[B-Greek] "WRITE, WRITE WRITE' (was "Suggestions Please!")

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue May 31 06:39:33 EDT 2011


On May 31, 2011, at 6:08 AM, John Sanders wrote:

> I recall from Gibbon's memoir that he employed a similar exercise.  This was
> when he was a young man (a teenager) in Switzerland.  He wished to model his
> Latin after Cicero and a few other notable Latin writers and his French on a
> Notable French writer (Tissot, if I recall correctly).  He would take a
> section from Cicero and translate it into French or something in French and
> translate it into Latin.  He would French.  He would then analyze his back
> translation to the original.  He wrote that he studied out the differences
> very carefully, so that his mind would be molded to writing in the manner of
> his mentor.
> 
> One thing to keep in mind.  He was not learning to write either Latin or
> French.  He was in a position to cast a sentence in Latin or French, easily
> and competently.  He was now working on how to develop a style that
> impressed himself.

"Le style c'est l'homme même" -- "Style is the man himself" -- Buffon

Yes, I now recall that in second-year Latin Composition we were no longer
trying to write Ciceronian Latin but trying to write like Sallust or Tacitus.

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





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