The Strangest Year, Vergil, and the Next Great Thing

Aside from the immediate and urgent concerns surrounding COVID-19, the two themes that most dominate human debate at the moment are the environment and the relentless march of technology.

Geologists are fond of defining eras, so we have the Cambrian, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, the Pleistocene, and so on. Our current epoch has been labelled the Anthropocene – Anthropos meaning ‘man’ in ancient Greek.

Perhaps the next epoch might be seen as the Robocene, as artificial intelligence takes over from the agency of human beings, a process that may well be accelerated by the aftermath of the coronavirus.  

Or, given the concerns about the environment, perhaps the next epoch might be known as the Plasticocene. Who knows what the future may bring?

Environmental and technological themes dominate our thinking at school, too. In fact, when recently we discussed within our Senior Leadership Team, what whole-school objectives we wanted to set ourselves next year, both the environment and technology featured in the top three.

The school’s 50^th anniversary has proved to be the strangest year. The Time Capsule and the Heritage Exhibition already seem like a long time ago. The Gala has been postponed, the publication of The BSM in 50 Objects delayed.

Instead of being driven by a nostalgic look at the past, the year has had its own urgent imperatives to contend with, yanking us back to the implacable present. Personally and professionally, it has been the most challenging year of my life.

But we look determinedly to the future, with a sense of hope and optimism that things will get better; that the virus will recede; that any psychological scars might be healed; that life will return in all its richness and variety.

I have no talent for predicting the future. Nor does anyone I know. I have ceased to be surprised by what happens. The discourse of crisis can be sustained only for so long, before you shrug and just get along, and try to muddle through.

Fortune telling is clearly just superstition, though I do have a sneaking regard for the practice of Sortes Vergilianae. This is when predictions of the future are sought by randomly chancing upon passages from the works of the Roman poet Vergil.

Basically, the idea is to flick through a copy of Vergil’s work, usually The Aeneid, and to stop by chance at a particular phrase or line. Wherever you touch the page is supposed to direct, advise or warn you before deciding your next action. The Emperor Hadrian, King Charles I of England, and Rabelais are all reported to have used this method (with varying success). 

There exists a website that randomly chooses one phrase a day (sortesvergilianae.com), though not yet an app. Some people, I know, use the Random Generator Number feature to choose a page in the book, then to choose a line, before putting the original Latin into Google Translate. 

Personally I do not go to these lengths, preferring to use my hard copy and the English translation. Perhaps that’s why the operation never yields anything that seems relevant to me – though I have to say, I have tried it many times.

I have a variation on this exercise, though, and it comes in two parts. The first is that I spin my rotating bookcase, which is fun in itself – the bibliophile’s equivalent of a DJ spinning a vinyl disk. Then I pick a book from wherever the rotation stops, and open it. 

The second part of the variation owes something to the traditions of a literary prize. There exists an award in France – this is true – to the best page 112 published in a novel in a particular year. I love that idea. 

So I turn immediately to page 112 of my randomly spun book, then page 88 (my favourite number - the number of keys on the piano, the number of constellations visible in the night sky). Finally I turn to page 32 (my second favourite number - the number of Goldberg Variations).  And I look for inspiration variously from pages 112, 88, and 32. 

I can’t say I ever have a sense that my fate is being directed by the act, but on occasion I have been inspired by this chancy and happenstantial method.

One of the quotations I came across recently, performing this routine, was from the American composer and conductor, Leonard Bernstein: 

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.

Well, maybe this is what I was looking for, and the direction I need right now. As a school we do have a fully developed plan for September, and not quite enough time to test it, but maybe this will be how we meet the challenge and achieve a great thing at the start of the new academic year.

So, thank you Leonard Bernstein, thank you rotating bookcase, thank you sortes vergilianae – and thank you to all those who have read the blog series and supported the school this year. 

This is the final blog until September. I look forward to renewing the series then.

Chris Greenhalgh
Principal & CEO