Years ago, while in Romania on a Fulbright Fellowship, I was invited to attend a graduation ceremony at Academia de Stiinte Economice (Academy of Business Sciences), Romania’s premier business school.
I suppose because this joint Romanian-American executive MBA program was in its starting years, Romanian’s then-president Ion Iliescu participated in the ceremony.
Far more exciting to me, however, were the minutes during the academic procession when the audience stood and joined together in Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. I love to sing, and, the Latin text being provided in the graduation booklet, was able to belt out the extremely singable music. “Gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum sumus,” the song starts, “Then let us rejoice in our youth,” and continues, appropriately enough: “Vivat academia, vivant professores…” “Long live academia, long live professors…”
Fast forward about a decade, and hop many degrees of longitude to Portland, Oregon, where I became part of a wonderful group of writers. We’d been together long enough that we’d jelled, we knew we had a special thing going, but one thing was still needed.
“A name,” one or the other of us would say, more and more often. “We need a name!”
In April 2009, putting procrastinating time to good use, Ruth began playing around with possible names for us.
Her initial idea was to make up an anagram based on our first initials, A, A, A, E, M, M, N, R, S. “Lots of nice vowels and consonants to choose from,” she said, and even came up with two possible names.
When I read her e-mail, I was impressed by the work she’d done. The two possibilities, though, seemed a bit heavy to me. And what if one day one of us moved on, another writer joined, but, gasp, didn’t have her initial included in the anagram?
Yet Ruth had also found a very intriguing Italian word. “Scriva appeals to me because it combines diva — Italian for a brilliantly talented woman in opera — and the Latin root for writing. And it’s got a bit of the vivace flavoring. [...] OK, my brain has run dry. It somebody else’s turn.”
Scriva—that sang out to me! I guess it was my turn. Ruth had set it all out: scriva… diva… vivace… My synapses fired, I remembered that joyful academic song from years before, and…
“How about Viva Scriva?” I replied.
Occasionally, at our critiques, one of us makes a comment that everyone deeply agrees with. With Viva Scriva, too, there was that unanimous sense of recognition. This was our name. We were Viva Scriva!
So, thank you, Brahms. Thank you, Academia de Stiinte Economice, and thank you, 13th century student who put your procrastinating time to good use writing “Gaudeamus igitur.” Most of all, of course, thank you, Ruth. ScrivaRuth.
**
If you really want to know more:
Ruth dug out one meaning of scriva, then I dug out a little more. This is what I understood and communicated to my fellow Scrivas:
So you know what we’re saying, see: http://italian.about.com/library/verb/blverb_scrivere.htm
…and especially the Subjunctive/Congiuntivo (i.e., = “I would write”–VERY appropriate!) and the Imperative (“write!”–though I don’t get what third person, AND singular, means exactly. I guess it’s addressed to a she or he).
Viva (and vivat) of course means “long live.”
Viva Scriva, as we coined it, means “Long live writing!” or “Long live the writers.”
**
Sabina I. Rascol
