George Doehne
LATN 002: Elementary Latin
May 15, 2020
Acta: Doctior et meliore doctrina imbuta/us
Visiting the inaugural Lutnick exhibit on incunabula that Alex Stern ‘20 curated was one of the highlights of Latin 002 this semester (especially since it was the last exhibit, Lutnick or otherwise, that I assume a lot of us got to see before the on-campus semester ended unceremoniously). Alex did an incredible job curating and narrating the tour, and I’m sad I won’t get to see her do any future exhibits on campus! For the content of the exhibit itself: it was fascinating to see physical examples of Latin in a sort of intermediate stage, well after the classical period but before the modern day. I enjoyed peering at each of them in turn, trying to see how much of each passage I could read, and then translate. (The answer was very few of them, but every single phrase felt like a little victory!) The tactile experience of being able to touch the vellum/rag paper/modern paper samples is something most exhibits don’t offer and helps satisfy that weird urge unique to museums to touch something very old and delicate and valuable that you probably shouldn’t. (Also, what do vellum books that old even smell like?) It also got me thinking that the fact that ancient paper is so much more durable but so much less reproducible also feels like a metaphor for much of our output today, and sets me thinking about how much of our literature would survive some sort of disaster or collapse (since e-books don’t fossilize, and apparently regular paper just disintegrates eventually!) Visually, the engraved drawings in the incunabula were pretty startlingly crisp and detailed for so early on and shows just what a leap the printing press was for literature and how impressive even the earliest uses of it could end up being. Overall, I’m also grateful we got to use class-time to do it, because I normally pass by the exhibit room on my way back to the dorm without checking it and that habit might’ve continued. Hopefully more classical stuff ends up in there eventually!