Tuesday, August 09, 2022
From the Ashes
Ward Allen, "Donald Davidson," Sewanee Review 78.2 (Spring, 1970) 390-404 (at 403):
The Latin is ungrammatical — cineris is the genitive of cinis and as such cannot be governed by the preposition in. An ablative is required, either cinere (singular) or cineribus (plural). Also, what is the subject of the verb viget? I suggest that what was in Davidson's mind was the motto on his own (?) family crest, "Viget in cinere virtus." See
Fairbairn's Book of Crests of the Families of Great Britain amd Ireland, 4th ed., Vol. I (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1905), p. 154:
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He had dedicated a book once to John Donald Wade and in reaching for a phrase to state his friend's nobility had fallen back on the Latin where commonplace words become monumental, In Cineris Viget, "in the ashes he flourishes." Cinis means literally ashes. It may describe the rubble of a burned city. It means, figuratively, destruction, ruin, annihilation. Especially is it associated with the dead.The book was Donald Davidson, Still Rebels, Still Yankees and Other Essays (1957; rpt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), and here is the dedication:
Davidson, William, Esquire, of Muirhouse, Davidson's Mains, Midlothian, a phoenix in flames ppr. Viget in cinere virtus.
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