Reformation

This paradoxical figure (Luther) revived the Christian consciousness of Europe . . . . Religion became again a dominant factor even in politics for another century and a half. Men cared enough for the faith to die for it and to kill for it. If there is any sense remaining of Christian civilization in the West, this man Luther in no small measure deserves the credit.

~Roland Bainton, Here I Stand

Mutatis mutandis

In researching a short paper on The Tempest, I came across an interesting example of translations. In act V scene 1, as Prospero the magus is about to renounce his power, he describes it in the following terms:

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves

And ye that on the sands with printless foot

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him

When he comes back; you demi-puppets that

By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,

Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime

Is to make midnight mushrumps, that rejoice

To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid

(Weak masters though ye be) I have bedimmed

The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,

And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault

Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder

Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak

With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory

Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up

The pine and cedar; graves had my command

Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth

By my so potent art.

(The Tempest 5.1.33-50)

This is taken from a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1567):

Ye airs and winds, ye elves of hills, of brooks, of woods alone,

Of standing lakes, and of the night, approach ye everychone!

Through help of whom, the crooked banks much wondering at the thing,

I have compelled streams to run clean back ward to their spring.

By charms I make the calm seas rough and make the rough seas plain,

And cover all the sky with clouds and chase them thence again.

By charms I raise and lay the winds, and burst the viper's jaw,

And from the bowels of the earth both stones and trees do draw,

Whole woods and forests I remove; I make the mountains shake,

And even the earth itself to groan and fearfully to quake.

I call up dead men from their graves.

(Metamorphoses, 7.265-275)

Golding was translating the following passage from Ovid:

auraeque et venti montesque amnesque lacusque,

dique omnes nemorum, dique omnes noctis adeste,

quorum ope, cum volui, ripis mirantibus amnes

in fontes rediere suos, concussaque sisto,

stantia concutio cantu freta, nubila pello

nubilaque induco, ventos abigoque vocoque,

vipereas rumpo verbis et carmine fauces,

vivaque saxa sua convulsaque robora terra

et silvas moveo iubeoque tremescere montis

et mugire solum manesque exire sepulcris!

(Metamorphoses 7.197-206)

Compare those passages with the Oxford World Classics edition:

Ye winds and airs, ye mountains, lakes and streams

And all ye forest gods and gods of night,

Be with me now! By your enabling power,

At my behest, broad rivers to their source

Flow back, their banks aghast; my magic song

Rouses the quiet, calms the angry seas;

I bring the clouds and make the clouds withdraw,

I call the winds and quell them; by my art

I sunder serpents' throats; the living rocks

And mighty oaks from out their soil I tear;

I move the forests, bid the mountains quake,

The deep earth groan and ghosts rise from their tombs.

(Metamorphoses 7.263-274)

Draw your own conclusions if you wish, but I think it just makes the point that it takes a poet to translate poetry. And even then, the Tempest is not by Ovid; it is clearly Shakespeare. A great translator re-makes the story in the image of his own language; the Tempest is not Ovid, but you can see the seed in the fruit.

(It makes the old Authorized Version of Colossians pretty cool: "Giving thanks unto the Father, . . . Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:" Maybe that's the best metaphor we have for resurrection; somehow, the old will be there but it will be completely remade.)

End-of-week wrapup

Yes, folks, it's the end of the week for me. I only have internet access when I'm at work (thanks to a dead power cord and my penchant for taking things apart, I don't have a laptop anymore) and I'm only at work until 2pm today. So here's some fun to keep you going: 1 video, 1 article, and 1 blog to follow. If you ration yourself, this should last all weekend.

The video:

A russian version of Winnie the Pooh. No, not Disney with Russian dub or subtitles. A Russian version, which is ever so much cuter than the other ones.

The article:

Tom Wright has a terrific piece on the recent antics by American Episcopalians. (HT The Gadfly). You should read the whole thing for yourself, but here are a few of the gems:

The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.

Contrary to some who have recently adopted the phrase, there is already a “fellowship of confessing Anglicans”. It is called the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is now distancing itself from that fellowship

The blog to follow: How Books Got Their Titles.

For example, under "While England Slept by Winston Churchill" you will discover that

Churchill suggested The Years of the Locust, but the cable operator garbled the message and it arrived as The Years of the Lotus. Putnam’s were puzzled. They knew that the lotus was a plant famous for its soporific properties, and, in an attempt to give a sense of this, settled on While England Slept.

On Parables

Dr. Leithart's exhortation this morning was amazing:

As much as pragmatic Americans might wish it to be otherwise, the Bible is not an answer-book. It includes advice, and laws, and rules, but a lot of it consists of puzzling prophecy, ancient history, obscure parables and apparently abstract theology. What are we supposed to get from that? We ask for an answer key, and God gives us poetry. Can’t we just skip the story and get to the moral?

No we can’t.

God gave us the Bible to guide us, but also – more fundamentally – to form us. By studying the Bible, hearing it, reading it, learning from it, we are being remade.

One of the ways the Bible remakes us is by giving us clues about God’s character and work. Parables aren’t moralistic tales. They’re allegories of God’s work in the world, the mysteries of His kingdom. By learning the parables, we learn to anticipate God’s next move.

We anticipate that when wheat is sown, weeds will be sown as well. We anticipate that we’ll have to wait for harvest for everything to be sorted out. We learn that the tree that counts doesn’t even look like a tree, but more like a bush, or a cross. We learn that God’s kingdom moves ahead through agents that we recoil from – prostitutes, tax-gatherers, sinners – as God sanctifies the world using the unclean.

But by learning the parables, living in the parables, and living out the parables, we come to know the ways of God. God is the choreographer and lead partner of our history and of our lives, and by learning the rhythm of the parables, we learn to keep in step with our dance partner.