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Larvatus prodeo

English translation: I go forward bewitched/masked.

GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)
Latin term or phrase:Larvatus prodeo
English translation:I go forward bewitched/masked.
Entered by: Joseph Brazauskas

13:14 Nov 25, 2008
Latin to English translations [PRO]
Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature
Latin term or phrase: Larvatus prodeo
the author is questioning the idea of a mother tongue, he doesn't feel like he has one.
"Perhaps," he says, "i have no mother tongue.
For at times, as i listen to the words of English as they emerge from my mouth, i have a disquieting sense that the one i hear is not the one i call "myself." Rather, it as though some other person (but who?) is being imitated, followed, even mimicked. Larvatus prodeo."

i discovered this is an expression used by actors wearing masks in Roman plays, indicating that he is coming forth with a mask, but what it really comes to mean in the context?

i'm translating the text into turkish, and surely shall leave the expression as it is, but there is the need to explain (first of all, to myself) what the whole thing means, even if as a footnote
vitaminBcomplex
Local time: 10:21
I go forward bewitched/masked.
Explanation:
'Larva' means both 'ghost' and 'mask' and 'larvare' means 'to bewitch, enchant', 'larvatus' being the masculine perfect passive participle of this verb. There is a pun here and the notion conveyed is of a ghost issuing from the grave, just as an actor issued masked from the sides or back of the stage.
Selected response from:

Joseph Brazauskas
United States
Local time: 03:21
Grading comment
thanx
4 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



Summary of answers provided
4 +1I appear in public masked
Rebecca Garber
5I go forward bewitched/masked.
Joseph Brazauskas
4"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille..."
Stephen C. Farrand


  

Answers


21 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +1
I appear in public masked


Explanation:
prodeo - prodire - prodii - proditum -- to go forth, to appear, particularly in public
larvatus -- masked

Rebecca Garber
Local time: 03:21
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Joseph Brazauskas: Loose, but I think correct.
48 mins
  -> Thanks Joseph
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43 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. De Mille..."


Explanation:
If you've seen the movie "Sunset Boulevard", and recall Gloria Swanson's line, it communicates--in a melodramatic way--what this phrases means to convey. Larvatus literally means "possessed by a larva; demented" and "masked" to portray an inhuman thing on stage, I think. "I enter, ready to play a mad scene" might be a more literal way of conveying the thought. The author continues his thought about his sense of otherness, of strangeness, from the language that does not seem to be his own.

If you Google the phrase, you'll find it has its source in Descartes, not in the ancient world.

Stephen C. Farrand
United States
Local time: 03:21
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 28

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  Joseph Brazauskas: Thanks for pointing these out. But none of the passages you cite seem to me to have any demonstrably daemonic connotations.
28 mins
  -> Well, Joseph, it is a term of abuse in Plautus' Mercator. The citation in Pliny's Historia Naturalis (praef. 31), while a witticism, hardly suggests that larvae were thought to be benign. The Apocolocyntosis suggests they tormented people.
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1 hr   confidence: Answerer confidence 5/5
I go forward bewitched/masked.


Explanation:
'Larva' means both 'ghost' and 'mask' and 'larvare' means 'to bewitch, enchant', 'larvatus' being the masculine perfect passive participle of this verb. There is a pun here and the notion conveyed is of a ghost issuing from the grave, just as an actor issued masked from the sides or back of the stage.

Joseph Brazauskas
United States
Local time: 03:21
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish, Native in SpanishSpanish
PRO pts in category: 56
Grading comment
thanx

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  Stephen C. Farrand: I think rather the first part of the dual meaning is "altered" or "possessed". The larvae were associated with epilepsy (think petit mal seizures).
5 hrs
  -> I know that they were associated with possession by Ceres--hence 'cerritus' is sometimes found in conjunction with 'larvatus'--but according to H.J. Rose, Ancient Roman Religion, 1948, p. 72f., this was a Greek importation. Have you a reference for epile
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