More from my book. Here, my protagonist, aboard the Serenade, is translating his Latin as two Egyptian policemen watch him from a concrete pier.
Gravior, the adjective, means “heavier” or “graver.” It is in the nominative case so it has to modify the noun exitus, which is also in the nominative case. “A heavier death” or “heavier fate.” Exitus best translates then as “death” or “fate” even though an EXIT sign does not suggest that everyone who leaves a building is about to face a tragic ending. I always like to think that exit actually breaks apart in Latin as ex + it, or as “out” and “he goes.” So exit means “he goes out.” But sometimes at the end of a scene in one of Shakespeare’s plays, he’ll write exeunt instead of exit, which is a plural verb for “they go out.” So, for example, if Benvolio leaves the stage alone, Shakespeare will use exit but if Benvolio and Mercutio both leave, the text will read exeunt. What I find amusing is that when I watch two people leave a room together under a doorway, I’ll remember Romeo and Juliet or King Lear and I’ll want to correct that overhead sign to EXEUNT to fit the violation. Two people cannot exit a room as one person. I’ve shared this bit of noun-verb agreement with a few friends who usually take great pleasure in pointing out to me that I am a dork and that if I keep it up, I’ll probably always be alone in life. So I’ve learned to keep most of my quirky observations to myself.
The exitus gravior here for “heavier fate” relates to Ovid’s flameless fax as a funeral torch and not as a happy marriage torch. Exitus auspicio gravior, to complete the line, then means “this fate was rather heavy in portent.” I prefer the sound of “rather heavy” than “heavier.” They’re both comparative adjectives, so it’s up to me as translator to decide which word(s) I want to use. Auspicio is in the ablative case, so it takes a preposition. Auspicio is the noun for “augury” or “portent,” so the line could read “the fate was rather heavy in portent” or “by portent” or “with portent,” or with any other suitable preposition. I prefer “in portent” because it implies that the danger lies within the flameless torch itself. Hymen’s torch does, in fact, carry this terrible omen for the newlywed couple.
The next line looks quite easy to translate. Nam nupta per herbas vagatur. Nam means “for.” Nupta means “bride.” Per means “through.” Herbas means “grass” and the “s” at the end makes it a plural noun. Vagatur is a verb because of –atur, and –atur is a passive verb form in the 3rd person singular for “to wander.” But my Latin dictionary cites vagatur as having the deponent principle parts of vagor, vagary. It can not then be a passive verb. Since a deponent verb takes the active voice and not the passive form, the verb means “wanders.” Of course, vagatur shares the same root as vagabond, which is often how I see myself. A vagabond translating a narrative about wandering. Anyway, nam nupta per herbas vagatur translates as “for the bride wanders through the meadow.” I think “meadow” sounds more poetic than common “grass,” so that’s how I will leave it.
It is not too difficult to visualize the young bride draped in a sheer tunic with some ivy leaves in her hair running across the meadows of Greece with the accompanying train of bridal celebrants. The sun is shining happily down on their exuberant smiles, and the tall grass, carpeted with yellow and red poppies, sways elegantly across the Thracian fields. It is slightly difficult to stay focused on this festive scene, however, with those machine guns pointing only a few yards away. Outside my cabin window stand two young military men on a concrete pier. The Serenade must be slowly heading through another lock or we have docked for some reason or another. Both the men, whom I guess to be around age 20, are chatting away as if the guns they hold are plastic toys and they have no official duties to perform. As they turn to look at me in my comfortable room surrounded by my books and papers, I wonder how many dollar bills I may have to relinquish not to get shot in the head by one of their alloy-barrel incentives.
