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"First Beginnings" and Lucretius

 



Puzzling about a matter of translation.

Lucretius, the great Latin poet, wrote ON THE NATURE OF THINGS some time around 58 BC, giving us a book-length rendering of the views of the Greek atomists. 

The matter of translation I have in mind is Lucretius' decision to refer to "atoms" as "primordia." That word in turn gets translated into English as "first beginnings." This is odd. "Atom," as even a flunk-out of languages like Christopher Faille knows, means "indivisible." Isn't there some word in Latin that would be a better translation for that then "first beginnings"? Oh, I don't know (he looks up the etymology of the English word "indivisible")  -- indivisibilus? 

Well, "primordia" has only four syllables and "indivisibilis" has six. That may have made it easier to use in verse -- easier to rhyme, and to work into the meter as necessary.  A further investigation of that would take way more learning than I have available to me. 

Still, I am grateful that there are at least some translators who render his "primordia" back into "atom." 

Now let us end with a verse of Lucretius, translated both ways. It happens to be a verse of some sentimental importance to be, but what the heck....

 "What keeps the mind itself from having necessity within it in all actions, and from being as it were mastered and forced to endure and to suffer, is the minute swerving of the first-beginnings at no fixed place and at no fixed time.”


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