Dusty Phrases

Dusty

May 18

Hi! Welcome to "Dusty Phrases." You will find a phrase below, in one ancient language or another, along with its English translation. You may also find the power to inspire your friends or provoke dread among your enemies.

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Latin:

Habent sua fata libelli

English:

According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their destiny

There's a bit of truth in this phrase. Once you write a thing down, what happens next is outside of your hands - regardless of how good the thing is that you wrote down. On the other hand, though, this phrase can also be an excuse. "Well, I wrote a masterpiece, but the readers weren't up to the challenge."

How has this phrase been used historically? For that we consult wikipedia:

The Latin expression Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli (literally, "According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their destiny"), is verse 1286 of De litteris, De syllabis, De Metris by Terentianus Maurus. Libelli is the plural of the Latin word libellus, which is a diminutive of liber ("book"), suggesting the qualification ("little books ...") was actually meant but in fact libellus was used to mean tracts, pamphlets etc.

William Camden used the phrase in the preface to Britannia (1607), the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. The phrase is translated as "Bookes receive their Doome according to the reader's capacity."

The early modern scholar Robert Burton deploys the expression in his The Anatomy of Melancholy: Our writings are as so many dishes, our readers guests, our books like beauty, that which one admires another rejects; so are we approved as men's fancies are inclined. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli.

The Latin is often only partially quoted as Habent sua fata libelli and then translated or understood as "Books have their own destinies." By extension the phrase is understood by Umberto Eco (in The Name of the Rose) as "Books share their fates with their readers". In a talk about book collecting, titled "Unpacking My Library" from Illuminations, Walter Benjamin cites the expression in its short form, noting that the words are often intended as a general statement about books; Benjamin's book collector, by way of contrast, applies them to himself and to the specific copies he collects.

Example uses

It is quoted by James Joyce in a letter, dated April 2, 1932, to American publisher Bennett Cerf, a letter requested by Cerf concerning the details of the publication of Joyce's novel Ulysses.

A modified version of the phrase translated as 'booklets and bailiffs have their own fate' appears as part of the footer on the American CAD file hosting website DEFCAD.

Voltaire uses it in his play "Mérope"