Hold me underwater, not afraid of drowning

[sovay]

Rabbit, rabbit! I woke this morning with forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit running through my head like the stuck line of a song, which I'm not even sure what to do with. On the other hand, I also woke to a small black cat who crawled under the covers beside me and purred himself back to sleep, which feels like a better omen. The air and the light have changed just enough to feel like autumn, even on a drizzling day. Every year I observe it's the ghost-season, but that doesn't seem to stop it being true.

Comments

[selkie]

Oh look, it's the Latin for don't tap the glass.

[sovay]

Oh look, it's the Latin for don't tap the glass.

AND WHAT DID WE SPEND THE EVENING DOING.

[selkie]

Pinching our noses and holding an ice pack to our fat neck!

[sovay]

Pinching our noses and holding an ice pack to our fat neck!

The next whiskey bar is thataway.

[selkie]

You know, I just bet Brecht had never been to Alabama.

But for a place with no barter economy, they got their hands on whiskey. So maybe little a barter, as a treat?

[sovay]

You know, I just bet Brecht had never been to Alabama.

Not at the time of Mahagonny, he hadn't. He didn't come to the U.S. until '41. And I have no idea if he visited Alabama even then.

But for a place with no barter economy, they got their hands on whiskey. So maybe little a barter, as a treat?

You know, it is immensely reassuring to me that even under the most stringent conditions, the black market springs eternal.

[kore]

I liked this meditation on that line (I suck at Latin so I don't know if "help" really is more appropriate, but it seems to go more with Seneca and other Stoic viewpoints)

https://medium.com/in-medias-res/forsan-et-haec-olim-meminisse-iuvabit-will-remembering-help-or-please-d631c8829886

[sovay]

I liked this meditation on that line (I suck at Latin so I don't know if "help" really is more appropriate, but it seems to go more with Seneca and other Stoic viewpoints)

Thank you! I hadn't seen Lombardo's translation, but I have seen discussions of memory in terms of usefulness rather than pleasure. I wish I could remember what I was taught about the line when we read the Aeneid in high school, but any notes or written translations of mine, if they survived, would be longhand on paper in a box in my parents' storeroom.

Forsan...

[lauradi7dw]

I mentioned to nineweaving recently that I always associate that line with Bruce Springsteen, having encountered the Aeneid in Latin two or three years after first hearing Rosalita, which has the line "some day we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny". (About 4:44)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HC4bf67s5lQ

Re: Forsan...

[sovay]

I always associate that line with Bruce Springsteen, having encountered the Aeneid in Latin two or three years after first hearing Rosalita, which has the line "some day we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny".

I can see how that works.

[nineweaving]

Now I imagine a programming language called Forsan...

The air and the light have changed just enough to feel like autumn, even on a drizzling day.

This lifts hope, a little.

Nine

[ethelmay]

I noticed the same thing on the other side of the country.

[sovay]

I noticed the same thing on the other side of the country.

Neat. Are you about the same latitude?

[ethelmay]

Seattle. About five degrees north.

[sovay]

Now I imagine a programming language called Forsan...

It would be very ambiguous.

This lifts hope, a little.

Good.

[dhampyresa]

Is the cat perhaps whispering to you ?

[sovay]

Is the cat perhaps whispering to you ?

He certainly has a most eloquent purr. I've never asked if it contains Latin.

[flemmings]

My mother's law prof, don't ask me why, rendered forsan et haec olim as 'cheer up, chum, it can always get worse'- an interpretation no one else backs but that appeals to the Eeyore in me.

[sovay]

My mother's law prof, don't ask me why, rendered forsan et haec olim as 'cheer up, chum, it can always get worse'- an interpretation no one else backs but that appeals to the Eeyore in me.

My high school Latin teacher used to quote it in reference to high school, which I think had something of the same flavor.

[choco_frosh]

Okay, so this is high-level geekery, but: does the -an in the first word elide into the "et" (Forsan't?), making it a spondee, or are they pronounced separately, making it a dactyl?

Due to the eccentricities of my Latin education, I first encountered the line in the frontispiece of Among Others, where it DEFINITELY has some Eeyore flavor going on.

[sovay]

Okay, so this is high-level geekery, but: does the -an in the first word elide into the "et" (Forsan't?), making it a spondee, or are they pronounced separately, making it a dactyl?

Separately, dactyl-style. The full line is:

mittite: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit

which scans as:

— ⏑ ⏑ | — ⏑ ⏑ | — || — | — ⏑ ⏑ | — ⏑ ⏑ | — —

and wow, I hate doing scansion by Unicode. I recommend overlaying it on the text by hand.

[selkie]

Were we not already so happily married, and to others. *swoons in dork *

[asakiyume]

A cat under the covers with you strikes me as a good omen in several ways--and we all need good omens.

[sovay]

A cat under the covers with you strikes me as a good omen in several ways--and we all need good omens.

Amen.