Vivaldi: Latin

[NikolaiI]

Can anyone help me with some Latin; specifically, the words to some of Vivaldi's operas, and what they mean in English? I've been fascinated with it for a while, ever since one of the songs in "Juditha Triumphans": "Arma, caedes, vindictae, furores" which means "Weapons, Slaughters, Vengeances, Rages." That's the title of the song, and I dunno any of the other words.

So, another one is "Agitata Infido Flatu," which according to online translation means "Drives him faithless blowing." Can anyone shed some light on this? And if you know any of the other words the songs...


Hm, I think I found the whole thing in Latin. http://www.karadar.com/Librettos/vivaldi_juditha.html, although it doesn't separate between songs.


I know virtually nothing about Latin...I'm interested in Vivaldi, though...


Since Latin differs in nature compared with most languages, Latin translation also has unique attributes. If your language is not an inflected language, you may find it difficult to translated words from Latin or to this language. While you can employ the use of dictionaries in translating other languages, the case is different in Latin translation. Looking a Latin word (as it was used in a Latin sentence) up in a dictionary may be useless since only root words or base forms, in most cases, are listed on a translation dictionary. For this reason, you have to know first the base form of a word used in a sentence before you can translate it.
(from http://www.tantalizingtranslation.com/Latin+Translation.9755.htm)

...
So if I get translations awfully wrong, Latin people, please forgive me!

So here's what I have for the first lines.

in Latin:

Arma, caedes, vindictae, furores,
Angustiae, timores
Precedite nos.
Rotate,
Pugnate
O bellicae sortes,
Mille plagas,
Mille mortes
Adducite vos.


And the best I can put together with free translations:

Arms, slaughters, vengeances, rages,
Straits, fear
To precede we.
Wheel,
Fight
Warlike sortes
A thousand plague
A thousand deaths
To lead you.

(no clue what sortes is? anything like the sortie?)- I didn't rearrange the words, because, well, it's pretty clear- fear to precede we, we fear to precede, etc............. any idea about precede vs. proceed?

That's the introductory lines; now, I'm going to try the "agitata infido flatu" part, since I found it a little ways down, but that's all I'll post on the original post.

And the part that I'm assuming is the song "Agitata Infido Flatu" (On here it says fatu):

Agitata infido fatu
Diu volatu
Vagabundo
Maesta hirundo
It plorando
Boni ignara.
Sed impulsu aurae serenae
Tantae cito oblita poenae
In dilecta
Dulcia tecta
Gaudii ridet haud avara.

To this is what it gave me, but I'll see if I can figure out any of the other words...(like I said, I'm very ignorant of Latin, so please forgive!)

Drives him faithless foolish
By day velocity
Vagabundo
Maesta hirundo
It plorando
Boni unacquainted with.
But to set in mortion heaven to make clear
So much quickly to cancel pain
Upon love
Sweetly to cover
Joy to laugh at no avaricious.


Erm...okay...I'll just wait now for someone else with Latin knowledge...I looked around and found some meanings of these words, but usually in languages other than Latin, like Italian and Spanish. For instance, Maesta hirundo might mean "majestic barnswallow" but I am being swallowed up by ignorance, so I must give up.

Oh, earlier I translated the first line in another one, which gave: drives him faithless blowing, so who knows? Ah, well, that was with flatu, and this is fatu. Mm, this is such a beautiful song. I'm going to enlist the help of my grandmother...maybe she will even make a name here :) - I asked her about it before, but never knew the words, but just the song titles. She said usually other words in the sentence affect what the words before them mean, so free translations are probably very weak.

[Petrarch's Love]

My Latin is only so-so, but I spotted a couple of rough spots in your translation of the first verse.

Arma, caedes, vindictae, furores,
Angustiae, timores
Precedite nos.
Rotate,
Pugnate
O bellicae sortes,
Mille plagas,
Mille mortes
Adducite vos.


(no clue what sortes is? anything like the sortie?)- I didn't rearrange the words, because, well, it's pretty clear- fear to precede we, we fear to precede, etc............. any idea about precede vs. proceed?

Close, but I believe precedite is the plural imperitive, meaning that it is a command to the "arma, caedes, vindictgae, furores, angustiae, timores," and "timores is definately being used as a noun rather than a verb. So it would translate to something like "preceed us arms, slaughters, vengeances, furies, wants (or straits), fears" or, more approximately: "Let arms, slaughters etc. preceed us"
I couldn't figure out what verb precedite is from my Latin dictionary, but I'll assume it means preceed since the Italian is quite similar.
Sortes is the plural nominative of sors, which means fortune or lot. Thus bellicae sortes would be something like the fortunes of war. Thus the second part would be something like "Let the fortunes of war, a thousand wounds, a thousand deaths, lead you."

The second part I've only had a chance to work at these lines:
Agitata infido fatu
Diu volatu
Vagabundo
Maesta hirundo
It plorando
Boni ignara.

The subject is fairly clearly the "Maesta hirundo," which means sad or mournful swallow. Given that my rather rough translation would be "The mournful swallow crying unaware of good, having been driven to faithlessness by long foolish flight." I'll see if I have time a little later to look at the rest. There may be someone here with better Latin than mine who can translate the rest and perhaps correct any mistakes I've made, but that'll get you started anyway.

[NikolaiI]

Thank you!!! I'll send the link to my grandmother, to see if she can help some. This is very beautiful, thank you.

[NikolaiI]

Here's my grandmother's analysis/translation, which she sent to me in an email.

"Very nice! Here's my take on the Latin. I suspect it really is "flatu," not "fatu," since the image is of a wind-blown bird.


Weapons, slaughters, vengances, furies,

Straits, fears,

Go before us;

Turn,

Fight,

O warlike fates;

A thousand plagues,

A thousand deaths,

Bring them, you!



Driven by the faithless blast,

Long in wandering

Flight,

The sad swallow

Goes in grief,

Ignorant of good.

But with a breath of serene air

Quickly forgetful of such pain,

In the beloved

Sweet shelter

She laughs, no longer thirsting for joy.



Anyway, that's the general idea. The first verse, I presume, is either the bad guys pep-talking their forces, or the good guys challenging the bad guys to do their worst. "Precedite" = "praecedite" and yes, it means "precede, go before." The only place I didn't see a way to translate line by line is in the 2nd and 3rd lines of the 2nd verse: "volatu" = "in flight" and "vagabundo" of course = "wandering," but it modifies "flight" not "swallow," so I moved it to make that clear.



Of course any translation more or less messes up the original. E.g., "rotate" of course means "turn," but it can describe a circling movement of an armed force, or the flourishing of a weapon, either/both of which seem appropriate here. I put "thirsting" for "avara" instead of the more usual "greedy" or "avaricious" because the swallow is a sympathetic character here, not a miser. And I translated "haud" as "no longer," though it really just means "not." Otherwise, the translation is pretty literal By the way, the only reason the swallow is feminine is that the word "hirundo" is of feminine gender in Latin, which doesn't necessarily imply female -- so you could make it "he" or "it" if you prefer."

[Petrarch's Love]

Yes, I like your grandmother's translation. Flatu does make more sense than fatu. That one was puzzling me. I don't think I've ever heard this Vivaldi. You've spurred me on to go find a recording now. :) Enjoy the music.

[NikolaiI]

Here's a recording on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFSxOe2hUY

When I first heard it, I didn't like it as much because it was different from the version I knew, but I guess that's normal. Now it sounds normal to me. The music is so beautiful in my opinion. Still one of the most beautiful songs I've heard.

I wish I still had all of Juditha Triumphans. I'll get it again some day. This is another song from it.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wisVxKqGfTo&feature=related

[tailor STATELY]

Enjoyed especially the operatic runs of JT's and the man's head that gets bandied about :)

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor