This isn’t any level 1 or level 2, but I’ll include some original texts from time to time. I used this song to check how I was doing when learning the language. I didn’t jump into the works of Cicero; I went for Mediaeval song lyrics because they still contain all the major points of Latin.
Despite this song
complaining about the vagaries of fate that are beyond our control, whoever
wrote O Fortuna in the early 13th century probably had fate on his side. A
century or so later the Black Death wiped out an estimated 50,000,000 people
including perhaps 50% of the European population; nobody knew what caused it
and nobody knew how to stop it. They just had to accept their fate.
How ironic it is to
listen to this song, with Carl Orff’s towering and dark composition, performed
by the Edinburgh Festival choir – in a silent and locked down Scotland – at the
mercy of a global pandemic which, at first, had no cure. The pleasure in their
faces at the end is probably when restrictions were relaxed a little.
Whatever was going to
happen at that time, it was out of our hands.
Fortuna Imperatrix
Mundi │Fate, the Empress of the World
In this post I have
given the Latin lyrics together with an English translation as close as
possible to the original. In the next post I’ll give vocabulary and notes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNwBExn1zgg
O Fortuna │O Fortune
velut luna │just like the moon
statu variabilis
│variable in state
semper crescis │(you are) always growing (waxing)
aut decrescis │ or
decreasing (waning)
vita detestabilis
│detestable life
nunc obdurat │now it oppresses
et tunc curat │and then it soothes (heals)
ludo mentis aciem
│keeness of mind with a game (it plays with mental clarity)
egestatem │poverty
potestatem │power
dissolvit ut glaciem.
│it melts (them) like ice.
Sors immanis │Fate,
monstrous
et inanis │and empty
rota tu volubilis │you
turning wheel
status malus │evil
condition
vana salus │ empty
(worthless) security (a false sense of security / well-being)
semper
dissolubilis│always dissoluble (fading to nothing)
obumbrata │shadowed
et velata │and veiled
michi quoque niteris
│you bear upon me too
nunc per ludum│dorsum
nudum│fero tui sceleris. │Now through the game of your wickedness I bear a
naked back [= my back is bare]
Sors salutis│The fate
of health
et virtutis│and virtue
michi nunc contraria,
│are now against me
est affectus│weakened
et defectus│worn out
(“weighted down” in some translations)
semper in angaria.
│always in slavery
Hac in hora│in this
hour
sine mora│without delay
corde pulsum tangite;
│touch the beat of the string
quod per
sortem│because through fate
sternit fortem, │she
strikes down the strong
mecum omnes plangite! │Everybody weep with me!
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