Latin

05

Capti: Fabula Menippeo-Hoffmanniana Americana

Stephanus Berard novam fabulam Menippeam – primam ex heptologia iam designata – nuper perfecit. Quae fabula fundatur, modo videlicet perlaxo, immo saepe ironico, duobus operibus illius scriptoris Germani "romantici" cui erat nomen E.T.A. Hoffmann: Prinzessin Brambilla et Das Fräulein von Scuderi. Quae lectori novisse neutiquam necesse erit ut fabulam hanc bene comprehendat – etsi sane insunt pauci ioci quos non penitus intelleget qui Hoffmanniana non libaverit.   

Generatim et universe dicendum est auctorem hac in fabula vetera novis commiscere. Generibus scribendi antiquis modos cogitandi argumentaque imponit cum moderna tum permoderna. Hexametris hic cum Iuvenale, hic cum Lucano, hic cum Lucretio, hic cum aliis aemulat.  Primi capituli in oratione prorsa periodis saepe longis, intortis, passim paulo informibus, vel Apuleianis haud dissimilibus, personarum commotionem confusionemque necnon et hilaritatem quasi Fellinianam exprimere conatur.  Alibi videntur scribendi genera alia.  Ipsi versus poetici per gradus evolvuntur sensim ex hexametris in numeros medioaevales, deinde in omnino modernos et solutos...id quod protagonistarum mundi commutationem dissolutionemve exprimit simulque Latine doctis nondum in artem poeticam modernam inductis iucundae doctrinae erit. 

Quamquam Stephanus genus quoddam antiquum elegit, "Fabula Menippea" denominatum, multa principia scribendi sumpsit tamen ab ipso Hoffmann, "realismi phantastici" inventore, "realismi magici" nunc vigentis virentisque proavo. In "realismo magico" – cuius notissima exempla praebuerunt vel Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Michael Angelus Asturias, Georgius Ludovicus Borges, Richardus Brautigan, Vilelmus Burroughs, Italus Calvino, Carolus Fuentes, Virginia Woolf – ipsa fabula videtur plerumque satis verisimilis, quamvis passim sub narrationis superficie, magia quaedam agi videatur. In genere invicem illo priore et Hoffmanniano, "realismus phantasticus" nominando, quod Stephanus hic exercet atque subsequis in fabulis colere perget, narrantur nunc omnino verisimilia nunc admodum phantastica, inter quae ipsius legentis est vincula invenire.     

"Heptologia Sphingis," cuius haec fabula pars est, nuntium proferet imprimis holismi quantalis. Stephanus per litteras quasi oblectatorias illam notionem scientalem, per physicam quantalem identidem corroboratam, propagare temptat: unam quamque cosmi "partem" simul partem esse et ipsam summam; cosmi omnia inter se rectissima via (quantali) esse coniuncta; ea quae hic fiunt omnibus "locis" ubique simul varieque exprimi; immo, ob inlocalitem (non-locality) iam probatam, in ipso rerum fundamento "loca separata" vanas tantum esse species...vel, ut totum visas, hologrammatis virtualis partes cuius informatio nullo "loco" condita. ...Ad quas notiones cum lectoribus communicandas "realismus phantasticus" omnium generum litterariorum Stephano visum est aptissimum.

"Professor Berard, id quod animo fingi aegre potest, longissimam saturam conscribere potuit illo litterarum genere incitatus quod solutam orationem poeticae miscet nomineque ‘fabulae Menippeae’ designari solet necnon et scriptis illius lepidissimi auctoris Ernesti Theodori Amadei Hoffmann. His igitur saporibus saturam Americanam suam condiit cuius in exordio hexametris lacessitur—quod quidem optime congruit—institutum illud omnium Americanissimum: Disneilandia. Hic novus scriptor lingua Latina ita utitur ut vel omnium peritissimi musici, ‘virtuosi’ dicti, in animum revocentur. Hoc ingens opus, id quod Cicero quondam de Lucretii carmine, ‘multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis’ esse dicam. Ei qui Apuleium, illum praecipitis ingenii scriptorem ingeniosarumque locutionum inventorem, Metamorphoseon sive Asini Aurei conditorem, nullum secundum opus exquisitum nobis praebuisse lamentantur valde gaudebunt opus Professoris Berard, saeculi vicesimi primi Apuleii, cognoscentes."

—Dr. Albert R. Baca, 
Emeritus Professor, 
Department of Modern and Classical Languages, 
California State University, Northridge

"Saeculo hoc vicesimo primo exstant adhuc Apulei. Stephanus enim Berard Latinis lectoribus veram offert fabulam Milesiam, in qua oratio soluta miscetur cum hexametris, mythistoria cum philosophia, conspicua cum arcanis, moderna argumenta cum stilo antiquo, idque maxima cum ubertate et inventionis copia. Ii, quibus notus est Ernestus Theodorus Amadeus Hoffmann, in hoc opere agnoscent 'realismum phantasticum' cuius scriptor Germanus dicitur esse inventor, et quo auctor ipse profitetur se valde esse imbutum. Bone lector, linguam haud semper facilem dum adgredi valeas suffusus eris flumine quasi Felliniano."

—Dr. Gaius Licoppe et Francisca Deraedt, Melissae editores

"Stephanus Berard, qui opera quaedam sermone Latino exarata iam composuerat (v. g. De philosophia quantali deque institutione publica), etiamsi nonnulla ex antiquorum scriptorum operibus non sine acri sumpserit ingenio, tamen et in versibus pangendis et in sermone conficiendo semper est suus, utpote qui omnia concinne, lepide, scite narret. Oratione modo gravi modo faceta utitur hic professor linguae Latinae peritissimus, adeoque fluenti, ut haec fabula, quae etiam vocum sententiarumque varietate singularis est, ad alliciendos legentium animos perapta esse videatur. Quare optandum est, ut huic operi eiusque scriptori, quem iure dixeris hac in ‘Menippea’palmam adeptum esse, vultu adrideat fortuna sereno."

—Victorius Ciarrocchi, adsiduus "Gregis Latine loquentium" particeps ac scriptor

"Salvador, Susana. "Da Épica 'Eneida' aos Crimes de 'Capti'​." Quociente de Inteligência, 2 Feb. 2013, p. 14-15. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. Symbola Lusitanica una cum versione tolerabili per Google facta.

Schauffler, Allen. "Wenatchee Valley Professor Makes Literary History." KING5.com. King Broadcasting Co., 2 Jan. 2012. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. Brevis symbola televisifica Anglice facta una cum exemplo chartaceo.

Steigmeyer, Rick. "Murder Plot in a Dead Language." Wenatchee World, 23 Nov. 2011. Web. 28 Mar. 2013.

Wilkes, Jim. "Modern Murder Mystery Reads Like a True Classic." Thestar.com. Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd., 22 Oct. 2011. Web. 28 Mar. 2013.

I. Regna Magica, Pars Prima

II. Terra Lignea

III. Regna Magica, Pars Altera

Verborum Index

Capti:

Fabula Menippeo-Hoffmanniana Americana

Praecursus:

Fabula Neophysiologica

Eos:

Fabula Methistorica

Daemonologia:

Fabula Synaesthetica

Caela Pone Caela:

Fabula Cubistica

Tantisper:

Fabula Neoheroica

Sphinx:

Fabula Arcana

Reprinted with Permission by MultiLingual Computing & Technology

#126 Volume 23 Issue 2© 2012 MultiLingual Computing, Inc.

319 North First Avenue, Suite 2, Sandpoint, Idaho 83864-1495 USA

208-263-8178, www.multilingual.com

Capti

Reviewed by Thomas Banks

First Latin novel in 250 years full of intrigue, farce and metaphysics

Capti: Fabula Menippeo-Hoffmanniana Americana

by Stephani Berard. AuthorHouse, 2011.

ISBN: 9781456759735.

627 pages.

In Capti (The Prisoners), Stephani Berard has written a novel that deserves more of an audience than it will conceivably find. There may be a few relevant reasons for this paucity of readership, but the obvious one is the author’s choice to write his tale of intrigue, farce and metaphysics in Latin — the first novel to be originally published in this language in over 250 years. There are a few tempting presumptions that the reader should avoid upon hearing this: one, that Shakespeare’s pedantic classicist Holophernes has been given a second lease on life; two, that the dreariness of that man’s soul who has written a 600-page novel in a dead tongue could be matched only by his naiveté.

The reality is nothing of the kind. Berard, a professor of Spanish, German and Latin, is a lively writer with apparently nothing of the hubris that has bedeviled teachers of the humanities since time immemorial — namely, the belief that anything worth learning exists under the heading of that subject on which they wrote their doctoral dissertations. Berard flavors his book freely enough with quotations from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, but he shows an equal awareness of the more commonly patronized end of the cultural spectrum with more than occasional asides to well-known figures such as Angelina Jolie and Madonna. Jay (rendered here as Gaius) Leno appears in a scene of perfectly rendered comic awkwardness.

One of the enduring and at times deserved prejudices against classics teachers is that the nature of their subject attracts only the curmudgeonly, the dry, the obscurantist. For this and other reasons, not least among them the loss of faith in the formerly unquestioned idea of what constituted a liberal arts education, our classics departments are empty, and those who teach in them are a barely-tolerated minority at the fringes of academia. This is unpleasant, naturally, but worse still is the indifference to the classics themselves. However, they include some of the most lighthearted literature that humanity has ever composed. The muse of comedy does not fear the polysyllabic sonority of the Latin tongue, and Capti is proof. Berard lets the child within wander through the pages, but takes his story seriously enough that it does not devolve into the learned trifling of a tenured aesthete.

Berard’s capabilities also extend to a Woody Allen-esque taste for mordant candor. One chapter opens: “In principio erat dolor. Et in fine dolor erat. In medio quoque dolor. Cum autem dolor hic ex perpetuo adesset inque perpetuum esset mansurus, id quod perpetuo sentiebatur dolorem esse neque aliam rem sciri nequibat.” (“In the beginning was suffering. And in the end was suffering. Likewise, in the middle there was suffering. But because this suffering had been present always and seemed liable to remain, that which had been felt since the beginning of time was no longer felt to be painful nor, indeed, felt to be anything.”) It is at moments like this that Berard seems most to enjoy his creations and, for all his erudition, is loath to refuse himself a tangent into the absurd.

Berard’s protagonist is one Vudius (Woody), a ballet dancer and Seattleite who suffers from autism and is gifted with an extraordinary memory. The story follows his reconnection with his former wife Olivia as he wanders down the West Coast, eventually to find himself part of a murder mystery. Refreshing in Woody’s character is just enough of the dangerous to make him more than human driftwood in an absurdist comedy. He has a captivating sincerity for all his bumbling. We never fully see all sides of him, but neither do we tire of what is shown. He is highly excitable, alienated from those around him, infinitely small in relation to his surroundings, yet is for all that an indefatigable spark in the black chaos of the universe at large — or the universe of Los Angeles, California, which in the world of the novel is no less terrifying a prospect. The novel begins, for example, with a panicked throng of children fleeing from Disneyland.

Though Capti is full of essayistic meanderings into quantum physics, the problem of evil, mythology and so on, Berard’s comic eloquence elevates the book above the level of a genre specimen. It is unmistakably magical realism, and should sit nicely on the shelf with the works of Italian writer Italo Calvino or American novelist Thomas Pynchon. Like both of these authors, Berard has a knack for weaving both the quotidian and the fantastical into a web pleasing to be tangled in. He can conjure up in a single simile something at once grandiose and sardonic: “Sicut in physica quantali saepius demonstratum erat particulas subatomicas . . . nullo certo loco exstare sed potius, neglecta lucis velocitate, cum ceteris omnibus particulis ubivis versantibus simul recta et proxime coniungi et cum eis reciproce agere posse, ita huius Urbis loci defectus, sive, ‘inlocalitas,’ a nonnulis non vitio vertebatur sed pro re modernissima magnique momenti habebatur.” (“As demonstrated in quantum physics, subatomic particles frequently exist in no exact position. Rather, having passed the speed of light, they are able in any place to unite closely and precisely with all other moving particles and act with them in reciprocity. Thus, ‘unlocality,’ the great drawback of this city [Los Angeles], was not avoided by some as a fault, but was rather held to be a point of great importance and with-it-ness.”)      

The vapid and the gauche, both of which appear in this story as in others dwelling on southern California, are rarely spared by the author in his essentially good-natured running commentary on the oddly humorous concatenation of modernity. Berard’s voice is something like a modern Epicurus, fond of this life, of a nature replete with all of those quirks that the advance of science seems only to magnify, happy to be a skeptic and smile at human folly, but never so angry as to shout it down. 

That being said, Professor Berard is fortunately more than a copyist. He writes poetry that is sharp and wonderfully vivacious. He shows himself to be master of a number of verse forms, including the old Goliard stanza of countless medieval drinking songs, a meter in which he weaves his own sort of clever nonsense verse: “Vitae arbos est inversa. Radix sursum, summa mersa. Terrae mediae diversa Manant iam in universa.” (“The tree of life is upside down. Roots high, and top sunk underground, Meanwhile, the parts of midmost earth Go swimming through the universe.”)

Berard has his fair share of fun letting his characters let loose the occasional volley of reproach when folly happens to cross their sights. If he has one fault as a satirist, it is a habit of satisfying himself with easy targets — the general crassness of postmodern man, for instance — with no real desire to change anything because he enjoys the joke only too well. At one or two points in the book I was reminded of English novelist George Meredith, another highly inventive ball of eccentric energy, and his observation that “There must be the moralist in the satirist if the satire is to strike. The stroke is weakened and art violated if he comes to the front.” The moralist in Professor Berard is, it seems, having a coffee and a cigarette behind the venue, unmotivated to come anywhere near the stage.

The book is shot through with the idea of a meta-universe, one in which locality and non-locality, being and non-being, appear to be either the same or unknowable. However, the humanity of the characters and palpable sympathy of the author toward them imbue too much sanity into the Berard-cosmos for us to take his ruminations without a grain of salt.

Whatever the shortcomings of the book, they amount to technical flaws of no damning proportion. Berard is a clever stylist, shining especially in the several poetic interludes that occur as thematic ramifications throughout the novel. He has done one better than to write what he knows, and that is to write what he loves. This is a promising first novel — part one of a seven-part series, as if the author had not already shown himself to be sufficiently ambitious — and if it does not ignite a fad and send the hipsters scurrying for a copy of Wheelock’s Latin Grammar, then Professor Berard can take comfort in the knowledge that an immortal language is too good for the fashions it is sure long to outlive.  M​​​​​​