Miscellany, 6

My Commencement Speech

For Breon Mitchell.  Alles, was uns begegnet, lässt Spuren zurück.

Congratulations, class of 2014!

Let’s start with a word—exceptionally for once without a sentence, meaning it’s more like a concept, or shorthand for an idea: TRANSLATION. “Translation” was taken from Latin TRANSLATIO into the modern languages; it is formed by the prefix TRANS- and the participle LATUM from the strong verb FERO, FERRE, TULLI, LATUM; trans means “beyond” and latum means “borne” or “carried,” so TRANSLATIO is, thus, something carried beyond. In Greek the equivalent of *LATIO relates to the present form of the verb FERO and it is *FOR A. The term for translation in Greek is METAFORA, a word that to this days you see painted on trucks that have the business of moving things, of transporting them in Athens and elsewhere in Greece.

            Leaving etymology aside, we can reflect that all life is translation. Insects, by eating, translate the trunk of an old tree into humus to mix with the minerals of the ground. Plants feed on humus to produce their greenery. Cows eat that greenery to produce milk, which then feeds us. And we sit atop the food chain (or so we think) mostly unaware of what we are translating and so it is no wonder that we so often stop to think, as we chew our metaphoric cuds, what the hell all this life means.

            But translate is all we do. We translate our food into energy, our thoughts into deeds, our love into action—and all along we leave the rest for others, for the humus (a lot of it, alas, we leave for a very distant future humus, considering the myriad gadgets we dump in landfills). From the Latin HUMUS comes our word HUMAN; we are human because, whether we like it or not, we will be translated into the earth.

            All our life is a passage, a transport, a translation. We translate ourselves from children to grown-ups. You are about to reach the peak of one important translation, from students to graduates. And, not to dwell in a morbid thought, we will all translate from the living to the dead. This is life: only that which dies, which will die, can be said to be living. Life is translation. Rejoice in it!

            I give my son one piece of overall advice, the same as I will give you here: TAKE WHAT NOURISHES YOU AND LEAVE THE REST TO COMPOST FOR OTHERS, although I am not sure whether this is advise or law. Perhaps the advice should come after you have assimilated the sentence: TAKE WHAT NOURISHES YOU AND LEAVE THE REST TO COMPOST FOR OTHERS, when you have translated it into your own ideas. Then I’ll advise you to TAKE and LEAVE, to translate, joyfully. Be happy in what you do and when you do it.

            I appreciate the kindness you graduating students have shown me this semester, and want to thank you all for it. I also want to shake the hand of each of you and say something, brief, individual to each of you and then we’ll go and wash our hands.

            Today, you graduate from this class, which might be but a little drop in the river of your education. My hope is that you have learned a thing or two. One of you, I suspect, saw this class as something to endure, as a bureaucratic step to a diploma, and despite her many talents, this person learned little. One or two others sat quietly and decided not to come out of their shells here. The rest of you, even though a few were still unsure what was going on, gave the class a chance, and for this I thank you and congratulate you; it is the best you could have done and it is the best you can do in life: take what nourishes you and leave the rest to compost for others.

            I shall close now with a reiteration of what I’ve tried to teach you:

Translate the sense, not the word.

But also respect and savor each word, whether you will transport it or not.

Own your work.

But also think how others will read it.

Read it out loud; let your work exist in the physical world of air, heartbeat, and saliva.

Take frequent rests and return to your work refreshed for, after all, a translation, like a life, is never final.

            And as for me, today, this is all. Thank you for having listened. Go forth and translate, class of 2014!