As I started a unit on Julius Caesar this year, I asked my Latin students why they decided to study Latin. The answers were as expected: my mom made me do it, they said; or, it will help me on the SATs. Embarrassingly, I must say that my reasons for beginning to study the language were the same; although I leaned heavily towards the camp of people who took Latin because it was not a spoken language: less chances to be embarrassed in front of everyone, and I was shy.
Probably the main reason for why I stuck with Latin was because of my teacher. She was eccentric, in the most wonderful ways. She was very European, wore the most beautiful shoes and had the most beautiful, art-filled house (my dream to this day). She gave us great advice at seventeen: marry your best friend. She also knew how to make us laugh: one day, she taught most of our class wearing only one shoe, when we finally asked about it, she produced another, different, shoe; she explained that she had left for work that morning wearing two different shoes. We laughed together. She taught me the things that I know about English grammar and how to write analytical papers; she taught me that all the literature, all the films, all the art, that we know and love today have some kind of root in the Classics.
I read in a Madeleine L’Engle book once, one of her lesser known ones, that a character wanted to be a writer and to study creative writing in college and received advice from another character that she should study English instead, the theory being that one should read everything for that is what will teach one to write. At some point in high school, my Latin teacher said that if I wanted to be a writer, I should study Classics. Of course. To study Classics meant that I would study THE Classics, read them in their original language and learn where stories came from. Something about that made sense to me. Love of language combined with a desire to write. It stuck.
My high school teacher once gave us a list of books that we should read in order to become well-read people. As one might suspect, the list had two things going for it: the authors were mostly white and male, and on a more positive note, many of the works were derived from, or related to, the Classics. While these works did not necessarily build our Latin vocabulary or have us practicing our translation skills, what they did do was begin to show us just how expansive the scope of literature that had been Classically inspired was, it showed just how far the hand reached. We seemed reluctant to acknowledge it, but the truth of it was something I couldn’t (can’t) escape.
The summer in between my junior and senior years in high school, I went on a college tour in New England. I knew that I wanted to study Classics, and I knew also that my number one criteria for a college was that it not be in the state of Georgia, so I looked at schools in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. I fell deeply in love with Mount Holyoke College, and decided to apply there. In filling out the application, there was an option to not submit SAT scores. At the time, 2006, MHC was one of the first schools to do this, and the president of the college, Joanne Creighton, wrote a few articles explaining her reasons for waiving SAT scores. I chose not to submit those scores, and instead wrote, submitting as many essays as they would allow, as well as chapters from a very ambitious novel I worked on all through high school. I think about that now, my original reasons for studying Latin had to do with some arbitrary standardized test, but when I decided not to have anything to do with the test, I did not feel as though I had lost anything from studying Latin. I’d already fallen in love with it. I’d already decided that my reasons for studying the language were something that mattered more than a standardized test.
There are a variety of different words in Latin for “killing.” There are fewer for “loving.” There are barbarians, that is, anyone who isn’t Roman. And then were are words like gravitas, auctoritas, that are nebulous. Sure they translate to something, but for the Romans, they were much more than just, mere authority. The words held a certain weight to them. Our English language is deficient, it lacks a way to express those untranslatable words. It lacks those heavy and important concepts that are embedded somewhere in the culture. Do we even have words for that? And then, too, there’s the mystery. The idea that there are words that go beyond us, beyond our capabilities to explain in our everyday, English language. I love that. I love mystery.
Studying Latin is a little bit about pain, self- inflicted pain. A little bit about being ok with the unknown, being ok with not knowing the answer. In college, I remember sitting in the library studying for Latin exams. I read translations because I had no idea what was going on in the Latin itself. And then I’d spend hours reading the Latin, just reading the words, even when I didn’t know exactly what they meant in English. When I say that Latin is a little bit about self-inflicted pain, this is what I mean. How did I just sit there and read words that I didn’t know the meaning of? I trusted my professors when they said that reading the Latin would be a good thing to do, that this would make me better at Latin. This did not always help me get A’s on exams, but I knew that it would help me gain some knowledge, knew that it would grant me some patience, that knowledge is not something that comes about immediately, or without any effort, it is not easy and it is not always enjoyable. Trust the process. This is what writers say, and in part, it works because that’s just how life is – sometimes when you read something you understand it immediately, sometimes you don’t understand it for another 10 years.
I stopped studying Latin for three years and I couldn’t stand it. I felt like part of the whole reason I read and wrote, part of my whole inspiration had disappeared. Without it, my story ideas fell flat. Without it, I got rusty. When I sat down to read a passage, which was rare, I found the words like gibberish, had lost my grasp on grammatical constructions and rules. I learned that what they say about not using language, that one will lose it, was true. And I think I did lose it.
A few years ago, I was at a college reunion. I always feel funny at these events, riddled with insecurities, awkward at addressing people that I haven’t seen in years, feeling that I went to a prestigious women’s college and only became a teacher. In comparison with others who have interesting sounding titles: directors, assistant directors, producers, editors, agents, associates, doctors. An acquaintance asked me what I was doing these days and I answered “teaching high school Latin.” She responded with, “You’re actually using your degree.” I asked my acquaintance what she had majored in and she said something like anthropology or sociology. I am proud of my degree in Latin, but I felt even prouder then, like I had unlocked some accomplishment. In fact, as a writer and a reader, I use my degree every single day. Teaching conjugations, vocabulary, translations, those are not the only things that are applicable to the use of a degree in Latin, although they are the most obvious. What’s more is English, is reading, is writing. What’s more is language.
I began learning Latin at fourteen, which means, at thirty-one, that I have been studying the language for over half of my life. I am no PhD, I am no scholar, I cannot speak the language to save my life, but I love it, and I love the stories, the literature, the way that ancient stories seem to always find their way into other places, other stories, the way it sneaks in because often, Classical stories are just embedded somewhere in our minds and show up in stories written today, consciously and unconsciously.
One final thought:
“On returning to New York, I registered for an elementary class in ancient Greek at Columbia University and blithely submitted the bill to the magazine’s new executive editor, Tony Gibbs. To my disbelief, he turned me down, saying that ancient Greek was not relevant to my job. After a year in collating, I had moved to the copy desk, and so I started a dossier of sorts, keeping a list of words from the Greek that cropped up in The New Yorker, everything from “pi” to “ophthalmologist,” which is often misspelled with a “p” instead of a “ph.” … To reinforce my petition, Eleanor Gould, whose cool intelligence made her something of an oracle to the editors, wrote a letter to Gibbs stating that her own knowledge of the language might not be current enough to save us from “ignorant mistakes.” I showed the document to my friend John Bennet, and editor, who said, “You’re using a cannon to shoot a flea.” Tony Gibbs was persuaded.” -“To the Letter,” Mary Morris. The New Yorker, Jan. 14, 2019
Come to think of it: what does Greek, or Latin, not relate to? I love this quote because it reminds me of something I would do. How culturally indelible is mythology, is Classical literature? Let me count the ways.
Alexandra Sladky 