Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language
    Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language
    Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language
    Ebook274 pages5 hours

    Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language

    By Nicola Gardini

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A lively exploration of the joys of a not-so-dead language

    From the acclaimed novelist and Oxford professor Nicola Gardini, a personal and passionate look at the Latin language: its history, its authors, its essential role in education, and its enduring impact on modern life—whether we call it “dead” or not.

    What use is Latin? It’s a question we’re often asked by those who see the language of Cicero as no more than a cumbersome heap of ruins, something to remove from the curriculum. In this sustained meditation, Gardini gives us his sincere and brilliant reply: Latin is, quite simply, the means of expression that made us—and continues to make us—who we are. In Latin, the rigorous and inventive thinker Lucretius examined the nature of our world; the poet Propertius told of love and emotion in a dizzying variety of registers; Caesar affirmed man’s capacity to shape reality through reason; Virgil composed the Aeneid, without which we’d see all of Western history in a different light.

    In Long Live Latin, Gardini shares his deep love for the language—enriched by his tireless intellectual curiosity—and warmly encourages us to engage with a civilization that has never ceased to exist, because it’s here with us now, whether we know it or not. Thanks to his careful guidance, even without a single lick of Latin grammar readers can discover how this language is still capable of restoring our sense of identity, with a power that only useless things can miraculously express.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 12, 2019
    ISBN9780374717049
    Author

    Nicola Gardini

    Nicola Gardini lives in Oxford and Milan. His novel The lost words of Amelia Lynd (Feltrinelli 2012) was awarded the Viareggio prize in 2012. He teaches Italian Literature at the University of Oxford. He also writes poetry and fiction, having published three novels and several collections of verse. He also co-edits the monthly magazine 'Poesia', based in Milan.

    Related to Long Live Latin

    Related ebooks

    Foreign Language Studies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      ‘We’re Gripped By Graphomania’: Why Writing Became An Online Contagion And How We Can Contain It

      Aug 12, 2023

      Perhaps it was once possible to think of writing as something beautiful and wondrous, an amazing conduit of silent communication between soul and soul. For a monk in the 13th century, maybe all writing was worthy of illumination. We are now, quite ob

      5 min read

    • Article

      The END of LITERATURE

      Sep 4, 2018

      LITERATURE’S MAINSTREAM is not a river that flows between fixed banks, but one that must be cut, and it is the experimental writer who, avoiding the backwaters of the often more lucrative and momentarily celebrated conventional writing, can be found

      7 min read

    • Article

      Writing The Present For The Future: ‘The Mezzanine’ Vs. ‘White Noise’

      Sep 23, 2019

      Rereading two of the most-’80s of ’80s novels by Nicholson Baker and Don DeLillo reveals two ways of looking at what is now a startlingly previous age. The post Writing the Present for the Future: ‘The Mezzanine’ vs. ‘White Noise’ appeared first on T

      6 min read

    • Article

      Language Lessons

      Jan 23, 2018

      Language Lessons
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Larger Idea Of Love

      Mar 7, 2022

      The Larger Idea Of Love
      5 min read

    • Article

      Cormac McCarthy Returns to the Kekulé Problem

      Nov 30, 2017

      Robert Musil, in his Man Without Qualities, wrote that a Soul is “That which crawls away and hides whenever someone mentions algebra.” According to his friend, Elias Canetti, Musil “felt at home and seemed natural among scientists,” as distinct from

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Linguist Responds to Cormac McCarthy

      May 25, 2017

      In his recent Nautilus essay, “The Kekulé Problem,” Cormac McCarthy suggests that our unconscious mental processes are a modern echo of the prelinguistic minds of our prehistoric ancestors. He sees a stark contrast between language as a fairly recent

      6 min read

    • Article

      Loving THE ALIEN

      Aug 4, 2022

      Loving THE ALIEN
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Scaffolding of Rhetoric

      May 30, 2023

      The Scaffolding of Rhetoric
      8 min read

    • Article

      Our Library

      Sep 25, 2023

      His father's boot Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letter From The Founder

      Dec 8, 2022

      Letter From The Founder
      4 min read

    • Article

      Teach What You Love

      Sep 1, 2020

      Teach What You Love
      17 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 14, 2022

      Would it be wrong to proclaim poetry to be the queerest form of literature? If one were to line up every facet of writing that makes up ‘literature’ along the Kinsey scale, surely ‘poetry’ would score quite high, given that so many of its pioneers –

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Long Live Latin

    3.5/5

    17 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Latin literature retains its elegance and relevance to today's world, in this survey of major authors and stylesI have long thought of myself as a scholar, and particularly look back at high school Latin with fondness, even though I was not smart enough to continue my studies beyond two years. It seemed that further study would mark me for the priesthood. The author is passionate about Latin. He guides the reader through the styles of authors from Livy to Augustine, and explains the development of the language. P 87 [about Lucretius] "Life therefore organizes itself in the universe - and here's the interpretive paradigm - just as language organizes itself on the page"P 171 [Petronius writing about farting in the The Satyricon] "Nemo nostrum solide natus est. Ego nullum puto tam magnum tormentum esse quam continere. Hoc solum vetare ne Iovis potest" (None of us was born solid. I can think of no greater torment than holding it in. Its the one thing that even Jupiter cannot prevent)P 203 [Juvenal on Fortune] "Monstro quod ipse tibi possis dare; semita certe tranquillae per virtutem patet unica vitae. Nullem numen habes, si sit prudentia: nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam caeloque locamus" (What I propose can be had on your own; the path is one that leads by virtue to a peaceful life. There are no other gods, when you have wisdom. It's we, dear Fortune, we who make you a goddess, and prop you up in the sky"P 208 [Lucretius] "Venus simulacris ludit amantis, nec satiare queunt spectando corpora coram nec manibus quicquam teneris abradere membris possunt errantes incerti corpore toto" (So in love, Venus taunts lovers with ghosts, and they cannot sate their bodies by looking - though they are near - nor can they draw anything from the supple limbs as they grope aimlessly across the other's body)P 215 [Propertius] "...solus ero, quoniam non licet esse tuum" (I'll be alone, if I cannot be yours)
    • 3/5
      A person that speaks three languages = TrilinguaA person that speaks two languages = BilingualA person who speaks one language = British/AmericanRight...? I've learned English (< 6 years old) and German, and a smattering of Porkie. The most important consequence of this was how I came to feel part of the stream of a humanity of long-standing and insights into the nature of human consciousness. Man is the grammatical animal, and human grammars reveal the similarities and differences in the structures of human consciousness and changes and mutations in that structure through time. Magical consciousness, mythical consciousness, mental-rational consciousness -- all have left their imprint in language and grammatical structure. Even this very word "grammar" is related to the old word for magic and spell-casting, revealing that in speaking "properly", human beings earlier felt they wielded magical power over time and space. Grammars don't just map relationships of time-space, but also shape, rule, and structure those relationships. And that is the most important thing to me about learning ancient languages -- they reveal different "species of consciousness" -- different structures of the consciousness of time and space.On a scale of usefulness/hours required to master, learning extinct languages comes somewhere between memorising PI to 1,000 decimal places and counting how many blades of grass their are at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon. In my old age, life's already too short to be fluent in Latin; why bother with this shite. I could be riding horses, riding my e-kick-scooter, scuba-diving, reading or having sex with my wife (or she having sex with me; anything you prefer).Of course, it's not just about languages. As a youngster I ended up in IT, after an engineering degree. The first time that I was taught to programme (code, for you youngsters; I'm 89 year's old, so I don't know what I'm talking about), I realised that the thought processes were identical to translating from Portuguese to German (and vice-versa), i.e., I had to first unravel all the muddle and decide what it really all meant. German really helps you think logically!NB: Learning Latin (or ancient Greek for that matter) really isn't just about learning a language - it's about learning about a whole culture - its literature, art, politics and customs. There is enormous value in it and enormous pleasure to be had for those who choose to immerse themselves in it. Should it be a compulsory subject on the state curriculum? No. But should it be an option available to as many as possible if you’re a young lad or babe? Absolutely.
    • 4/5
      This book is about learning to read Latin for pleasure. The author says there are two reasons for doing this: a) Latin contains secrets about our civilization that demand to be understood, and b) it is a beautiful language. He bolsters his case with passages from the works of Catullus, Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, Tacitus, Seneca Juvenal and Horace. These passages are first shown in Latin, then underneath them he gives the English translation. In short, the author (a professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Oxford) gives specific examples why he loves Latin and invites us to do so also. He is largely successful in demonstrating that Latin isn't a "useless language;" indeed, the book contains the best advocacy I know of for learning Latin.

    Book preview

    Long Live Latin - Nicola Gardini

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1