Latin of the New Sun

John Smith · 21 Jul 2008, 16:25 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: jsmith2627 at att.net (John Smith)
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:25:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Latin of the New Sun
Message-ID: <133476.14811.qm at web83711.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>

Does anybody understand what Wolfe is up to when he
resorts to Latin in The New Sun books?   He says,
"Latin is once or twice employed to indicate that
inscriptions and the like are in a language Severian
appears to consider obsolete."  (Shadow, appendix).  
But that doesn't seem to be the whole story.

Wolfe's translations from his Latin seem to be a
little off.  (I admit that my high school Latin is
very rusty.)

Valeria says to Severian, "Do you like the dead
languages?  They have mottoes.  ' Lux dei vitae viam
monstrat,' that's  'The beam of the New Sun lights the
way of life.'   'Felicibus brevis, miseris hora
longa.'  'Men wait long for happiness.'   'Aspice ut
aspiciar.'"  (Shadow, IV)

"Lux dei" is literally  "the light of God."  Maybe
Valeria's "beam of the New Sun"  is just supposed to
strengthen the connection between  the New Sun and
God.  But the second translation is strange.  It
should be something like  "Happiness is brief, misery
is long",  probably based on the Latin tag "Ars longa,
vita brevis" (Art is long, life is short).
Her last, untranslated phrase means something like
"Look in order to see."

When Severian receives his sword, he says he had
learned enough of ancient languages to know that
"Terminus Est"  means "This is the Line of Division." 
 (Shadow, XIV)   A simpler translation would be "This
is the end."

Is Wolfe making little jokes (showing that Valeria and
Severian don't understand the dead languages as well
as they think) or is there something deeper going on?

Jack

Best wishes,

Jack

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