Many thanks to Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Helen Conrad, and David Wilson-Okamura for their helpful responses to my _Scoop_ inquiry. (The responses just reached me today in the "digest" version of the Virgil list--digestion can be slow when list traffic is low.) I think Helen Conrad's observation may go a long way in explaining why Waugh selected this passage: this novel, like much of Waugh's work, comments humorously and sometimes bitterly on what he perceived as the depravity of British society, so it is telling that he has the daughter of one of London's leading families reading through this work largely on her own. When the girl gets stuck on this passage, her mother rushes off saying "We'll do it tomorrow. I've got to go now," and Josephine later confesses to finding Virgil "banal." Combined with several other things going on simultaneously in this scene, it is a typical instance of Waugh's slapstick satire. Once again, thanks for the assistance.
David Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] >David Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >>An early scene in Evelyn Waugh's novel _Scoop_ has eight-year-old Josephine >>construing her day's passage of Virgil. "'Floribus Austrum,' Josephine >>chanted, >>'perditus et liquidis immisi fontibus apros; having been lost with flowers in >>the South and sent into the liquid fountains; apros is wild boars but I >>couldn't >>quite make sense of that bit.'" That is all we are told of her efforts. >> >>I'm trying to figure out how this paragraph relates to other things happening >>in >>the scene and the novel. One (if not both) of my questions is likely to seem >>terribly elementary to many list subscribers, so I start by thanking you in >>advance for your patience and explaining that the fifteen years of >>accumulated >>rust since I took the intensive Latin course at CUNY have made me as bad as >>Josephine at construing passages of Virgil. My first question (in two parts) >>is >>what the passage says and what Josephine does to it; the second question is >>whether anyone knows where the passage appears in Virgil. > >In the second eclogue of the Bucolics, lines 58-9. The correct >translation would be something like: 'ruined (by madness) that I am, I >have let the south wind loose upon the flowers [i.e. exposed them to the >fierce Sirocco] and the boars into the clear springs', i.e. I have >ruined everything by falling in love with my master's minion. > >Leofranc Holford-Strevens > >------------------------------ > >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Helen Conrad) >Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 12:15:03 +0100 >Subject: Re: VIRGIL: Evelyn Waugh's Josephine > >I am somewhat hampered by having never read 'Scoop' - but certainly it is >interesting that the child is translating the second eclogue which gave >centuries of school masters moral dilemmas because of the subject matter (I >note her remark: 'but I couldn't quite make sense of that bit '). I have >found again and again references to this pedagogical problem - I believe it >was Erasmus who suggested that the best wat to get through it was to really >hit grammar hard and in its minutiae when reading the second eclogue. >Helen COB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
