congeries

Ibland är livet en läskig gegga av synkroniteter.
Jag skrev ju häromdagen om Alfred Thomas Barton övesättning av Shakespeares sonetter till latin, och fick nu syn på en aldeles nylig artikel i Bryn Mawr Classical Review om just denna tolkning och en ny bok därom:

"Alfred Thomas Barton (1840 - 1912), a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, devoted many years to producing a quite elegant set of translations of the complete sonnets of Shakespeare into Latin hexameters and elegiac couplets. As a gesture of pietas, the year after his death John Harrower published the complete set at London, and (rather remarkably) ten years later the sales of Barton's poetry were sufficient to justify a reprint edition. In 2004 Barton's sonnets, in the form printed by Harrower, were published on the Web by Claude Pavur S. J. of St. Louis University. Hard on the heels of that electronic edition comes a new print one, by Ludwig Bernays (henceforth B.). B. pays Barton the compliment of a scientific edition, outfitted with a Vorwort of his own, a reproduction of Harrower's Praefatio, rather copious annotation, and a concluding essay on "Shakespeare in klassischem Gewande" by Markus Marti (text in both German and English)."
...
"Barton's translation work was clearly a labor of love, but some, perhaps, will ask whether all this effort was misplaced. To be sure, a certain historical context for Barton's translations was provided by the introduction of verse composition in examinations (requiring the translation of set passages) as part of the 1879 tripos reform at Cambridge, reflecting an increased interest in linguistic detail and stylistic imitation. Translations provide an excellent arena to pursue these pedagogical enthusiasms. So there is inevitably a donnish dimension to what he accomplished. But it would be wrong, I think, to dismiss his translations as mere academic exercises or some kind of esoteric puzzle-solving (an analogy suggested by a remark in Marti's essay). When conducted at Barton's level, such translation work is can assume the quality of an art-form, albeit a highly specialized one, in its own right, and so B. very properly regards this collection as a legitimate object for scholarly treatment."

Något till julstrumpan kanske!
Kan någon förresten förklara för mig varför tyskarna av tradition och hävd är så besatta av Shakespeare? Är det nationsbyggandet de avundas? Falstaff?

Vidare har ytterligare ett av jätteträden fallit i Lundagård. (Har blivit en ivrig läsare av Sydsvenskans nätupplaga av förklarliga skäl.)
Är det någon mer än jag som vill se detta som en symbolisk parallell till latinets situation i samma stad? Kom ihåg, lyktstolpe=upplysning, visdom, lärdom:

"Strax innan 10.00 i förmiddags föll ett träd i Lundagård. Bjässen lade sig utefter det öst-västliga huvudstråket, riktning mot Kyrkogatan i Lund. I fallet krossades en lyktstolpe."