Ah Dominic,
I should have remembered ‘Chilcot’. in all the news so recently, and now I’ve
followed the link to
rogue classicism
which is a delight, much falls into place.
The word play is attractive and the seriousness now more evident.
Thanks
Max
NB also the rogue classicism link to The Telegraph,
reporting on Mick Jagger and the Latin language...
On Jul 20, 2016, at 23:41, Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Max, I was inattentive during Latin lessons at 14, and had to look up
> the opening of Aeneid book 4 which I (barely) studied over a
> quarter-century ago:
>
> At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura
> vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni.
>
> But the queen, long-weakened by grave care, feeds the wound in her veins
> and is tormented by a blind fire.
>
> I picture a movie opening with a long shot of a palace balcony zooming in
> on a moody Liz Taylor - "discovered so at grievance".
>
> Rendering "carpitur" as "carpet-bombed" is a *terrible* translingual pun,
> but the context is this exchange from the recently-published Chilcot report
> into the decision taken to go to war in Iraq:
>
> https://rogueclassicism.com/2011/01/20/latin-intelligence/
>
> (Hence also the very oblique reference to the use of depleted Uranium
> munitions in that war, an ongoing scandal).
>
> Chilcot was 2.6 million words long; anyone who's "read" it at this point
> will have to have scanned and skimmed and sampled fairly ruthlessly, which
> is why some of the other language in the poem has to do with machine
> processing of large textual corpuses.
>
> D
>
> On 21 Jul 2016 01:29, "Max Richards" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> This has caught me in a rare moment of minimal brain fog,
>>
>> Dominic, and though my last year of Latin was 1956, just a little
>>
>> Virgil is still with me, and the line in your subject heading almost
>> clicks for me,
>>
>> as I know I’m letting him down largely.
>>
>> Your lines are witty, even where I know they fly past me.
>>
>> Perhaps if I looked up Chilcot?
>>
>> ‘frazzles nuance’ is a brilliant phrase.
>>
>> Fancy a machine set to translate any Latin! let alone Virgil…
>>
>> Max
>>
>> On Jul 20, 2016, at 16:49, Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Pretense at knowing Latin - ave atque -
>>> little-befitting valet, overrated
>>> big-data-groomer pitching for attention.
>>> Sic algorithmic whizz on Chilcot; sift
>>> for sentiment, accumulate small mercies:
>>> a buried empire’s gift for elegy
>>> in parcelled phrases, morsels of conceit.
>>> Machine-translated Virgil frazzles nuance,
>>> makes hash of syntax, say high classicists,
>>> pall-bearers of uncalled-for expertise.
>>> Find half-life on the far side of depletion -
>>> supposing we are pre-known by such clauses,
>>> discovered so at grievance - at regina -
>>> so carpet-bombed by an unseeing fire.
>>
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