[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.
=========

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)




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