I don’t know what I REALLY should read.
Please give me an advice.
I began to study Latin 4 years ago, alone by myself.
The same year I started to read medieval philosophy, of scholars from 11 to 13th century, like Thomas Aquinas.
The Latin was very easy and there was minimum need of consulting dictionaries.
I was not satisfied with what I was reading (medieval philosophy texts).
What I was really curious and wanted to try was magical texts from around Renaissance period.
But I couldn’t find an e-text (I found photo-copies on the web, for example, of Ficinus’ books, but I couldn’t read those difficult old characters).
And searching the web for Latin texts I can read, I met with a Tertullianus page and an Augustinus page (where you can see his opera omnia). (my concern was always around philosophy, not history and literature.)
I tried reading some of the texts, and I found them extraordinarily difficult, far more difficult than the medieval Latin.
I had to check up every word in the dictionary, and even doing so I could not really understand one sentence.
So I got completely stuck in them, I got completely caught by their difficulty, and since then I have studied them throwing away medievals. I thought being able to read medieval Latin was still a beginner’s level, and that I would have to become able to read Augustinus and Tertullianus if I want to be a Latin master.
Reading Tertullianus and Augustinus demands me to consult dictionaries exhaustively.
And the work can be carried on only in a very, really slow pace.
It takes me 2 or 3 weeks to read up only one chapter.
And in result I can produce very little amount of productive works, and the works are all at a kind of student’s level, (I am frustrated)
while, if I work on medieval philosophy texts, I would be able to produce more, and the works can be developed above student’s level.
So, please advise me what I REALLY should do now.
If I want to be a pundit of Latin, I think I should keep working on Tertullianus.
If I want to get more freely into activity, I should return to medieval philosophy. (But then, the Latin skill and knowledge will surely stop growing.)
If I want to resume the first interest, I should find e-texts of magical literature.
I don’t know which option to choose.
Read Asterix in latin now. I predict the answer will come to you afterwards. Fabulas nunc Asterigis Galli in latinum convertas legi. Posteà quod facere debes se ostendet, portendo.
Hi, Matthaeus Latinus.
Are those historical literatures simple and easy to understand, but with a lot of different words to check up in dictionaries ?
(Medieval philosophy’s Latin is simple, and besides, with a very very small vocabulary. The same words are repeatedly used, so you don’t have to check up the words in the dictionary many times. That is the bad point in medieval philosophy texts as a material for learning Latin.)
Adrianus, since you say so, I suppose it is really meaningful, I will try it soon. (I ordered Asterix Iter Gallicum just now at Amazon.)
I imagine reading Asterix in Latin had dramatically improved your grasp of Latin laguage.
But, could you tell me what was actually helpful in reading it ?
I really mean you occasionally need something not so serious but at the same time real, that can give you pleasure and release, until you take up again your burden. To motivate yourself, you need to find pleasure again. Plus, I like comics and Asterix is a very good one in Latin, and challenging, even.
Verè volo dicere quoddam levius tamen sincerum tibi opus alicubi esse, quod delectet avocetque, antequam onus denuò tollas. Ut te impellas, iterùm te delicias reperire desideras. Porrò libelli pictographici mihi placent et ex eis optimi latinè illi de Asterige, non minùs digni ut eos studeas.
Then it is ok with other things than Asterix ?
I sometimes read and translate medieval songs, things like you listen to in early music. (I like early music, since I used to listen to it on the radio in my childhood. This partly motivated me to start Latin.)
Is this ok too ?
Then everybody seems to feel so. Don’t you think the same way with other philosophical writers of the medieval periods ? They write with a very small vocabulary and repeatedly use the same words.
If you are interested in magical texts, you could do worse than read this one: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=8NE7AAAAcAAJ
Malleus maleficarum
By Jakob Sprenger, Heinrich Institoris
There is a clearer edition available on europeana.eu
Thank you, Metrodorus.
Melleus Maleficarum, nice. (I own an English translation of it.)
If you have time, could you instruct me how to search the net effectively and without headache for what one wants to find (in my case, magical texts from around Renaissance) ?
I am really bad at searching the net.
Whie searching, I soon get a headache (not figuratively, but a real headache).
I’ll make a YouTube video and stick on Latinum giving some hints - although I am sure others are better at it than I am. Sometime this week, hopefully.
The Clavicula Salomonis in Latin is quite a bit harder to find though. There was a critical edition of the Liber Juratus which is now out of print. There is also a critical edition of Libri Tres de Philosophia Occulta still available. Julien Veronese was also preparing a critical edition of the Almandal in Latin AFAIK which might have been published already. There’s also a book called Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century with a transcription of a grimoire in Latin.
Quendidil, you gave me a wonderful information.
But the problem is, I can’t choose what kind of Latin text I should REALLY read, what I should REALLY study. (There are 3 or more options.)
The study of magical texts is fascinating.
And I have always wanted to see and study them from the first time.
I wish I could choose it as my true object of study right now, but I can’t.
Why don’t you try reading some Classical authors too? Cicero goes into philosophy in many of his letters; there’s Lucretius, Seneca and if you consider natural philosophy, there’s Pliny.
Besides that, there are more modern philosophical writings in Latin from the Renaissance to the early modern era too. Newton, Descartes, Spinoza among others. From the 18th century on there are also some translations of Eastern philosophical texts into Latin. This guy in fact translated the Diamond Sutra and the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra into Latin. Here is the Dhammapada in Pali and Latin.
Quendidil,
why do you know I have an inclination to Buddhism ? Because I am Japanese ?
You gave me a lot of options.
But what has to be advised on is, what I had better choose from them.
I can’t do multiple work. (The reason is written below.)
And to tell the truth, I want to go to the study of Buddhism, abandonning what I have studied these several years, Latin and Greek.
(Last year I tried translating the Heart Sutra myself from Sanskrit. The Heart Sutra is the best known sutra among Japanese (the Chinese translation of it). Even my mom often hand-copies it as a kind of religious activity.)
Why I want to go to Buddhism is, because the philosophies in Latin and Greek don’t have a topic which I can find myself really interested in.
But in Buddhism there are, and in Buddhism there are what I find really important for my life and deserve serious studying.
I’m especially interested in the philosophical study of Buddhism on how to observe oneself and control oneself, so that one can control the pain of body (and mind, and life in general).
Science of self-observation, especially as regards observation of one’s body from the inner side, is not cultivated in Latin and Greek philosophies.
Dammapada you mentioned, and Suttanipata have been especially interesting to me.
Now I’m in the middle of opposite options, unable to decide which one to choose.
Should I cherish my present ability in Latin and Greek and keep working at them ?
then which philosophers should I study? (I started Latin from Aquinas as a commentator of Aristotle’s DE ANIMA, and other Latin commentators on DE ANIMA, and then started Aristotle’s Greek text of DE ANIMA or Peri Psyche^s.)
Or should I abandon them and go to Buddhism study ?
I cannot do them all. I have to abandon some.
For, Latin and Greek writings are difficult to me, so they demand very much laborious dictionary-consultation.
I cannot work on multiple texts.
And also I like to translate in a deep way,
creatively thinking how to translate better and in a well coherent manner, and how to make the translation understandable as deeply for the readers as for me,
disliking just translating literally, or just imitating the other translators’ translations.
So the work takes much time and energy, that I cannot engage in multiple works.
\
options
Miedeval commentaries on Aristotle’s DE ANIMA and Greek original text and Greek commentaries (This is what I most have engaged myself in.)
Renaissance magical texts (This is what I am just curious, probably influenced by occult novels and films and Japanese animations and comics.)
Philosophical writings from Roman period. (This is to challenge a very difficult Latin, studying of which will deepen my knowledge of Latin.)
