Tomorrow I am afforded some respite from that... place.
It was nice to hear a colleague say on the way home, "You shouldn't be working here" (holding a master's degree in Classical Latin). I shouldn't be. This is not the first time I have heard this, certainly at my last job (also doing unskilled labour), another colleague, upon seeing me read some Plautus (a Latin playwright) in Latin, said, "You shouldn't be here." I refrained, both times, from saying what I feel, "This is not Renaissance Italy. It's Dark Age Britain." It would be unpatriotic to do so (even if this is the reality). Let's not sugar coat it like the bumbling buffoon and host of partygate might: "higher skilled, higher paid jobs" (my backside).
In any case, I have been inspired by reading much Christopher Marlowe, and have finally confessed to where I have creatively borrowed from a couple of plays (Milton, too), by putting in those citations - credit where credit's due. Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni is proud to belong to that same literary tradition of English poetic excellence. In an - albeit antiquated - academic article I recently read, Robert Fletcher (1893, p.121 [A Poet - Is he born, not made?]), the author quotes the playwright Ben Johnson:
"...imitation, to be able to convert the substance or riches of another poet to his own use. Not as a creature that swallows what it takes in crude, raw, or indigested, but that feeds with an appetite, and hath a stomach to concoct, divide, and turn all into nourishment. Not to imitate servilely . . . but to draw forth out of the best and choicest flowers, with the bee, and turn all into honey, work it into one relish and savor."
He then goes on to cite Ralph Waldo Emerson:
"Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it. A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts, but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own."
I should not allow my passion for classical verse and prose to overshadow my English poetic heritage. I am honoured to cite Shakespeare, Marlowe or Milton, for they are every bit as worthy as Homer, Hesiod, Virgil or Ovid (perhaps even more so, because they wrote in a language everybody can understand - although Milton did write some fine Latin works). Latin used to be the language of the intelligentsia, but now it is the language of unskilled labourers (that is, except for people that don't understand it, and listen to Johnathan Pie have a rant - believing Latin to somehow be the exclusive reserve of toffy nosed arrogant men of privilege). I was even at a party one night, and happened to have my complete works of Virgil with me, and began reciting arma virumque Troiae qui primus ab oris (I was a little tipsy), and someone there believed me to be casting a magical spell! (Such ignorance! All from the likes of watching Harry Plopper movies!).
Seriously, though, there are quite a few grimoires written in Latin, and not a little in Hebrew, either, Classical Arabic even, and of course: Ancient Greek. So in retrospect, perhaps the fellow's reaction was to be expected (though again, completely ignorant and wholly superstitious). "I sing of arms and the man, who first came from Troy" is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a magical spell. Equally, the incipe Maenalios mecum, mea tibia, versus in the same book (Virgil, Eclogue 8) does certainly qualify, as does the Idyl of Theocritus it was modelled on...
In any case, I have nearly finished my play now, Boadicea: Queen of the Iceni so it will not long be published. I must have about 950 or so lines done now, so there's not long to go. I may even leave it under a thousand lines, just for the sake of brevity.
Max.
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