Sunday, September 02, 2012

 

Even Better Latin?

Guy Davenport (1927-2005), "Two Notes on Wallace Stevens," in The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art (Washington: Counterpoint, 1997), pp. 154-158 (at 156):
In 1957 Samuel French Morse edited Stevens's uncollected poems, and some prose, under the title Opus Posthumous. In his 1989 edition Milton J. Bates adds to Morse's edition twenty-three poems, a short play, a rich selection from his notebooks, and nineteen prose pieces. He keeps Morse's macaronic title, which should be Opus Posthumus, or in even better Latin, Opus Postumus.
Either Davenport or his typesetter forgot that the gender of the Latin noun opus is neuter. Read Opus Postumum. Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.

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