Eurovision 2022 — My thoughts

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For the first time ever, a Eurovision entry was (partly) in Latin, courtesy of Serbia’s Konstrakta. As well as the language, the track is also unusual in its subject matter — private healthcare in Serbia and the pressure to be as beautiful as Meghan Markle, who is named in the opening line.

But I’m more of a Latinist than an expert in Balkan medical provision, and I don’t know Serbian, so let’s discuss the Latin lyrics. The song’s title is “In Corpore Sano”, from the famous quote mēns sāna in corpore sānō (a healthy mind in a healthy body), and the three words are repeated often in the song.

At one point the phrase is mixed with Serbian (the language of the non-Latin lyrics) to make Corpus je sānō. I will take it on faith that je means “is” in Serbian, so here the phrase is meant to be a sentence, “The body is healthy”. In full Latin, that would be Corpus est sānum, since both the adjective and the noun should be in the nominative case. But I don’t think sānō is much of a mistake when mixed with Serbian.

More interesting are the four lines that end with in corpore sānō, almost at the end of the song. They are:

Mēns īnfirma in corpore sānō.
Anima trīstis in corpore sānō.
Mēns dēspērāta in corpore sānō.
Mēns conterrita in corpore sānō.

These translate as:

An unwell mind in a healthy body.
A sad soul in a healthy body.
A despairing mind in a healthy body.
A terrified mind in a healthy body.

Konstrakta’s delivery of these lines is fantastic. I was particularly surprised at how well the words fit the tune metrically — all but one of the stressed syllables are stressed, and nearly all the syllables have their correct length.

The only two mistakes (if they even count as mistakes) are that dēspērāta and conterrita are sung as if their middle syllables are short. This also has the effect of making the two words rhyme, although they don’t outside of Serbian Eurovision lyrics.

But still, this is me being extremely picky. I thought it was great. More Latin at Eurovision please!

Sidenote: if you want to find Latin words that rhyme, may I recommend velut, the dictionary I created? Here are some adjectives from velut (and one from Logeion) that would fit in the Mēns … in corpore sānō space:

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The UK actually did well this year, coming second!

Out of the Big Five countries (that give the most money to Eurovision), Italy does really well (thanks to their Sanremo competition), and Spain and France often do well. But Germany and the UK have been at the bottom of the scoreboard in recent years. Some Britons had concluded that other European countries were holding grudges against the UK for political reasons; it’s nice to see that’s not the case!

Eurovision requires something memorable. SuRie, Joe & Jake, and Englebert Humperdinck (not the composer, who has been dead for a while) are too much of a mix of fluffy and ballady. (I quite like SuRie’s “Storm”, but concede it’s not a winner.)

This year, however, Sam Ryder was what we needed. Rock on!

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Congratulations to Ukraine! Their song “Stefania” is really fun and distinctively Ukrainian with its telenka and sopilka (woodwind instruments).

And to anyone saying the audience only supported Ukraine because of Russia’s invasion, or that voting should be purely music-based and apolitical, I would argue that the Eurovision Song Contest was founded largely to promote peace in Europe, by reminding us of our shared interests and providing a non-military outlet for nationalistic competition.

Although there was some controversy over voting procedure in this year’s semi-finals, the contest is also a display of democracy, and of LGBT+ acceptance, both of which are viciously repressed under Vladimir Putin. The outpouring of votes in Ukraine’s favour, and the exclusion of Russia (and Russia’s ally Belarus) from this year’s competition, are signs that Europe can unite to defend our common values. So I couldn’t have picked a worthier winner.

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