[B-Greek] "Crossing the Rubicon" (learning Greek NOT in English)
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jun 19 07:37:51 EDT 2007
Another gem from the Old Curmudgeon (Michael Gilleland, Laudator
Temporis Acti), this from C.S. Lewis' autobiography, _Surprised by
Joy_, somthing I've long been meaning to read. I'm going to cite this
one in its entirety:
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Crossing the Rubicon
By Michael Gilleland
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, chap. IX
(The Great Knock):
We opened our books at Iliad, Book 1. Without a word of
introduction Knock read aloud the first twenty lines or so in the
"new" pronunciation, which I had never heard before....He then
translated, with a few, a very few explanations, about a hundred
lines. I had never seen a classical author taken in such large gulps
before. When he had finished he handed me over Crusius' Lexicon and,
having told me to go through again as much as he had done, left the
room. It seems an odd method of teaching, but it worked. At first I
could travel only a very short way along the trail he had blazed, but
every day I could travel further. Presently I could travel the whole
way. Then I could go a line or two beyond his furthest North. Then it
became a kind of game to see how far beyond. He appeared at this
stage to value speed more than absolute accuracy. The great gain was
that I very soon became able to understand a great deal without (even
mentally) translating it; I was beginning to think in Greek. That is
the great Rubicon to cross in learning any language. Those in whom
the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the
lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not
reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. The very
formula, "Naus means a ship," is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a
thing, they do not mean one another. Behind Naus, as behind navis or
naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or
oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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