A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh comes up in conversation every so often. And especially its Latin translation. Whenever I remember the book that we all read at the Urban Institute of Slovenia in Ljubljana in the late Seventies, I immediately come up with all sorts of sonorous Latin quotes: Winnie ille Pu sub nomine Sandersi solus in silva habitabat or de apibus semper dubitandum est or cum vasibus melis in ramo arboris sedebat. Ah, the peerless charm of Latin!

Having heard me enthuse about it for years, my beloved ordered the book via Amazon. She brought it with her the last time she came to Motovun. Translated by Alexander Lenard, Winnie ille Pu is now published by Penguin Books,[1] but the edition I used to have was published by Methuen.[2] This I know from so many quotes in my Residua. Now it is a joy to dig into it several times a day. Reading from it aloud is a special delight, it goes without saying. The louder, the better, too.

Looking for something completely different, yesterday I made a thorough search of my library, or what remains of it after my departure from Reading, when I got rid of a huge number of books. To my surprise, I discovered a Latin translation of the second book about Pooh, entitled The House at Pooh Corner. Translated by Brian Gerrard Staples as Domus Anguli Puensis, it was also published by Methuen.[3] According to my note on the front page, I bought the book in Reading in 1998. And then I wiped it out of my mind.

In less than a week, I was thus blessed with Latin translations of both books about Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne, which used to be my childhood favorites. By a wide margin, too. In fact, no other book comes even close to these two. Now they are always within my reach. A few paragraphs from either of them are enough to make me feel just right. By now it seems to me that I first encountered Pooh in Latin, anyhow. Given my age, the idea strikes me as less than preposterous. After all, why quibble about mere decades, centuries, or millennia?!

Footnotes

1. London: 1991.

2. London: 1975.

3. London: 1980.