A TSH scene I've been wondering about is the one where Richard first runs into Bunny and the twins in the library and ends up helping them with their Greek homework, because apparently it's inaccurate. I saw some discussion of this on reddit like a long while ago but never here.
I'm not a classicist by any means, but I've studied a tiny bit of Greek. Though I never learned to write it I know some of the grammar. Basically the thing is the Greeks are sailing to Carthage. Camilla suggests the accusative and, long story short, is correct. When it's a destination of motion, as in this case (the Greeks were sailing towards Carthage, they weren't already on it) the accusative should be used, not the dative. Charles says something about the Greeks sailing to attack it, but tbh I have no idea why this should affect the noun case. If anything, if you attack something, the object should be accusative. Bunny suggest the ablative but that's just bullshit bc Greek doesn't have an ablative.
But the interesting thing is when Richard comes along and suggests using a Homeric suffix, a locative, a -ζδε. Now, Homer did use such suffixes to indicate motion towards certain places, but still there are several problems with the suggestion, not just limited to the fact that this is drastically off contextually. Keep reading because this became a wall of text I'm sorry to have invaded everyone's dash.
First of all, the suffix isn't -ζδε but -δε, but that's not too terrible; misremembering a specific grammar rule happens to the best of us. The bigger problem is these suffixes aren't noun cases: they're suffixes. They're exactly, as Richard says, like turning Carthage into Carthage-ward in English. It's pretty clear Richard has only a dim idea of what the hell he's talking about, because he contradicts himself by saying this is a 'locative case' and then saying 'you won't have to worry about a case, either'.
Ancient Greek, as far as I could find, doesn't have a locative case at all, unlike Proto-Indo-European. (Old Latin apparently does too.) It seems Homer did use it for some words in some contexts, but this doesn't have anything to do with the suffix, not to mention the locative wasn't used to indicate 'place whither' but rather 'place where' (not toward something, but rather in, on, by etc.) so it would be off anyway: it might only theoretically be correct when a dative would be correct, but this particular sentence requires an accusative. Again, the locative has nothing to do with the suffix, because noun cases aren't suffixes.
Then Henry shows up, sees the incorrect suffix, and of course immediately goes: 'Ah, archaic locative'. It's interesting to think about what this means. You could see it as proof of their fraudulent intellectualism; thinking they know everything while in fact being spectacularly wrong. But I think that's a bit simplistic. Fandom is generally divided into two parts: those who think Henry is an infallible linguistic and general genius, and those who think Henry is a fraud who knew nothing about anything. The second group seems to be in the right here, but they aren't completely: because you can say whatever you want about Henry but he does speak, at the very least, Greek, Latin, and Italian fairly well, and he can casually quote French literature in the original language, and he did publish a translation of lyric poetry at the age of 18 which is wildly impressive. It could be that he misread or misremembered the suffix, and then misused a term. He was wildly wrong, but I don't think he's a complete idiot. I think that could be the message that Tartt was trying to send: even the smartest people make mistakes.
*points at henry winter* this idiot is fluent in homeric greek but somehow still misinterpreted the iliad as a glorification of horror and violence. this idiot got so hung up on “beauty is terror” that he forgot about the rest of the spectrum of human experience. this idiot managed to be a linguistic genius without an ounce of media literacy.
something that I don't see people talking about in support of Henry's intelligence, is that Nietzsche was clearly a model for Henry. His sickliness being the major similarity. his close relationship to a mentor. he excels in philology, but as we know that was not enough for Nietzsche, who's real interest was in philosophy. Birth of Tragedy is basically required reading for secret history fans, so I don't think its a stretch to say that Henry's philosophy is similar to this period of Nietzsche's thought.
the text almosts demands application of Nietzsche's later work too. Henry is meant to be a man wandering above a sea of fog and above humanity, he is our superman, it's no mistake he kills Bunny on a cliff. There is support for Henry being sheltered, being morally 'bad' for killing this farmer and then his close friend, and maybe even some line that hints he regrets it. There is even a very popular suggestion Bunny is an embodiment of humanity. But there is none to separate these acts from his intelligence, his genius and his philosophy.
We can't know for sure to what extent other characters were meant to share Nietzsche's qualities. For instance, Nietzsche loved hiking as Bunny did in the text. We also can't know for sure how broad Donna's Nietzsche as his work was at times contradictory. It was also life affirming, there are echos of the Eternal Return in the final passage where Richard meets Henry. The Nietzsche Podcast is where I first heard the suggestion that Julian was Dionysus, using the original title for the secret history as evidence.
Finally, we cant know that Nietzsche is the ONLY genius Henry was based on, as these basic strokes are a theme in so many of the lives of enlightenment figures, and influential writers, and even political geniuses like Hitler.
All this to say, if a character's life is modelled on the life of a genius, acts like a genius, and we are told pretty explicitly he is the most intelligent person most of the other very smart and well connected people around him had ever met. Then he must be... just plain booksmart?
Did I just see you refer to them as ‘the Greek class and Bunny’? Hm? Like he wasn’t the person who held them together (kept them linked to reality), and when they killed him (and before, when they did the bacchanal without him) everything spiraled out of control?
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