Living Latin?

Salvete! I write to you from deep inside the mosquito-infested neo-Roman world of Accademia Vivarium Novum. Ita, ultimo tempore scripsi multos menses abhinc--Yes, it's been a long time since I've written. And when I did, I was neither covered with mosquito bites, sweating out my pores, nor struggling to master third declension adjectives in the plural genitive case (don't ask...). Yes, these are some odd conjunctions (perhaps not the least of which is the optimism revealed in my use of the plural salutation).

But since arriving in this neoclassical cloister, I have encountered many odd conjunctions. I came here slightly over a month and a half ago to learn Latin. I have to learn it for Columbia (and for, well, life), and, let's face it, an intensive Latin course at CUNY  (City University of New York) simply didn't measure up to the potential of an eight-week immersive program in Rome. Any opportunity to get out of the city is okay by me.

But I'm afraid I wasn't perfectly informed of what exactly I signed up for (yes, that's a preposition completing the sentence, but I can't come up with a better form). For one thing, when they said "immersive," they weren't kidding. Who knew that a place exists where everyone speaks Latin 24/7; where every year twenty teenagers live, eat, and breathe Latin, taught by perhaps the most accomplished speaking Latinist in the world; where even such modern technologies as the internet are translated into a "dead" language? Yes, such a place exists, about 5 miles outside of Rome. During the school year, Accademia Vivarium Novum is essentially a boarding school for boys from all around world, rigorously selected for a free year of classical education. The summer, though, is largely devoted to transient Latin learners like myself: students, priests, Latin teachers, people with nothing better to do with their time. For two months, we too live, eat, and breathe Latin (Although I confess, I have not gotten to the point of thinking in Latin: today my roommate almost walked in on me unexpectedly and I cried, "Wait! Give me a minute!" As if that means anything to my Mexican, Latin-speaking roommate...). The founder really tries consciously to create a humanist enclave reminiscent of the 16th-century. So we have very little free time at all, and even less during which we can exit our walled enclosure. During the school year, I'm told, the students live an EXTREME ascetic lifestyle: no heat, no breakfast aside from packaged toast slices, no sugar, no light, almost no opportunities to leave. It's tough--to the point where around half of the students leave permanently each year around Christmas. But for those who survive, they testify to friendships that transcend everything, to an education that surpasses everything, and to an institutional loyalty that withstands everything. We summer people have it easier; after all, we're paying to come here. We at least have options at breakfast, the lights work, and the main schoolroom has air conditioning (97 degrees today...). But we to are submerged in a captivating philosophy of humanist education, where a lesson on Aeneas' treatment of Dido is transformed into a gut-wrenching examination of the human condition. I have rarely gone to lunch so pensively depressed...

TBC...