Bringing Back Latin Verse Composition
Latin verse composition has
never been very easy or popular, but it was required for good reason. The best
way to understand and appreciate the written word is to practice writing it, which
is why most of the great English poets (as well as those who wrote in the
Romance languages and German) wrote Latin poetry before attempting it in their
own language.
I think the main problem with
teaching composition today is the methodology, which is overly difficult,
boring, and ineffective. Most composition books are merely collections of
antequated English passages which the student must translate into Latin. This
is not composition. Most verse comp books use the same approach, requiring that
lines of English “verse” be translated word for word into Latin. The student is
overwhelmed with having to do too many things at once: look up the Latin word,
figure out the length of all the syllables, and only then fit the words
together.
Of all the books on LVC I
have seen, one attempts to do something different. A. C. Ainger, in his 2
volume work Clivus (Alden and
Blackwell, 1949), appended to Vol. 1 a collection of introductory exercises
which require the student to arrange lines of pre-scanned Latin words into the
various parts of the eligiac couplet, beginning with the first or last parts of
a hexameter or pentameter line, on up to a complete line or couplet.
I think this approach offers
much potential for reviving verse composition at the high school or college
level. Of course the goal does not even have to be original compositions;
students can learn a lot about the verse form simply by re-arranging Latin
words, and seeing how they do or do not work together. I have scanned and
posted these exercises on the following pages.
Pages:
Other Resources:
Do it Yourself: How to Write
Latin Verse, by Harry Schnur (1957)
The Eureka. In 1845, John
Clark built a machine which composes Latin verse—really!