Personal material in the Festschrift

William Harvey's advice, and the poem 'Amigos' attributed to Vinicius de Moraes (1913-1980), translated by Fraser as 'Friends', with background information on the real author.

2007-2011

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William Harvey's 1657 advice reflected a perspective much favoured by Fraser.

'Nature is nowhere accustomed more openly to display her secret mysteries than in cases where she shows traces of her workings apart from the beaten path; nor is there any better way to advance the proper practice of medicine than to give our minds to the discovery of the usual law of Nature by careful investigation of rarer forms of disease. For it has been found in almost all things, that what they contain of useful or applicable nature is hardly perceived unless we are deprived of them, or they become deranged in some way'.

In the Festschrift this piece (originally in Latin) was to have appeared in 25 languages; in the event three translations were omitted due to lack of space.

Fraser recorded,

‘Apart from Latin and English (translated from the Latin by Robert Willis in 1847, this sentiment appeared in the Festschrift in translations into twenty other languages (twice in Italian). Of the twenty-one translators, six were contributors: Felix Konotey-Ahulu (Ga - a Ghanaian language); Zoltán Papp (Hungarian); Angelo Serra, Italo Barrai (Italian); Francisco Salzano (Portuguese); Eva Yap-Todos (Romanian). Among the other fifteen were my wife, Maria Fraser, (Modern Greek) and my very good friends who were no longer alive at the time that the Festschrift was being prepared, Jérôme Lejeune (French) and Hartwig Cleve (German).

I am very grateful to them for their translations, as well as to my other friends who provided translations, Musa Abdelaziz (Arabic), Nikolay Bochkov (Russian), Marie Ferguson-Smith (Polish), Matatiau Glassner (Hebrew), Eduard Klain (Croatian), Jules Leroi (Dutch), Pål Møller (Norwegian), Štefan Sršen (Slovak), Antonio Velázquez (Spanish), Wu Min (Chinese), and Akira Yoshida (Japanese).

I am grateful to Gwyn Campbell, Canada Research Professor in Indian Ocean World History, Department of History, McGill University, for encouraging his colleagues to produce translations into Welsh, made by Evelyn Hughes and printed in the Festschrift, and into Korean (Bok-Rae, Kim), Provençal (Patric Choffrut) and Ewondo - one of the Beti group of languages spoken in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea (Olivette Otele), Unfortunately, these last three translations could not be included in the Festschrift due to lack of space but they are included in this archive’.

The poem 'Amigos', in which the author expresses the debt he owes to his friends, meant much to Fraser as an expression of his own sentiments. He translated it from Portuguese into English.

Fraser recorded,

‘I have translated a poem which circulates widely on the Brazilian internet about the Brazilian conception of friendship. It is said on the internet that the poem was written by Vinícius de Moraes (1913-1980) who was a man of many talents including a great talent as a poet. However, pursuing an investigation of the authorship of the poem on the internet, including an appeal to an online bookshop in Porto Alegre, I discovered that the poem is virtually the same as an article (Meus secretos amigos) written by Paulo Sant’Ana, a journalist (specialist on football) from Porto Alegre; he also likes to call himself O Gênio Idiota. Overall this little piece of literary detective work provided a very amusing experience; it was sparked by clues on the internet written by people who were not happy with the attribution to Vinícius de Moraes and who mentioned Paulo Sant’Ana’.