Enjoy the sweetest fruits of tender youth

BarcelonaThere are still several scholarly men and women in the world, but very few schoolchildren who study. Recently, TV3 reported that a young woman in the United States was passing through the years in secondary school and high school, and that when she got to university, where she was admitted, it turned out that she could neither read nor write. She will end up with a degree, perhaps a doctorate and everything. It is not the defeatism of a grumpy person: it is the reality of education in many places in the world.

It seems that a literary motif that is already found in a piece of the goliardic songs has finally triumphed. Carmina Burana —not set to music by Carl Orff—, which in 12th century Latin says this (then comes the translation): "Omittamus studia, / dulce est desipere, / te cartamus dulcia / iuventutis tenere! / Nothing is apt senectuti / series intendere. / Velox etes preterit / studio detenta, / lascivire suggested / tenera iuventa". That is to say: "Let us leave aside our studies, / for it is very pleasant to dissipate, / and enjoy the sweetest fruits / of tender youth. / It is a thing that is proper for old people / to dedicate themselves to serious things. / We lose time very quickly / if we dedicate it to studies. / Tender youth always invites us / to joy."

It is a variant of very powerful motifs in Latin literature of the classical period, such as that of the carpe we say or of the rose brevis. But these were reasons directed at adults: the young people who studied, few, could not adapt their customs. They sweated to learn; neither the trivium (grammar, dialectics and rhetoric) nor the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy) were not learned like someone blowing and making bottles.

Times have changed. We have so many tools and shows to distract us that any study at a young age seems like a waste of time (so says the poem we have transcribed); that is, we prefer to take advantage with great satisfaction of the joys that youth brings, Sònar and the Palau Sant Jordi.

We only have to keep in mind that these poems found in the German town of Beuren (hence the Latin) Burana) were written either by goliardic poets or by those somewhat educated men who were called vagrant clergy, educated young people, vagabonds. François Villon belonged to this group, who we talked about a few weeks ago. We must add that a good number of these vagabond poets ended up on the gallows because, in addition to writing lewd and anti-clerical poems, they ran around hidden paths stealing the pins, making trouble with them and, if necessary, killing them. It is like saying that this poem is not good advice for a young person of school age.