Dative of Reference or Interest

I have things to be doing.

Real things, for a change.

Like, for instance, packing up the entire contents of my house and moving 4.5 hours southwest, starting a new job, and trying to pass a notoriously difficult exam--the PBDS, for those of you in whose hearts this acronym strikes terror) in order to secure the new job (because it wasn't not enough to have to cram 2-4 years of nursing school into 11 months, take a national licensing exam, and go through orientation the first time).

Not to mention the whole "two shifts and you're on your own" downside to travel nursing.

So instead of doing things I should be doing, I am procrastinating and leafing through old text books, with antiquated titles like The Nature and Destiny of Man (ten points and a PhD in dorkiness if you know which of the Niebuhr brothers wrote that book, and what's more, actually care) and James Cones' God of the Opressed. (I decided I am going to write the follow up, God of the Depressed, and then maybe a third, God of the Suppressed. Maybe I'll even do a spoof for an encore: God of the Undressed.)

Also, I happened to be looking through Wheelock's Latin (6th ed.) and in chapter 38, jauntily titled "Relative Clauses of Characteristics; Dative of Reference; Supines" p 270, under subtitle "Dative of Reference or Interest" found this curious example:

Caret tibi pectus inani ambitione?

Wheelock translates thusly:

Is your breast free from vain ambition--are you sure?

This isn't really funny, unless you are a geek, but I immediately thought, "It's almost like a Roman advertisement for Breast Cancer Awareness Month!"

I mean, doesn't the urgency of it all make you desperate to rush to the nearest mirror posthaste, and do a quick self exam, just to make sure that your mammary tissue is indeed "free from vain ambition"?

It does me.

I also think it's interesting that Latin has so-called "Fear clauses," as Wheelock points out in this now-incomprehensible-to-me sentence: "Verbs denoting fear or apprehension often take subjunctive noun clauses introduced by ne (that) or it (that.... not); the conjunctions are just the opposite of what might be expected, because in origin the clauses they introduced were essentially independent jussive clauses..." (Chapter 40, p. 285).

Oh, why of course, the whole "independent jussive clause" thing makes it absolutely clear. Absolutely crystal.

Uh huh.

(I even have this line underlined in pencil, with a completely unhelpful scrawl "timeo ne abeas" in the right margin, to prove I can copy the examples given in the text, apparently.)

Similarly dog eared and marginated texts in my collection include:

Kant, I. The Critique of Pure Reason
Barson. La grammaire a la oeuvre
Hegel, ed. Hodgson, Peter C. Hegel Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: One Volume Edition, the Lectures of 1827.
Eliot, George--various novels.

Note this basic desecration of textbooks does not indicate a relative measure of mastery or understanding of any of the material within (esp. that of the Hegel book; it looks impressively weather-beaten--not because I had any great intellectual epiphanies about its contents--but rather, because I spilled an entire cup of coffee on it while walking to 19th century theology class one day. My favorite part of that book continues to be the appendix, with the pedantic tables and diagrams of religion. Hilarious stuff.)

My copy of the Critique is actually falling apart, and has been, for some years, but this is mainly due to inferior binding process, as opposed to actual recent perusal (of which it was subject to a great deal in my student day). The spine, ergo, desperately needs tape. Wheelock's already has clear packing tape at the top of the spine, and really grubby pages. My Harper Collins Study Bible (no, not like Christian Right Evangelical Study Bible) from divinity school is likewise bloated from some unfortunate contact with an autumn deluge of rain that occured while walking back from class one Friday.

I was also looking through the facebook of my divinity school and recognizing old professors and thinking fondly, "Aw! He was like a grandpa that read you stories about Hegel!" and "Remember his funny joke about Muenster and those crazy-ass Anabaptists?"

Those were wild and raucous days, divinity school.