I was in that... place again with my 'learned' colleagues. They are impatient, juvenile, fretful and dictatorial. Surely the comparative degree adjective senior ('older') in Latin has no meaning here in Dark Age Britain. I am at the behest of spotty teenagers, and not even British teenagers at that! (I heard one say just the other day, "I'm not English" yet they were born in England, raised in England, can only speak English and have an English father!). Mmmnnyesss. Quite.
Anyway, I am translating Hildegard von Bingen's Scivias ('Know the Ways') and it is an absolutely fascinating little adventure, not least because this is a most curious and illuminating work, but also because I am discovering more and more about scribal abbreviation. Because the pdf I was working from is a poor copy, I thought I would have a glance and some original manuscripts of this work. After no digging at all (merely a brief search) I found one excellent 13th century copy in Oxford University's Bodleian Library (MS 160) and another splendid 12th century copy (the Salem Codex x,16) in Heidleberg University's library. What should I find? Errors, in the pdf I was working from. Reading scribal abbreviation is a necessary tool in the array of instruments available to a Latin scholar. It's a bit like reading epigraphic abbreviations: without such knowledge one cannot read an inscription, or in this case, a manuscript.
I first encountered scribal abbreviation while translating the philosophical hermetica, but also again on my master's degree (though other, students may have passed this over - focusing more on the theoretical side and archaeological aspects [i.e. rhetorical hearsay and bits of broken wall rather than the hard-core essential skills belonging to a classicist of the old school]). Alas, I remember meeting a god once. Dr. John North of Cambridge University. (You won't believe this). I was translating Tacitus' Germania at the time, and the good doctor actually finished off the sentence I was translating, in Latin, verbatim, from memory! He may not be a genuine god, but he is a god to me. Anyway, we were discussing the use of the subjunctive mood (which at the time I mistakenly believed was only rendered as 'may, might, could, would') and the good doctor said, "Should is also acceptable, and even preferable in some cases" (or words to that effect). Later on I checked, and sure enough in my Latin grammar books, should is a perfectly acceptable use of the subjunctive mood (not the jussive, of course). Anyhow, straight afterwards, we were talking about Latin translation and the good doctor asked, "Have you looked at the manuscripts?" "No." I replied honestly. "Well you should." said the good doctor, wittily.
I can see now, why doctor North said I should. The manuscripts themselves are more informative and profound than merely some digitised copy of a text. There are, however, four notable exceptions: the Oxford editions, Cambridge editions, Budé (Parisian) and Tuebner (Leipzig) editions, all of which contain most excellent apparatus criticus. However, Dr. North did say it is better to simply read the text, and not bother about alternative interpretations. I read in one book I have on the great Roman poet Ovid (by Peter Jones) that quite often scansion can eliminate erroneous possibilities in manuscript readings, simply by the weight of the words themselves.
Alas, I digress. Hildegard is an absolutely fascinating Muse. This work is actually 360 pages of Latin (180 in two columns), so will take some time to translate (I'm still only on column one of page two!), and my earlier attempt at translating it will have to be set aside (for it is before I managed to master the language properly). Yet I am motivated. There is the trifling matter of publishing what I have already translated, but that will come in time (as soon as I can buy some ISBN numbers).
The only thing motivating me to get that bloody tedious job done (which is basically just checking, re-checking and checking the Latin yet again) is the fact that I have to put up with this bloody awful, terrible and hellish subsistence at that... place. My 'learned' colleages: extremely well read, mature, and certainly most reasonable people, true philosophers to a man, most mindful and considerate, full of compassion and forgiveness. (Yeah *cough*). Sure.
Max.
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