Have sua fata libelli
Habent sua fata libelli is a Latin proverb and means, precisely translated, “Books have their fates”.
origin
It comes from an incomplete didactic poem by the ancient grammarian Terentianus Maurus , who probably worked towards the end of the second century AD. The poem De litteris, de syllabis, de metris is written in various ancient meters . The line (verse 1286) containing the words famous today is a hexameter. It is complete
Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli
Depending on the reader's perception, the little books have their fates
When the German bookseller's house was inaugurated in Leipzig in 1888 , the heraldic artist Emil Doepler raised the floor to the popular motto of the German book trade association .
meaning
Usually the sentence is used in this sense: A text can only convey as much meaning or message as the respective reader is willing or able to grasp. But it is also conceivable: Depending on the time and circumstances, books are “read” differently, that is, understood and instrumentalized.
The dictum can also be understood as follows: The book itself (not just its interpreted content) has a turbulent fate - depending on whose hands it is. Umberto Eco interprets the sentence in his novel The Name of the Rose in this more literal sense. The book shares the fate of its owners.
In a similar sense, the humanistically educated author Richard Wilhelm uses the quote in his foreword to his standard translation of the I Ching : The little books share the fate [only] of those who understand them.
In A letter from Mr. Joyce to the Publisher, James Joyce used the quote: “[…] however, they have given my book in print a life of its own. Have sua fata libelli! " The fate of a book begins when an author has done his or her job and the book 'comes into the world'.
Sigmund Freud mentions in his work The Joke and His Relationship to the Unconscious the corruption of the quote to “Habent sua fata morgana” by the Wippchen figure of the journalist Julius Stettenheim .
In the story In Stahlgewittern, Ernst Jünger quotes the senior staff doctor operating on him, who philosophizes about the bullet's happy trajectory when removing a shrapnel: "Have sua fata libelli et balli."
In his satirical legend, The Hair of the Holy Fringilla, Otto Julius Bierbaum changed the quote for “Habent sua fata capilli” - when the hair of the Fringilla was no longer used as a relic, but in future as a padding for a sparrow's nest.
Another perspective is to view books as social constructs (just as theories, ideologies or religions are) that develop a life of their own that goes beyond the intentions of the author: the reception of a book by the audience and posterity may well differ differ from the original intention of the author. Including James Branch Cabell , A Note on Cabellian Harmonics in Cabellian Harmonics April 1928: "For a book, once it is printed and published, Becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book 'means' thereafter, perforce, - both grammatically and actually, - whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it. " The idea that the “externalization” of a thought creates new independent entities that become part of the “social construction of reality” was elaborated by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their work, The Social Construction of Reality . A current application of this approach can be found at Vittorio Ferretti.
literature
- Stefan Link : Dictionary of Antiquity . 11th edition Kröner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-520-09611-0 (Kröner's pocket edition; 96).
Individual evidence
- ↑ About changing a quote (boersenblatt.net)
- ↑ StA. Vol. 4, p. 199
- ↑ Berger, Peter L. / Luckmann, Thomas (1969/1987): The social construction of reality. A theory of the sociology of knowledge. Frankfurt / Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.
- ^ Vittorio Ferretti: Back to Ptolemaism - To Protect the Human Individual from Abuses of Social Constructs. Amazon / Kindle, 2012.