My Latin Novel

I've completed 2 novels: the first one, short enough that perhaps I should call it a novella instead of a novel, is entitled Salvation and is about Pontius Pilate and Jesus. In my version of the story, Pilate and Jesus are friends, and a lot of other details are different from the traditional story.

My second novel is entitled The Independents. It's about the friendship which develops between a very successful Hollywood movie director, one of Amurrka's most highly-acclaimed poets, who at the beginning of the story is becoming homeless, not for the first time (this is my sarcastic comment on haw badly Amurrka treats its poets. Seriously, in a whole long list of other countries, poets have it better than they do in the US), and a former Mafioso who doesn't want to be a thug anymore, and is on the run from his former associates, and some other people.

I've started quite a few other novels, including 2 which I started writing on this blog: a novel about angels, and a novel about 2 autistic men in London in 1900.

And then, there's my Latin novel, the novel I want to write in Latin, but I'm not sure whether I'll ever be fluent enough in Latin to do it right. I've been thinking about this one since long before I first heard of Capti by Stephen Berard, published in 2011, still the only novel I know written originally in Latin which has been published more recently than the 18th century. (Berard has promised that Capti is just the 1st of 7 novels he will write in Latin -- how long must we wait for the next one?!)

This novel will start with a preface, in Latin, by a member of a Native American tribe from the southwestern US, which is noted for having produced many first-rate Classical scholars. The preface is written by the editor of the text which comprises the bulk of the novel. The editor notes that it's not surprising that his tribe is rather adept at the Latin language, because it has been their native language for 1000 years. Very few academics outside of the tribe believe that they have been reading, writing and speaking Latin for 1000 years, but it is the truth, and the text which comprises the bulk of this volume is further evidence that it is true: it is the text of a recently-re-discovered manuscript which had been lost for a very long time, which contains a copy of the journal of the man who taught the tribe to read, write and speak Latin 1000 years ago. In the late 10th century, the author of this journal was a restless young European nobleman. He was restless in great part because he had read the Latin Classics, which depicted an ancient Roman society in which people could follow any religion they liked, or any combination of religions, or no religion whatsoever; whereas, in 10th-century, the young nobleman and everyone he knew was either a Christian, or pretending to be, because otherwise, they would be tortured and killed quite horribly.

At the beginning of the journal, the nobleman writes about how he has heard that there are non-Christians far to the north in Europe. He packs up a trunk with manuscripts of all of the Latin Classics known to him and heads north. He has many colorful and dangerous adventures. Everywhere he goes, he tries to teach Latin to whomever he meets who isn't already fluent in the language, and he has copies made of the Classical texts and urges his students to make still more copies and spread knowledge of the wonderful literature of ancient Rome.

For the most part, he finds few people who are interested in the training he offers. At times it is very difficult for him to keep possession of his treasure, the trunk full of Classical manuscripts. But he keeps it.

After teaching Latin to a few pagan Vikings and not having much hope of further spreading interest in his cause, he hears about an upcoming voyage. The Vikings have discovered a strange, non-European land, far across the bitterly-cold ocean to the west. He manages to get himself aboard a ship going to those strange lands. When the Vikings abandon their settlement in the strange Western land and sail back to Scandanavia, our narrator stays, and travels west with his trunk full of treasure, full of manuscripts. After many further travels and many more adventures, managing to find an individual or 2 here and there who are interested in the teaching he is offering, finally, in the area which present-day Arizona, he finds an entire tribe who are eager to meet him, who have heard of him, and who want to learn to read and write and speak Latin. And there he spends a long happy time, among a people who copy all of the Classical manuscripts, and master Latin with a joyous eagerness, so much so that, while the European nobleman, although no longer young at all, is still alive, they have adopted Latin as their new first language.

And that's my Latin novel. Or should I swell with hubris and over-ambition at my advanced age and the not-very-advanced stage of my skills in Latin, and nevertheless refer to it as my first Latin novel?

An Ironic Incident And An Attempt To Do Better

I'm not convinced that Jesus existed. I think maybe he did, or maybe that someone (leading candidate: St Paul) made him up, or had a dream about him and concluded he was real; or maybe that the nonfictional John the Baptist gradually morphed, in the minds of several people, into a mythical character, Jesus. The overwhelming majority of academics who specialize in the New Testament and related fields insist that Jesus existed. The problem I have with them is that they seem unwilling even to discuss the possibility that he never existed. Several times on this blog, I've characterized the response of many of them toward people who aren't convinced that Jesus existed as, "We're right, you're wrong, shut up!" And I've complained that this sort of response does not amount to an argument. I've complained about the unwillingness to discuss the matter.

This morning, it suddenly occurred to me that "I'm right, you're wrong, shut up!" is exactly what I said to someone in my previous post on this blog, in which I responded to someone who'd said that there are 5h-century Viking maps of Canada.

That's ironic. And I shouldn't do exactly the same thing I complain about other people doing. So, does that mean that I'm going to explain in this post in painstaking detail why I'm so sure that the assertion that there are 5th-century Viking maps of Canada is mistaken? No, not right now, because that would require some effort. Hard work made me quit. But I'll provide some references to the work of some other people. For example, there is this book, also linked in yesterday's post:



Does this embarrassing ironic incident make Jesus' existence seem more likely to me? Also no. Does it give me more sympathy for the academics who are convinced Jesus did exist, and respond to us who aren't convinced by saying, "We're right, you're wrong, shut up!" ? Yes.

I'll try not to repeat yesterday's behavior. I'll try to improve upon it with this:

Am I aware of any plausible evidence of Europeans sailing to the Western Hemisphere as early as the 5th century AD? No. (That's how I should participate in debates: not by saying, "You're wrong! Get out!" but by saying: "I am unaware of any plausible evidence which supports what you're saying." That's not merely nicer: it's also much more precise. It is open for the possibility that there may be evidence of which I am unaware. Such openness is the way to be.)

Now, when we come to the 6th century, I am aware of some things: namely, St Brendan and some other Irish monks sailed west from Ireland, and as far as I can see, no one knows with anything approaching certainty how far west they journeyed. Samuel Eliot Morison's book The European Discovery of America: the Northern Voyages, AD 500-1600 is an excellent introduction to the subject, and has superb bibliographies following each chapter, with a heavy emphasis on the primary sources. Morison is completely convinced that the Vinland Map is a fake.



Morison also wrote an excellent book about the southern voyages, ie, Columbus and those who followed him.

Civilisation My Arse, Sir Kenneth! [PLEASE READ THE PS!]

Kenneth Clark, 1903-1983, the art critic and historian, OM, CH, KCB, FBA -- in other words: about as upper-crusty British as one could be without actually belonging to the royal family -- probably best known, like Carl Sagan and J Bronowski, for a public-television series, in Clark's case entitled "Civilisation," and the book associated with the series, Ah say Ah say Kenneth Clark seems to have been a very nice, very charming man. I probably would've liked him if I'd ever known him, it seems that most people did. But then, would a common "unwashed" American "ethnic" person such as myself ever actually have met Clark? He may have had staff members charged primarily with the duty to see to it that such meetings never took place. He may well have spent most of his time in the company of royals, and very little time with anyone who was not titled.

Such insulation would help to explain the nature of his work. I do not like Clark's work. I do not like it in a tree, I do not like it with a bee, I do not like it with a crutch, I do not like it very much, I do not like it here or there, I do not like it anywhere, I do not like it with grape jam, I do not like it, Sam I Am! Bertrand Russell boldly asserts that the ancient Greeks invented philosophy. Whatever the Egyptians and Chinese and Indians and other were doing before Thales & Co,. it wasn't philosophy, according to Russell. I think Russell is wrong about that. Way wrong. Well, Clark goes Russell one better and asserts that the ancient Greeks invented civilisation. What is often referred to as Western civilisation is the only truly civilized state of things, according to Clark. Clark also repeats the traditional Western mistake of missing how tenuous is the connection between ancient Greek and the modern West, and not only tenuous, but very much dependent upon the links of Moslem and Byzantine culture, which kept the legacy of Greek philosophy and science and literature and art alive while the West sank into very deep and dark barbarism indeed. Islam is cited only 3 times in the index of Civilisation, China and Japan not at all, Africa only that one time at the beginning, where Clark politely puts down the civilisation represented by that African mask about which he apparently knows nothing, about which he clearly wishes to know nothing.

At this point people may want to defend Clark by saying that "Civilisation"/Civilisation is only about Western civilisation. Yes, clearly it is. But Clark could've called it Western Civilisation. He didn't. He also doesn't mention all the long list of things that the West has taken from other cultures and then claimed as its own. No, he's one of the ones ignorantly claiming them.

At the beginning of Civilization, the book and television series, Clark is in Paris, the center of his idea of civilization. He talks about how in the 9th century, Vikings -- not civilized, according to Clark -- almost captured Paris, and oh what a calamity that would've been! Then he shows a picture of an ancient Greek sculpture of Apollo, and asserts that it represents a much higher state of civilisation than an African mask. (If Clark had any idea what part of Africa the mask came from, or what it represented, or anything else about it, he kept all that info to himself.) (That is my sarcastic way of pointing out that Clark was pretty ignorant of the African culture he was disparaging in his pleasant and polite way.)

Clark asserts that civilsation is something you can feel. In, I think, a very similar way, Oswald Spengler asserts in the Untergang des Abendlandes that race is something you can feel. I don't feel what Clark or Spengler is feeling, but in both cases I feel the presence of bigotry.

Let's get back to Paris and the Vikings -- would it have been such a calamity if the Vikings had taken Paris? Would that act have threatened to extinguish civilisation, as Clark implies?

What the fuck was so civilised about Paris in the ninth century? The Carolingians were busily waging war against each other and destroying the Empire Charlemagne had established. The kings and nobles were not caring well for their peasants. The economy was still mostly barter. A lot of people starved to death. Civilisation my ass. Having the Vikings take over could've actually improved things in lots of ways. They didn't want to plunder and destroy like the Huns or the Conquistadors -- or like the Carolingians were still for the most part attempting to do, except that Charlemagne's descendants weren't nearly as good at waging war as he was, and were primarily waging futile war against each other, whereas Charlemagne at least had pacified the very large area under his control -- the Vikings wanted to rule, and they ruled pretty well, from England to Russia and lots of places in between.

In the ninth century the Vikings were still un-Christian and illiterate. I don't think the non-Christianity was a bad thing. I would agree with Clark that literacy is a good thing. However, I think it was a bad thing that the Christian Church had such a thorough monopoly on literacy in Western Europe at the time. For one thing, the contemporary accounts of encounters between Christians, such as those in and around Paris in the ninth century, and illiterate non-Christians such as the invading Vikings, were all written by Christians. Lately it has occurred to historians how one-sided such depictions were, how distorted at the expense of the non-Christians. Clark was not part of the re-assessment and correction of the traditional Western view of the world. He was a staunch traditionalist. Where the West encountered literate peoples, whether Byzantine or Arab or Copt or Syriac or Chinese or Mayan or what have you, Clark does not avail himself of the non-Western records -- well, it's very hard for anyone to avail themselves of the Mayan records, since the Conquistadors burnt almost all the Mayan books and killed all the Mayans who could read them. Oops! -- and does not seem to be the slightest bit interested in the possibility that his traditional, pro-Western view of the world could be wrong.

It is wrong. Way, way wrong. It wouldn't have been cutting-edge in the 18th century, let alone the 20th.

PS, 26 October, 2019: This post is completely wrong. Clark was the opposite of a snob. I should have read past the first half-page before shooting my mouth off. I'm sorry.