Alicia in Terra Mirabili

As if the Lewis Carroll classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were not strange enough already, I just found the whole thing translated into Latin. Carroll, a college professor at a time when Latin was a staple of schoolboy knowledge, would certainly have approved.

Like Alice encountering Jabberwocky for the first time, I don't completely understand it, but I'm charmed by what I do understand. In particular, the translator's take on "The Mouse's Tale" (you know, the poem shaped like a mouse's tail--"Fury said to a mouse / That he met in the house...") can only be explained by a stroke of genius. Besides the fact that the English rhyme is transformed into a flawless Roman jingle, the mouse's canine nemesis is re-christened Nero.

Non poteram sine miraculo

Latin has made a Watson of me. I sit there, baffled, scrabbling over a sentence until I think I'll lose my mind. Then I turn the page for the translation and say, "How absurdly simple!"

Sometimes the most frustrating things are the ones that are right between your fingers, if only you could manage them.

[Edit: The title is bad Latin. It should be, "Non potero id facere sine miraculo." I think.]

Studeo, Studere

I must be a glutton for punishment. I'd be fine, I really would--relaxed and caught up and everything--if I hadn't decided to be a Classics major. As it is, we're freewheeling through Wheelock's at an alarming speed, and it's hard to study when you can't concentrate. I never can.

But it's interesting how studeo doesn't actually mean study. It means desire. The second meaning came about later. And I really do want this.

I just wish I could focus.

Book Thoughts For the Day

I'm well aware that, as an up-and-coming young Classics major, I should have more significant concerns on the "ancient world" front than choosing between Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood, but I can't help it. I'm delaying the decision. See, I live on Long Island, so Camp Half-Blood seems like an obvious choice, but I prefer Latin to Greek, so maybe I belong with the Romans. But then again, Camp Half-Blood has Percy Jackson. But wait! Camp Jupiter has Leo Valdez! And I prefer the Greek names for the gods, but my current favorite Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, is set in Rome, and Camp Half-Blood is the original camp, but Camp Jupiter is better-run and more efficient, and . . . and . . . and . . .

~

Just in time to comfort me in my Psmith bereavement, someone found a couple of my other favorite offbeat obscure books just lying around somewhere in storage, and I'm tackling them again. Robert McCloskey's Homer Price, which I finished this morning, is always worth a reread. Maybe I'll review it later. Still left to look over: James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks and Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding.

~

Wait, weren't Ransom and I on the immediate precipice of something huge? With Out of the Silent Planet seeming to be gathering all its forces, why did I leave it lying on its spine at the eleventh hour? Certainly not because I was bored. I was taking it in in gulps!

. . . You know what? I think that I'm scared. I think that I'm a little afraid of this fantastic runner-of-the-planet that Ransom is about to meet. How like me. But knowing Ransom, I bet he's afraid, too. Don't worry, Ransom, we'll get through this together. I will now plunk myself down on the porch and not lift my head out of the book until our journey is one hundred percent ended. (Well, maybe occasionally I'll lift my head out, but only to take notes.)