MODERN LANGUAGE
By A. D. C. PETERSON
MY researches into Modern Language began with the Sixth Form's essays. Each boy was writing on a chosen subject, and they asked me to get some modern books for them from the County Library ; someone asked what existentialism was, so I promised to cover that too. I glanced through the books when they arrived. Alex Comfort's The Novel in Our Time would do for Chuzzlewit, I thought, and the Council for Curriculum Reform's Content of Education was just the thing for Copperfield's essay on Specialisation in the Sixth Form. There was even Norberto Bobbio's Philosophy of Decadentism for the existentialist. All were serious and well- reviewed books. The library had clearly done its best.
As I began to read, however, I felt creeping over me that baffling uncertainty which afflicts the man with a slight knowledge of Italian who tries to read a Spanish newspaper. The paragraphs seemed intelligible as I read them, but when I stopped to think I was more than doubtful whether I had understood them at all. And I felt quite sure that the Sixth Form could not hope to. What then was to be done ? It was useless to give books written in a strange tongue to boys only accustomed to plain English, yet it seemed a pity to cut them off from Modern Thought altogether. It occured to me that we had here the perfect " balance subject "; instead of teaching cultural French to scientists and the history of science to Classics, it would be better to teach them all this new modern language. Then they could read the books for themselves.
We started off cheerfully with passages for unseen translation, taking first this one about the existentialist: " He returns to the embrace of an anthropology which re-echoes Christian themes and, perhaps unconsciously, evokes afresh that religious motif, which at the outset of the modern age had experienced its own revival of fortune contemporaneously with the flowering of Humanism in the pessimistic anthropology of the Reform, and found its champions even later during the triumph of historicistic optimism (think of Kierkegaard)." This may seem rather a hard passage for beginners, and the fact that it had already been translated from Italian into Modern Language perhaps made it harder. However, we did fairly well, I think, and finally rendered it: "He reverts to a doctrine of Man's nature which is, whether he knows it or not, very like the Christian doctrine of Original Sin ; this Reformation at the very time when Humanism was flowering and had its supporters, such as Kierkegaard, even when the optimism of the Historical school was fashionable." It was here that we ran into the first difficulty in Modern Language as a school subject. In teaching the classics there is always the Loeb edition against which the teacher can check his own translation ; we thought our translation made sense, but how were we to be certain in the new subject that it was a faithful rendering of the original ?
When it came to The Novel in Our Time, the lack of notes and translations by previous editors, and even of an apparatus criticus, became even more obvious. The first passage chosen for translation was taken from page two: "No form of Art can be regarded in isolation from the society in which the artist lives, and it is only comparatively recently In history that critics and readers have come) to regard artistic activities as a separate branch of endeavour, similar to one of the branches of technology." The first half presented no difficulties except that Parsonage (Classical Side) maintained that the words " in history " and "and readers " were glosses which had crept into the text. The second half, however, raised a storm of controversy which made it very difficult to maintain a proper degree of pedagogic dogmatism. The translation recommended was: " It is only comparatively recently that critics have come to regard art as a separate branch of human activity similar to a technique." To this the Literary Sixth objected strongly on the grounds that it way manifest nonsense, since the very earliest critics stressed the view that this is just what art is ; and they quoted at me Plato, Horace and Quintilian. It was in vain that I pointed out that they had been asked to translate, not to criticise, and that in accordance with the maxim difficilior lectio potior the more difficult reading from the point of view of sense was the more likely to be correct. They were pre- pared, they said, to accept a reading of which it was difficult to make sense, but not one of which it was impossible.
At this point the Historians struck in. " Do you think he means that it is a good thing that the critics have come to this conclusion or a bad thing, sir ?" they asked. Normally, I might have temporised with, " Surely there's something in the notes about that, Dombey ?" But here there were no notes. I plunged therefore. " A bad thing of course," I said. " He's just told you that art cannot be considered in isolation from society, and now here are the critics coming to regard it as a separate branch of endeavour, similar to one of the branches of technology." Alas, this merely drew in the Scientists. "But the branches of technology aren't isolated from society, sir," said Ammeter ; " at least not if radio is a branch of technology, which I suppose it is." " I agree with Ammeter," broke in Parsonage again, " and I suggest that for ' and' in the second line we read ' but '; it's a very small emendation and makes sense of the whole passage." Fortunately the bell went then, and the Sixth Form adjourned to stump cricket.
The next lesson was chaos. It was Parsonage who did most harm. He had collected some books in Modern Language on his own account and saw himself as a new Bentley, continually maintaining that the word " not " had dropped out of sentences of the most profound insight, owing to the compositors not understanding the language they were setting. I must admit that the sentences often seemed just as profound when he restored it. It was with difficulty that I got them on to the next Unseen from The Content of Educa- tion: " As we grow to the vision of a common school as a function of a planned community, where pre- and post-natal care, health and child guidance services, planned housing, recreation and community centres are essential parts of an ordered society, so our mental out- look on the education of all children widens and the common school is seen, as indeed it is most urgently necessary that it should be seen, as one factor in the social reconstruction that is the dynamic neces- sity of our age." The chief difficulties in this fine example of Modern Language are, of course, " grow to the vision of " (which Parsonage wanted to emend to " groan at the vision of "), " function, of a planned community " and " dynamic." In the end the boys produced this version : "As we become slowly aware that, in any community where health, housing, recreation and social life are planned from before the cradle, it will also be the planners' job to provide common schools, we begin to connect up the education of all children with everything else. We then see, as it is most important that we should, that the purpose of the common school is to assist the social revolution which is necessary in an age of electric power."
Now I have got to correct the translations without cribs. Of course they have misunderstood " dynamic " and I am pretty sure they should never have fallen for Parsonage's proposal to transpose it to qualify " age " rather than " necessity." On the other hand what am I to suggest instead ? "Dynamic " necessity must mean some- thing, I suppose ; but what ? Unless the authors of the works them- selves are prepared to sponsor school editions with notes and vocabularies, it seems to me that Modern Language as a school subject will have to be abandoned. It exposes the teacher to too many, unanswerable questions.
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