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We’ve seen a lot of posts of late about MGM movies – hardly surprising, of course, given the provenance of the recent FSM CDs. This makes great reading for me as MGM is by far my favourite studio; I’ve been watching its movies (and listening to its dazzling music) for nigh on 35 years. However, for the last twenty or so, I’ve had to grimace every time the MGM insignia appeared on the screen – ever since I realized there was something fundamentally wrong with the motto on Leo’s scroll.
The problem? The famous MGM maxim “ARS GRATIA ARTIS” is grammatically incorrect.
My kitchen-sink Latin may be rustier than Cleopatra’s chastity belt, but you don’t have to be a Rhodes scholar to know that the Latin for “art for art’s sake” is “ars artis gratia” and not the other way round.
Now this is a pretty big mistake – literally and figuratively. It’s not like it’s some miniscule millimetre-high misspelling in the liner notes of an obscure Bulgarian soundtrack.
We’re talking about the most famous movie insignia in the history of the universe – emblazoned on the front end of 2000 films, with Latin letters the size of Richard Kiel when projected onto a decent cinema screen!
I know Sam Goldwyn was no polyglot, but someone on his payroll – he had some pretty smart writers, after all – must have been aware that his Latin motto was as kosher as a bacon sandwich.
I can’t believe that no-one told him, or Louis B. Mayer.
Just to confirm this, I spent the last month reading “Goldwyn”, A Scott Berg’s meticulously researched biography of Sam Goldwyn, John Eames’s “The MGM Story”, Ronald Haver’s “David O. Selznick’s Hollywood” and “Memo from David O. Selznick”, containing 36 years of memoranda, letters and telegrams from the man himself.
1,953 pages and not ONE single reference to this blunder!
Can anyone help me shed some light on this? All I’ve discovered is that the Latin text was not in Howard Dietz’s original design but was included as an afterthought. Perhaps Goldwyn found out too late that his copyrighter’s Latin was a little wanting and wasn’t prepared to incur the expensive of changing all the existing artwork.
Perhaps he liked the symmetry of “ars gratia artis” and told his advisers, “Screw the grammar! I like it the way it is!”
Either way, it’s pretty ironic when your motto is “art for art’s sake”!
Anyone??
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Posted: |
Feb 25, 2003 - 12:54 AM
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By: |
Joe E.
(Member)
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I haven't studied Latin, but it's my impression there's more freedom regarding word order in it than there is in, say, English. Here's a page I found with a few things to say about it:
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/LatinBackground/BeginningLatin.html
A quote from the page:
"Latin with its myriad endings, had no problems identifying the function of words in sentences, and used what may seem to us a "free word order". It is actually not free, often the first word marks a point of considerable emphasis, and if the last word is the verb, a well-known periodic or punch-line structure emerges. But in Latin, the word order is basically at the service of the author and his ideas, it can be a stylistic and an artistic consideration. "
There are lots of other places online that have something to say about word order in Latin; this is just one of the first ones I looked at. Do an online search for "word order in Latin" and see if you find anything that provides illumination.
I think the word sequence in the MGM logo is acceptable, but I'll ask my linguistics professor about it.
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I studied Latin for nine years, eventually earning a B.A. in Classical Civilization, from Boston University in 1972, which, at the time, had a marvelous Classics Dept.
The advantage of using Latin is that, because of the strict adherence of conjugations for the verbs, and declensions for the nouns, the meaning of any given word is defined within a sentence, no matter its physical placement within that sentence. Consequently, "Ars," meaning the nominative case of the word meaning "Art," because it is in the nominative case, defining it as the subject of the phrase, can be placed anywhere and still fill its function. "Gratia" is a word meaning "for the sake of," and is always followed by the genitive case. Therefore, "Artis," meaning "of art," being the genitive case of the word for "art," naturally follows "Gratia." But, because each word is rigidly defined by its grammatical usage, they could actually be placed in any order, and still always mean the same thing.
It was always the provenance of authors writing in Latin to place words in sentences, depending on the emphasis they wished to present.
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So, we're essentially talking about the difference between:
"Art for art's sake."
and
"Art for the sake of art."
Am I close?
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Firstly, it's not a "ribbon" surrounding MGM's Leo the Lion, Ron, it's film (note the little perforations depicted along the edges).
Secondly, Jerzy, you're not the first to notice the rather free translation of "art for art's sake" but, as in English, there's more than one syntactical way to skin a cat (or lion, as the case may be). "Ars gratia artis" can, quite acceptably, be translated -- in the syntax MGM employed -- as "art for the sake of art," which conveys the meaning perfectly well.
And, thirdly, you're exactly right: Louis B. Mayer didn't give a crap, just as long as the profits kept rolling in. (This is a man, after all, who kept Herbert Stothart on the payroll for twenty years, even as that inept non-composer did his level-best to ruin film after film after film.)
It should also be noted that MGM inherited the Howard Dietz-designed roaring-lion logo (though not the Latin motto) from the Samuel Goldwyn company, which was one of the three entities that merged in 1924 to form MGM (or "M-G-M" as it was written then, though Goldwyn, the producer, had no part in the newly-formed company; it was merely a contractual -- and somewhat ego-driven -- obligation he insisted on to consummate the merger, that the studio should bear what then seemed the tongue-twisting name of "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer." Ironically, MGM -- long shorn of its studio facility, classic film library, production preeminence and glory -- now owns the rights to Samuel Goldwyn's great, independently-produced films [WUTHERING HEIGHTS, DODSWORTH, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE BISHOP'S WIFE, etc.] since Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. sold the old man's company to the nearly hollow shell that remains of his dad's old rival).
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***I studied Latin for nine years, eventually earning a B.A. in Classical Civilization, from Boston University in 1972, which, at the time, had a marvelous Classics Dept.
The advantage of using Latin is that, because of the strict adherence of conjugations for the verbs, and declensions for the nouns, the meaning of any given word is defined within a sentence, no matter its physical placement within that sentence. Consequently, "Ars," meaning the nominative case of the word meaning "Art," because it is in the nominative case, defining it as the subject of the phrase, can be placed anywhere and still fill its function. "Gratia" is a word meaning "for the sake of," and is always followed by the genitive case. Therefore, "Artis," meaning "of art," being the genitive case of the word for "art," naturally follows "Gratia." But, because each word is rigidly defined by its grammatical usage, they could actually be placed in any order, and still always mean the same thing.
It was always the provenance of authors writing in Latin to place words in sentences, depending on the emphasis they wished to present.***
John,
With all due respect, you’re wrong.
Latin is indeed a case-based language. Like Polish, it has rigid patterns of conjugations and declensions and, by dint of this, has “transitive” word order. (However, inflection, i.e. the distinction of case, number and gender, is applied to a much greater degree in Polish than in Latin – Polish has seven cases to Latin’s six, for example – which makes the former much more complex a language but gives users almost unlimited choice in word-order.)
HOWEVER, and this is a big “however”, despite this ostensible syntactic free-for-all, there are word-order rules which classical Latin and Polish observe.
One of the Latin rules – taken from a high school Latin text book – states:
“GENITIVE + ABLATIVE”
In other words, to make things crystal clear: *the genitive is followed by the ablative*.
A typical example of the observance of this rule is:
“exempli gratia” (“for the sake of example”, or simply: “for example”).
(exempli = genitive, gratia = ablative)
Yet you tell us that the ONLY correct form is “gratia exempli”. I quote: “"Gratia" is a word meaning "for the sake of," and is always [sic] followed by the genitive case.”
Members of this board do not require a degree in Latin to prove this statement wrong: they need only turn to a good English dictionary and look up the entry “e.g.”.
The reason why the dictionaries give “my” word order and not yours is not because the authors tossed a coin and “mine” won. It is because “gratia exempli” breaks the aforementioned rule and thus would constitute an idiomatic error, if not a grammatical mistake.
The word “gratia” (“for the sake of”) is like “causa” in the phrase “honoris causa” (a university degree conferred in recognition of public distinction, without the customary examination).
It is NOT correct to say “causa honoris” because it breaks the same rule.
Turning to Cicero - whose writings are regarded as a model of Latin prose – we get the famous phrase: “honoris gratia” (“for the sake of honour”).
In a sense, one could argue that Cicero set the rule, and we have all followed suit ever since.
Nearly all of us, I should add.
If we can return to the phrase in question: “ARS GRATIA ARTIS”.
We have the following:
ARS = nominative
GRATIA = ablative
ARTIS = genitive
Thus, following the rule “GENITIVE + ABLATIVE”, we get: “ARS ARTIS GRATIA”.
MGM’s “ARS GRATIA ARTIS” is, in the terms of this rule, undoubtedly a mistake.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Or, if you prefer,
quod demonstrandum erat.
Jerzy
PS. I just stumbled across a highly literate French website that pokes fun at a wide variety of Latin mistakes. MGM’s gaffe (complete with a computerized lion) has – excuse the pun – pride of place. The authors pay particular attention to the absurdity of the GRATIA + GENITIVE word order.
Here’s the address:
http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/pres-etab/colllouisarmand/latin/devise_du_lion.htm
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Romanes eunt domum!
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"With all due respect, you’re wrong."
This could get ugly.
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Pax vobiscum...
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Pax vobiscum...
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MGM, Paramount and Columbia had no standardized fanfares, as did Fox, Universal and Warner's.
The Franz Waxman-composed fanfare you mention was used in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940), for which he wrote the music (I don't recall if he wrote it for this particular film). It also appears at the beginning of several other Waxman/MGM scores (surprisingly, he wrote more music for that studio than any other, but it's the least memorable of his work. In all liklihood, MGM wanted every composer's music to be in the bland Herbert Stothart mold; it's ironic, then, that it had to wait till Miklos Rozsa's arrival in 1948 to finally bring MGM musically to the top ranks of film studios).
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