Contemporary Nonfiction - Latin used well; Latin used poorly

 I - Well

It was over the winter just past that I discovered David Foster Wallace, in the form of his essay for Harper's Magazine (April, 2001) entitled "Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars over Usage," ostensibly a review of Bryan Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, but actually a very winningly articulated discussion of the "usage wars," in which he seems to lay the groundwork for a kind of post-prescriptivism that would combine a friendly good sense with a sane respect for tradition.

He begins his piece with the tag: "Dilige et quod vis fac. - St. Augustine."  In a way this sums up his basic point about close questions of usage.  Who, however, would realize that?  The Latin is from the seventh of a series of homilies by this Patristic author on the First Letter of John in the New Testament.  In Latin the name of this collection is In Epistolam Ioannis ad Parthos Tractatus Decem.  Here is the section of this sermon containing this line:

Hoc diximus in similibus factis. In diversis factis, invenimus saevientem hominem factum de caritate; et blandum factum de iniquitate. Puerum caedit pater, et mango blanditur. Si duas res proponas, plagas et blandimenta; quis non eligat blandimenta, et fugiat plagas? Si personas attendas, caritas caedit, blanditur iniquitas. Videte quid commendamus, quia non discernuntur facta hominum, nisi de radice caritatis. Nam multa fieri possunt quae speciem habent bonam, et non procedunt de radice caritatis. Habent enim et spinae flores: quaedam vero videntur aspera, videntur truculenta; sed fiunt ad disciplinam dictante caritate. Semel ergo breve praeceptum tibi praecipitur: Dilige, et quod vis fac: sive taceas, dilectione taceas; sive clames, dilectione clames; sive emendes, dilectione emendes; sive parcas, dilectione parcas: radix sit intus dilectionis, non potest de ista radice nisi bonum existere.

You can find a translation at the New Advent website.  It can scarcely be more conservative and traditional than to cite St. Augustine for anything these days, but of course, like most condensations of wisdom, there is undoubted truth in this nugget, even if, misunderstood, half-understood, or twisted by fanaticism, it could be advanced as justification for the worst sorts of wickedness. 

Was Wallace familiar with the source - i.e., had he read Augustine in the original Latin - or was he aware of the quote from elsewhere - note that as a string in quotes the Latin sentence fetches some 227,000 hits on Google?  Or is the more pertinent question really what sort of readership had Wallace in mind. Consider the other sprinkles of Latin in the essay:

• Not more than a couple pages later, we encounter the second Latin expression:  "A Dictionary of Modern American Usage has no Editorial Staff or Distinguished Panel.  Itʻs conceived, researched, and written ab ovo usque ad mala by Bryan Garner."  (p. 42)  
• On the same page he appends a footnote [he loves footnotes] to the use of a cardinal number in stating the age of an individual: "(7. Garner prescribes spelling out only numbers under ten.  I was taught that this rule applies just to Business Writing and that in all other modes you spell out one through nineteen and start using cardinals at 20. De gustibus non est disputandum.)" 
• Another shot of Latin is not injected until page 46, again in another footnote: "19  Standard Written English (SWE) is also sometimes called Standard English (SE) or Educated English, but the inditement-emphasis is the same.    SEMI-INTERPOLATION    Plus note that Garnerʻs Preface explicitly names ADMAUʻs intended audience as "writers and editors."  And even ads for the dictionary in such organs as The New York Review of Books are built around the slogan "If you like to WRITE. . . Refer to us." (Yr. snoot rev. cannot help observing, w/r/t these ads. that the opening r in Refer here should not be capitalized after a dependent clause + ellipse -- Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.)"  
• Not until page 51 do we encounter a little more Latin, this time the title of a book, again in a footnote: "33  (Q.v. for example Sir Thomas Smithʻs cortex-withering De Recta et Emendata Linguae Anglicae Scriptione Diologus of 1568.)" [note that unfortunately a spelling error has intruded - Diologus should of course be Dialogus - and note if youʻre interested you can get a reprint of the book from Amazon].  
• The last bit of Latin appears at page 57: "Garner recognizes something that neither of the dogmatic camps appears to get: Given 40 years of the Usage Wars, "authority" is no longer something a lexicographer can just presume ex officio."  

I have provided links to Wikipedia explanations of all these expressions.  Note that Wallace never offers a translation or explanation (other than what may be gleaned from his immediate context).  But note as well that every use of a Latin expression adds something, ordinarily to the meaning itself of what he is saying, but in every instance certainly to the tone and style with which he says it.  Still remains the question what sort of person did Wallace expect would be reading this?  Certainly he was assuming a readership such that either he did not even consider using English equivalents instead of the Latin, or he considered and rejected the idea.

I pass over the fact that Wallace does not seem to have a solid grasp of the Latin abbreviation q.v. (quod vide).  He uses it on three occasions.  In each, as in footnote 33 page 51, he seems to really mean vide.  At least he does not use cf. when he only wants to suggest that the reader look at something else.

II - Poorly

In contrast to the deft and appropriate use of Latin in Wallace's article, consider this passage from another book I recently read, Diane Ravitch's "The Death and Life of the Great American School System", pp. 166-7: "When we define what matters in education only by what we can measure, we are in serious trouble.  When that happens, we tend to forget that schools are responsible for shaping character, developing sound minds in healthy bodies (mens sana in corpore sano), and forming citizens for our democracy, not just for teaching basic skills."  Here, the Latin is almost perfectly pointless.  It is nothing more than a sort of translation into Latin of the preceding English phrase "sound minds in healthy bodies" - I say sort of since it ignores the plural/singular issue so as to stay with the proverbial original.  It adds no twist or comment.  It is a mere redundancy.  It seems to have been added - and parenthetically at that - only as some kind of citation to ancient authority in support of the proposition that it is a good idea to have a sound mind in a healthy body.  For some 160 pages I had been following her arguments, thinking them pretty sound and pretty effectively marshaled, and only mildly annoyed by her habit of name-dropping, when this infelicity appeared.   It leaves me wondering why on earth did she bother dropping this Latin nugget into her sentence.  Recall that the author holds a doctorate in history, writes extensively on the history of education, and has filled a number of impressively named posts in government (Bush I and Clinton administrations) and private institutions.  This is all the Latin she could muster in support of any of the ideas in her book?