Portuguese Irregular Verbs

Guillelmus Campobellens recently gave me a little gem of a book, Portuguese Irregular Verbs. I have been reading it to Morag before bed and we have both really enjoyed it. No, it’s not actually about Portuguese irregular verbs, but the adventures of a German philologist, Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. The book is not for everyone, but anyone who has been involved in academia will be highly amused by its portrayal of Dr. Ingelfeld and his colleagues from the department of Romance Philology, Professor Dr Dr (honoris causa) Florianus Prinzel and Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. Author Alexander McCall Smith, a Professor at the University of Edinburgh, portrays the relationships and mentality of academics with comic insight. Von Igelfeld’s concern that he ‘ur-rachied’ a woman following a lecture by Indian Professor J.G.K.L. Singh on Terms of Ritual Abuse in the Creator/Debtor Relationship in Village India brought up lost memories of sitting in Byzantium and the West and wondering who really cares whether or not Robert Guiscard intended to conquer the Byzantine Empire.

My favourite episode in the book is when the three professors decide to play Tennis after the Annual Congress of Romance Philology in Zürich. Although not one of the three had played before, “’that’s no reason not to play,’ von Igelfeld added quickly. ‘Tennis, like any activity, can be mastered if one knows the principles behind it. In that respect it must be like language.”

So they obtain tennis equipment and “The Rules of Lawn Tennis by Captain Geoffrey Pembleton BA (Cantab.), tennis Blue, sometime country champion of Cambridgeshire; and published in 1923, before the tie-breaker was invented.” The three men study “this great work of Cambridge scholarship”, learning the rules and techniques, the major strokes and the disposition of the body. Prinzel and Igelfeld begin to play, but neither can make it over the net except for the odd occasion! As the match extends, no one can win other than by default of the server. They consult the book, but it merely says that a player wins by winning six games, provided they are two games ahead. But neither player can get two games ahead!

“’This is quite ridiculous,’ snorted von Igelfeld. “A game must have a winner – everybody knows that – an yet this…this stupid book makes no provision for moderate players like ourselves!’”

“So much for Cambridge!”

The three then decide on a swim. “’Do you swim?’ asked Unterholzer.”

“’Not in practice,’ said von Igelfeld. ‘But it has never looked difficult to me. One merely extends the arms in the appropriate motion and then retracts them, thereby propelling the body through the water.’”

As for Morag, I suspect the reason that she enjoyed this books so much was that it reminded her of… close acquaintances.