I recently finished reading the book,
The Secret History by Donna Tart. I was attracted to the book when I heard it centered around a cohort of students of Ancient Greek at a small private college. Having been a student of Greek in college and a lover of dead languages to this day, I decided it was a book I should read. Of course I enjoyed the book. I found it a suspenseful page-turner; I couldn’t put it down.
I enjoyed the book even though the plot to me was rather creepy, sort of a cross between Tom Wolfe’s
I am Charlotte Simmons and Golding’s
Lord of the Flies. From what I had read about the book I was expecting a kind of murder mystery, whodunnit. Actually, there was never any doubt about, “who done it”, not just once but twice. The mystery and suspense was in whether they would be caught or not. Whether or not the perpetrators were brought to justice in a court of law, they for the most part, seemed to have received a sort of divine retribution for their crimes.
The most fascinating parts of the book to me though, were the parts about the actual language classes and learning. The author’s observations on Greek prose composition, which I quote below, were worth the time spent reading the book. You see, I too took Greek Prose Composition in college. It was probably the hardest class I ever took, more difficult to me than Old Akkadian or Engineering Physics. Of course, I was at a disadvantage, being the only person enrolled in the class who wasn’t a Classics major (My major was Near Eastern Languages).
I’ll never forget the look the Professor gave me after I read aloud one of my compositions to the class. He looked my squarely in the eyes and asked if I had meant to say such-and-such. “Yes”, I answered meekly. “Well that is not at all what you said.” I wish I could convey the sarcasm in his voice and the embarrassment I felt, but you get the idea. So I haven’t yet mastered the art of thinking in Ancient Greek. But I can’t say I didn’t try.
Here's an excerpt from The Secret History:
Back in my room, dizzy and exhausted, I wanted more than anything to pull the shades and lie down on my bed -- Which suddenly seemed the most enticing bed in the world, musty pillow, dirty sheets and all. But, that was impossible. Greek prose composition was in two hours and I hadn't done my homework.
The assignment was a two page essay, in Greek, on any epigram on Callimachus that we chose. I had done only a page and started to hurry through the rest in an impatient and slightly dishonest fashion, writing out the English and translating word-for-word. It was something Julian asked us not to do. The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods, but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns became different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, that pur that roared from the towers of Illion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos.
Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of Ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange, harsh light that pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end.
In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the others in the Greek class they, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms -- the world, in fact, was not their home, at least not the world as I knew it -- and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, as it is eminently possible to study it all ones life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvellous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek -- quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious, 'Hello?', and may never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end.
