Heavy Latin: HIM - In Venere Veritas

What's all this fuss about?

Latin lyrics in Heavy Metal music are a common phenomenon. The darker the music, the more evil the band wanna be. What's better than using an old, mysterious, hardly understandable, cryptic, medieval and therefore almost satanic language? Unfortunately bands seldom know how to use this language properly. So, instead of evoking the demons of the realm of evil, they just evoke a hop-frog. Clatu verata nicto! - The most of you know what happened after this wrongly spoken spell.

Normally, two questions are the result of the fact that you've just read a latin phrase:
- What does it mean? (almost everybody)
- Is it correct? (just a few latin aficionados)

This page doesn't want to make fun of mistakes in latin lyrics. I wanna answer the first question to everybody who is interested. The second question is just for myself or for the two or three weird guys out there or for bands which are thinking about using a latin phrase as well. You can contact me if you want.

Dienstag, 24. November 2009

HIM - In Venere Veritas

HIM - In Venere Veritas - Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice (2010)

In February, HIM gonna release a new album, on which the opening title has a latin name. The most of you I guess, even if you have no clue about latin, have heard the phrase "In Vino Veritas" before: In wine, there is truth.

Now, there is truth in another place, in Venere. This is the correct ablative form (because of in, asking "Where?") of the name Venus, which is the goddess of love and sexuality in ancient mythology. In ancient texts, her name was also used to refer to the practice of love making, so venus can be translated as sex.

In Venere Veritas = In Sex, there is Truth....

... still keep on searching.

7 Kommentare:

Marya hat gesagt…: Interesting indeed:)

www.himlibrary.com; 11. Januar 2010 um 22:48
davethethird hat gesagt…: thanx!!!! i knew it has something to do with sex & venus...;-); 6. Februar 2010 um 15:51
Anonym hat gesagt…: Thanks so much, now it is clear and makes sense. :); 12. Februar 2010 um 17:02
Anonym hat gesagt…: Would it make sense to leave it as Venus? Ville does have that "Venus" Complex! LOL Venus Doom, Venus In Our Blood...; 14. Februar 2010 um 05:39
Unknown hat gesagt…: Would it have to be sex? or could it be translated or seen as the more romantic "In love there is truth"?; 18. Februar 2010 um 08:47
markheim hat gesagt…: @WonKa: In latin love poems the word "venus" was used to talk about sexual intercourse without using direct words.
Some poets like Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid wrote love poems which nowadays can be considered as "romantic": the first-person-narrator wrote about his feelings towards a woman and was dreaming about a lifetime relationship, about loyalty and mutual support. But these poets never used "Venus" to describe these feelings. They used "amor" (love) or "foedus" (pact, alliance). At least for latin literature in Roman times "Venus" just stood for ... you know :-); 4. März 2010 um 17:59
FrannieFran hat gesagt…: Hi! Nice blog! Comes in handy.

Have you checked out the Mudvayne trilogy? There's some latin in their music videos. Tried to google the translation, but it didn't make too much sense to me.

http://www.mudvayne.com/videotrilogy; 22. Juli 2010 um 02:40