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Question 30: "Equitare, arcum tendere, veritatem dicere?"

Q. The three of us have a question about the Latin motto "equitare, arcum tendere, veritatem dicere". We have looked...and looked...and can not find any info on this motto.

Can you find us a translation and most importantly, the importance of it to the author?

The motto appears on the flyleaf of Out of Africa.

A.

• Source: Tacitus (c. AD 55-117), Roman historian. His Latin translation of Herodotus (1.136.2), Greek historian of the fifth century BC, who detailed the Persian wars.
• Literal translation: "To ride, to shoot [a bow], to tell the truth."
• History: poetic description of the ideal education of a Persian noble, especially a king.
• Heroic interpretation: "To go forth, to engage, to report." As a literary ideal, "To venture, to experience, to describe."
• Significance to Karen Blixen:
1. As prelude to Out of Africa (1937), the motto presents Karen Blixen's overview of what she achieved. She ventured out to Africa, she experienced life as a settler, and in this work she is reporting on her experience.
2. The motto fulfills the Romantic ideal: "To accept a challenge, to participate in life, and to render the experience as myth." She presents not the literal truth but the poetic truth.
3. Literally in this book, Karen Blixen does ride a horse, learn to shoot, and retell her story of living in Africa. Symbolically, she risked adventures, came to terms with the ensuing difficulties, and relates the lessons of her experience.
4. It is possible to consider the motto as a dedication of the book to Denys Finch Hatton, a classics scholar, as she was not.
5. Describing the education of a noble, the motto echoes Karen Blixen's use of the name Daniel for the child she hoped to have with Denys Finch Hatton: in Biblical terms, "a chosen youth...widely read in many fields, well-informed, alert and sensible, with enough poise to look good around the palace" [Daniel 1:3-4]. In a sense, the story Out of Africa may be interpreted as the child of their liaison.
6. In Karen Blixen's imagery, shooting is equivalent to orgasmic experience. ("The shot was a declaration of love...an affair of perfect harmony, of deep, burning, mutual desire..."[Shadows on the Grass, p. 442]. Therefore in sexual terms, the motto may be interpreted as, "To mount, to realize, and to produce fine fruit." From this standpoint, the motto becomes the recipe for seduction--in this case, seduction of the reader. Karen Blixen uses the terminology of seduction to describe the artist's achievement (as in "Ehrengard").
7. The motto appealed to Karen Blixen because it echoes the philosophy of the great Nordic sagas (and reiterates the story of the Odyssey), that one must venture forth, confront tragedy, and render it as literature in order to become immortal.

Nietzschean interpretation:
 

• The motto was popularized by Nietzsche (1844-1900) in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He believes that moral values are specific to cultures and uses four examples as illustrations:
1. ancient Persian, where action was most important,
2. classical Greek, where personal excellence was most important,
3. Old Testament Hebrew, where family obligation was most important,
4. and medieval North European, where loyalty was most important.
• Nietzche's work was promoted in Denmark by the great critic, Georg Brandes (1842-1927), one of Karen Blixen's literary heroes. She alludes to the Persian motto and Nietzsche in "On Mottoes of my Life" (1960) (Daguerreotypes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.): "I have bent a Masai bow and have felt in a moment of rapture a kinship with Odysseus...Nietzsche has written: I am a yea-sayer..." (p. 14). [Note: Traditionally, the Masai hunt with spears; however, they use bows to protect themselves from enemies and to guard their herds.]

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Supported misspellings: karen blixon, karin, isaac, isak dineson, isak denison, dinison, dinisen, denesen, dinnison, dennison, dinnisen, coolsong, donaldson