A short address
At the end of December I went to a special Cena Latina in Petaluma to meet Cletus Pavanetto, sometime head of Latin at the Vatican and now head of the Vatican's Latinitas Foundation. It was his first time in the United States and was a very special event for everyone concerned. (Cletus was also the teacher of Nancy "Annula" Llewelynn, ringleader of much spoken Latin activity, including SALVI and the Rusticationes Californianae.)
One remarkable thing was that it was the first time I had ever used Latin to communicate with someone who is not also a fluent English speaker. (Cletus's native language is Italian, and he's worked at the Vatican for decades, mainly visiting other European countries.) I've used Latin to communicate with dozens of people, but every one of them previously was more comfortable in English than in Latin. It was a rare and remarkable thing to find a situation in which Latin was actually the most useful and practical means of communication available. Primo Levi had this experience as a displaced person seeking help from a priest, but it seems rare enough to be notable. (In fact, Primo Levi's experience is the only other case I can think of at the moment, and it happened to him half a century ago.) Perhaps it will happen to me again in my lifetime.
During the two-day extended Cena, we had a lot of festivity and visited a winery with a magnificent library, and celebrated Cletus Pavanetto's birthday as well as his first visit to the U.S. He was very funny and certainly gave me and others a hard time with puns and riddles. I remember getting into a long discussion about a fake apple and the question about the existence of a good apple, bad apple, good real apple, good fake apple, bad real apple, and bad fake apple (bonum malum, malum malum, bonum malum falsum, bonum malum verum, malum malum verum, and malum malum falsum). Cletus also asked me what was meant to be a riddle:
Estne peccatum, patrem suum occidere?
(Is it a sin to kill your father?)
I answered "est" (it is) or perhaps "videtur" (apparently).
Cletus laughed and said I was wrong and asked me why. I told him I couldn't think of any reason why it wouldn't be a sin to kill your father. He said: "non est pater tuus, est pater porcorum -- sus, suis". (It isn't your father, it's some pigs' father.) Using a slightly strained theory of the word "sus" (pig), the sentence has a lexical ambiguity and can be read
Estne peccatum, patrem suum occidere?
(Is it a sin to kill the father of some pigs?)
So I answered "etiam" (that too; even so). Which perhaps spoils the punchline.
"Quid! num holerarius es!" (Don't tell me you're a vegetarian!)
And then I had to try to discourse in Latin on the distinction between Genesis 1:29 and Genesis 9:2-3, which I think I might find shaky ground for vegetarian advocacy even in English, so I didn't get far.
When after several hours of Latin dining I told Cletus that I was a little sleepy because I had been up late the night before writing some letters, he asked me why I hadn't written him one. I told him that I hadn't written him a letter because I hadn't known his address.
So he told me he would give me his address and expect a letter. I started to look for a pen and paper to write it down, and he stopped me and said: "Brevissima est. Audi. Cletus, Città del Vaticano."
Now I have the pleasure of knowing Ian Goldberg, who has the valid e-mail address <n@ai>, and Cletus Pavanetto, who has the valid postal address "Cletus, Vatican City". Now that's what I call a short address.
In addition to his distinguished career in Latin for the Catholic Church, Cletus is the author of a thorough modern Latin grammar in Latin (Elementa linguae et grammaticae latinae), which means he has the further right to be called grammaticus, in my experience a uniquely respected title in Latinity to this day.
