I have been amusing myself today over a little passage in Latin on p. 287. FW is full of languages though its base language, most of the time, is English (so long as you read it out loud). There are some passages in other languages (with some of the expected Wakean wordplay, but far less concentrated), in French, Latin, and probably others.
I'm a native English speaker and have been living in Germany for almost three years. I could read German OK before moving here, with ample dictionary work. But I've been learning and am OK at basic speaking proficiency. My two older children are fluent, having learned through pure immersion and only a modicum of direct tutoring in public school (and were at least at a very good level 6 months in). I have taken classes, though lately learning the schreckliche Sprache has formally taken a back seat to some urgent work deadlines. We don't know how long we are staying here. Assuming that, this summer, we are relatively certain we are here for another year or two, I plan on getting more serious about learning it.
Nevertheless, I dream in German. Like FW, the basic language is English, but I find myself dreaming about myself living in Germany and trying to talk to people. This is a constant anxiety of mine: not only not knowing the right words for the occasion (doctor's office? looking for an innertube for a tire? ordering five ice cream cones to different specifications?), but being constantly aware that, as a fairly proficient and, if I might say so, adept speaker of English, and someone who enjoys communicating and sharing with others, that I cannot truly express myself, that the wellspring of my deepest thoughts and desires is running through the night in the town square with nobody to draw from it or listen to its gurgle. It's definitely for the best, in terms of what is usually appropriate in conversation in this land; I have learned the virtue of standard phrases and dialogues that allow you to be kind and to communicate but to keep your true self guarded. I suppose it's better to do this, but the spring is still running and sometimes I fear it is overflowing.
Even though I am much better at German than I was initially, and can go into everyday situations (asking for help at the pharmacy, dropping off one of my kids at a play date) without flipping through my dictionary or asking my phone frantically as I walk up to my destination, the anxiety is there. I think the German I speak in my dreams is OK, and I even occasionally remember a few words (usually words I was not sure of in the dream, which I spoke with hesitation) when I woke up, and can look them up later. Sometimes they are comically off, but often they are right.
I wonder if this anxiety about language is present in FW, about expression in general. Certainly JJ references the confused and often hostile reception of his Work in Progress, it seems at least once in every chapter of FW. As I am in the midst of II.2 and reading how the twins are at pains to find the secrets implicit in double triangles and bisected circles, trying to reveal the secrets of their mother and father, with hints and hopes about the coming dawn growing, it seems, ever more frequent, I wonder if the true mystery of the book that promises to be revealed, is that the mystery is ever deepening and, since it is ultimately about itself, cannot be found outside of it, but through a constant "cycling through" of its extent.
* * *
Here is the passage in Latin, on p.287:
venite, preteriti, sine mora dumque de entibus nascituris decentius in lingua romanana mortuorum parva chartula liviana ostenditur, sedentes in letitiae super ollas carnium, spectantes immo situm lutetiae unde auspiciis secundis tantae consurgent humanae stirpes, antiquissimam flaminum amborium Jordani et Jambaptistae mentibus revolvamus sapientiam: totum tute fluvii modo mundo fluere, eadem quae ex aggere fututa iterum inter alveum fore futura, quodlibet sese ipsum per aliudpiam agnoscere contrarium, omnem demun amnem ripis rivalibus amplecti
Certainly if you are really interested you can find better translations and commentaries out there other than me, but here is how I would translate, trying to sound archaic and even keeping to the syntax:
Come, ye passed by, without delay, while the little Livian letter of entities to be born is displayed more fittingly in the Roman language of the deceased, you seated in happiness over the fleshpots, yea, watching the seat of muddiness whence, according to the omens, the races of people rise, so that we might turn over in the mind the most ancient wisdom of the two priests of Jordan and Jambaptista: that the entirety flows safely in the world in the manner of a river, the same one which was fucked from the mound will again be about to come to be among the riverbed, that any thing whatsoever knows itself through any other contrary thing, that, finally, every river is embraced by the banks of its rivals.
Words to live by! Another tantalizing glimpse, perhaps of ALP's letter, although it does not say that these are its contents; indeed this doesn't seem so (but the twins did seem to copy a version of it earlier, or at least a template that was also used by ALP/Shem).
The phrase totum tute fluvii modo mundo fluere is, I think, brilliant and beautiful. This kind of balanced phrase is typical of Latin aphorisms that turn on similar sounding and difficult words. The one that is most memorable to me is the one uttered by Schopenhauer when his mother-in-law, who was the bane of his life, died after falling down stairs: anus obit onus abit, "The old lady is deceased, the burden is gone." I have some difficulty with mundo: modo appears to be a postpositive preposition going with fluvii, leaving mundo in dative or ablative. With no other word to connect to, I take it alone as an ablative of place.
Some notes:
pretereiti. Literally means "those who have passed by," are in the past, but I like how it sounds like "passerby" (at least in translation, not sure what Latin epigraphs would have said here), like an address to the living from a tomb.
liviana: This could refer to Livy (the twins were reading about Roman history earlier), and besides the obvious reference to ALP, it could also be a reference to a type of letter or small type of writing named for Livia, the wife of Augustus. But it isn't capitalized here, as is Jordani and Jambaptistae.
lutitiae, "muddy." You'll see "Paris" in the commentaries, but luteus means "muddy" and sim. Mud was just mentioned in the narrative before this interruption, when Shem instructed Shaun to fill a cup of mud to try and solve the geometry problem which they were struggling through. Technically the word Lutetia only means the town which would become Paris, but I prefer to see JJ inventing a 1st declension abstract noun from the adjective luteus. The "seat of muddiness," given the next sentence, would be the river bed.
flaminum: Looks like a mistake for fluminum, "rivers," as the names Jordan and "Jambaptista" (John the Baptist). These names evoke Giordano Bruno and Giambattista Vico. There is a lot out there on the importance of these two figures for FW.
eadem quae. Translations of this take this as a neuter plural but I think it is a feminine singular.
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