredibly youthful smiling young man comes onto our screens and explains the innermost mysteries of the universe against a background of corruscating imagery few of us will ever see anywhere else in our lifetime. an optimal travel guide facilitates himself against sometimes staggering backgrounds while he unlocks doors and leads us through glimpses of sacred rituals usually reserved only for initiates. the elderly and the ebullient offer us entrancements of the impossible. vehicles we shall never drive. quicksteps we shall never dance. obstacle courses we shall never complete. a contest of bat and ball is built up to a climax of anticipation followed, as in some of the most moving classical dramas, by the inevitable almost anticipated fall from grace. post coitum tristis est. for a couple of coins we can read all about it, be touched by the indiscretions of the great and the good. trivia is magnified for the attention of the moment. and the daily politics? – for that has long been my constant entertainment – they let us see the squirms and grimaces of those we have elected to steer the ship of state. where are we going? fear not. we’ve been there before. even if we didn’t buy the t-shirt. but that was long ago and only the spoilsports will disturb the frisson of the moment with their pallid reminders. what’s next on the bill? good. bring on the tumblers the jugglers the shakers and movers.
francis cameron, oxford, 18 july 2011
Friday 13 July 2012
Saturday 7 July 2012
Monday 2 July 2012
what was I taught at school?
What was the main lesson I was taught at St Mary’s Church of England Elementary School?
I know the answer to that question when applied to the Mercers’ School. That answer came to me just a few days ago, when I was in one of my ‘one single word’ modes of mind. And that single word, for Mercers’, is : Conform!
With St Mary’s it’s more difficult. More elusive. I thought of each day’s classes beginning with Scripture. And that suggested to me : Gentle Jesus, meek and mild / Look upon a little child. That might have been a factor, but it wasn’t the final solution.
Then it came to me :
The rich man in his castle
The poor man at his gate
He made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate
It’s one of the verses from a well-known hymn we often sang. All things bright and beautiful by Cecil F Alexander. Written in 1848 and still frequently heard at weddings in the late 20th century when fewer and fewer are aware of any hymns that might be familiar, even to a small proportion of the wedding guests at a ceremony.
When, in the 1950s, I played the organ for the Church of St Barnabas in Pimlico, that verse – although still printed in the hymn books – had to be omitted. Something to do with the political (social?) persuasion of Philip Rowe, Vicar. I wondered why, but chose never to raise the query.
And the first time I went to Palma de Majorca, the Sunday morning sermon at Mass was very much on those lines. We should accept the station we had been born into.
What has brought all this into my mind at the beginning of July in my 85th year? I’ll call it the local Zeitgeist, though that may not be quite the right word. The very real feeling of an inevitably stratified society with an upper layer riddled with some whose interests are limited to themselves and whose care for the serfs at the castle gate never has even a moment’s consideration. I see it every time I watch a political programme on the television. Though there, there is a tinge of concern for the way votes may be cast at the next election. Beyond that : Nothing. Blank incomprehension. ‘You chose us to rule over you. Now just be quiet and let us get on with the job.’ Except that, today, the situation is different. The voices from below are not silent. And today their messages have wings more powerful even than in 1945.
francis cameron, oxford, 2 july 2012