Stefano Vitrano
Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:03:06 -0800
>-- Messaggio originale -- >From: "Patrick Roper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: VIRGIL: Virgil in Welsh >Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:30:40 -0000 >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > >Further to my last post on teaching the Aeneid in translation, I got my >Welsh a bit wrong because the e-mail escaped before I had checked it >properly. 'Virgil' was 'Fyrsil' or 'fferyll' and 'fferyll' meant also an >alchemist or magician (because that is what they thought Virgil was). From >this is derived 'fferyllydd' (a chemist or pharmacist) and 'siop fferyllydd' >(a chemist's shop or pharmacy). A single 'f' is pronounced like mod. >English 'v' and a double 'ff' like mod. English 'f'. > >I suppose one could say 'fferyllydd' also means 'a Virgilian'. The Welsh >is >a difficult word for non-Welsh speakers to pronounce, but it approximates >very roughly to 'ferulthlith'. > >Phew! Glad I got that straight: almost as bad as writing 'habebant' for >'habebat'. > >Patrick Roper > I?m sorry to send another letter to answer to Patrick, but I had to leave home and I wanted to give him a first answer as soon as possible. Aeneid hasn?t to be seen as a magic book from which we can always extract new revelations. Evidently the way the book had been read during Middle age is wrong. Virgil has been seen as a prophet of the future Jesus? come, because the ?ecclesiae sapientes? read Augustus? exaltations as a Christian prophecy. About the various interpretations of Aeneid, for the fist time a great American writer, Bloom, has spoken about ?Overinterpretation of literary works?, evidencing the indispensability of a subjective interpretation of texts. He says a text achieves different scopes in different ages. Though it?s very fascinating, I think this way can bring to excess as in middle age. On the contrary the historicist theory wants to enclose the literary work in the time it was written, watching it only as a phenomenon of that age (Vernant and Vidal-Naquet). I can?t totally accept none of them, because none shows that the beauty of an ancient literary work is in bringing the message of the author to our age. The work has to been read with the eyes of a philologist and of a baby. We have to be able to understand its original aim, but also to let us merely been taken by it and to relive the same shocking sensations of author?s contemporary public. This?s another prove of your Synpatheia to Aeneid ?Nox erat??! > >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >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 Stefano Vitrano C.E.I. school, Palermo, Italy [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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