The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek
I was waiting for so long for this book to be translated in English. Andrea Marcolongo’s book “La Lingua Geniale—Nove ragioni per amare il Greco”, came out in 2016 but my Italian are at a very low level and even with the help of a dictionary would be difficult and time consuming to read it.
When at last, three years later, it has been translated in English, by Will Schutt, as “The Ingenious Language: Nine Epic Reasons to Love Greek”, I was able to read it. I spent the first two weeks of the coronavirus lockdown with it and I enjoyed every minute of it.
The Ingenious Language is a book about Greek, ancient Greek in particular. What’s so special about Greek, you may ask. It’s a human language, says Andrea Marcolongo, an Italian writer, and classical scholar, because it leaves people the responsibility and the freedom of choosing not only what to say but also how to say it.
It is also an emotional language. “….. it is a language that has us most in bondage; the desire for that which perpetually lures us back.”
So writes Virginia Woolf in “On not Knowing Greek.” And that’s how things stand, says Marcolongo.
“We can never hope to make the intensity of a single word in ancient Greek our own. Yet we continue to study the language, which has lured us for millennia, with the power of distance that, for millennia, we have mistaken or swapped for proximity. In the Greek texts we no longer read the Greek world; we read ourselves.”
The Ingenious Language was a bestseller in Italy and has been translated into dozens of other languages. I must admit I find it extraordinary how the book has been embraced by readers around the world.
I don’t know how to review this book. I loved it, but I am not a linguistic or a classical scholar. I have studied ancient Greek, many years ago- because I had to- and there were many moments that I hate it. It is now, after all these years, that I am re-discovering the beauty of the language.
The Ingenious Language is a book about Greek, but it’s also a personal book. It explores the extraordinary challenges and the opportunities ancient Greek offers to all who engage with it.