Undusted Texts

 Introduction Jean de La Ceppède (c. 1550-1623) was a French nobleman, judge, and poet, best-known for his sonnet series  Theorems on the Sacred Mystery of Our Redemption , sometimes known as the  Spiritual Theorems  for short.  Below, I have given a translation of one of the best-known of these sonnets. My translation is a poetic one, which matches La Ceppède's rhyme scheme (ABAB BABA CCD EDE); for a more literal translation, see Christopher O. Blum's article on La Ceppède, "A Poet of the Passion of Christ."  To keep a rhythm and to keep the rhyme, I sometimes had to reword some of La Ceppède's lines, or omit phrases.  The last tercet is the oddest in translation, particularly the first line: "Beauty for whom this Beauty dies alove."  A literal translation of the French is "Beautiful woman for whom this beautiful man dies while loving you well."  This is far too wordy for my rhythm, hence my compression.  For the final phrase, and to ma...

 Francis Jammes (1868-1938) was a French poet and author; I previously published a translation of one of his novels,  The Rosary in the Sun .  Now I have translation an essay of his on poetic theory:  The Poet and Inspiration  (1922).  As an appendix, I have also translated a short manifesto from his early days, "Jammism" (1897).     Direct Download

 Introduction Even a cursed poet can write a holy poem.  Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was such a poet.  Though much of his life was spent in violence, debauchery, alcoholism, and addiction, he had a brief time when he experienced a return to the faith, while in prison for shooting his lover in the wrist (deemed by the courts "attempted murder").  Most of the poems from this time were published in his 1880 collection  Sagesse (Wisdom) .  The following poem is one such poem, from the time when Verlaine had "prostrated before the long-unknown Altar...adores the All-Good and invokes the Almighty, sworn son of the Church, the last in merits, but full of good will" (Preface to  Sagesse ).  The poem is made of tercets in which lines 1 and 3 are identical, and line 2 unique.  Other than the identical rhymes of lines 1 and 3 of each tercet, no rhyme scheme is involved.  My translation aims at accuracy of meaning rather than any attempt to replicate ...

  The Clovisiade of Jean-Marie Gabriel Darrodes de Lillebonne  Background By the 1800s, zeal for Christian epics had burned up all its fuel: though long narrative poems were still quite popular (as seen, in English, in Southey, Scott, Tennyson, Longfellow, etc.), the epic style was now outré .  Even by the 1700s, few were hits, besides Klopstock's Der Messias (1748-1773).  The quest to craft a Christian epic was quixotic in the 1800s: even more delusional was the hope that readers would pay for it. Yet such material considerations did not stop Jean-Marie-Gabriel d'Arodes de Lillebonne (1781-1838).  He wrote a few shorter poetic works—some Diverse Little Works (1805), and a book of Odes to the Emperor Napoleon (1806)—but his chief-work was the The Clovisiade, or, The Triumph of Christianity in France .  It was intended as a monumental work of 24 cantos, matching the Iliad or the Odyssey (though still short of Nonnos of Panopolis' 48-canto Dionysiaca );...

One of the greatest mystical poems of the Spanish Golden Age is the anonymous "Sonnet to Christ Crucified."  At one time or another, it has been attributed to practically every important spiritual writer of the time; one of the strongest cases is for St. John of Ávila (1500-1569), as some lines in his authentic works come very close to the themes and language of the poem. Over a decade ago , I posted the Spanish text and an English translation: the translation was off in a few spots, and it certainly did not flow as a poem.   The translation below certainly wouldn't pass scansion as a traditional English poem, and i have forgone attempts to match the Spanish rhyme scheme, but I think it has a rhythm of its own, and it gives a much better sense of the original poem than my translation a decade ago.  The odd syntax (where the verb "move" comes before its varied subjects) reflects the syntax of the Spanish original. Moves me not, my Lord, to love You the Heaven Yo...

  Introduction Paul Claudel (1868-1955) was a French playwright and poet, known for his devout Catholicism and how it affected his poetry.  The following diptych, "The Crucifix," first appeared in his 1916 collection Other Poems During the War .  The original poem consists of long lines that rhyme in couplets; my translation is instead in a kind of ballad meter: alternating tetrameters and trimeters rhyming ABCB.  Each two of my lines reflects one of Claudel's lines, so the rhymes are still in equivalent relation. The Crucifix Paul Claudel His Head Seen From the Right Of all the Body crucified,     only Head is free. The thorns they’ve wrapped around, with care,     mean no support can be. Three hours it has reigned and prayed;     three hours we’ve seen God’s Face. In the end, the Head must fall     when force has left His frame. Behold! the moment has arrived     that patient we’ve awaited. ...

  Introduction Christ is risen!   I intended to post this closer to Pascha, originally on Great and Holy Saturday, but it is still fitting even now.  This poem is a loose translation, close to a paraphrase, of a passage from the Christiad , a Latin epic poem by Marco Girolamo Vida (1485-1566).  Here, he represents the descent of Christ into Hades to free the souls imprisoned there; Vida's description of Hell and Satan, throughout the Christiad , was a key influence on John Milton's descriptions in Paradise Lost .  My translation is written in a kind of four-foot blank verse, an unrhymed, loosely iambic tetrameter.  (True blank verse, as in Milton, is unrhymed iambic pentameter.)  It is not perfectly metrical, but I inclined more towards closeness to the original than to metrical perfection. There are a number of full English translations of Vida's epic; the 18th-century translations (John Cranwell, Edward Granan) are in heroic couplets; the 20th-centur...

Introduction:  Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (1562-1635) was one of literature's most prolific writers, a monument of the Spanish Golden Age; among his many works are hundreds of plays and poems, including multiple epics, as well as some novels.  Though he had a variety of lovers and mistresses, he was ordained a priest in 1614, and many of his poems are religious.  Among them is the collection Romancero Espiritual ( Spiritual Romance-Book , a romance  being a type of Spanish folk ballad).  Below are the opening lines of one of these romances , "On the Solitude of Our Lady."  I find the sharp contrasts of these opening lines quite effective as their own poem, separated from the full romance .  They are also fitting lines for Great and Holy Friday.  The source is Lope  Félix  de Vega Carpio, Obras Escogidas , ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles (Madrid: Aguilar, 1953) , II:124. From Romancero Espiritual XVIII "On the Solitude of Our Lady" L...

 Introduction Francisco López de Zárate was born in Logroño, in northern Spain, the son of a postman. He first began studying Law at Salamanca, in 1598, but abandoned his studies to join the army, fighting in Flanders, Italy, and Germany. After his military service, he served as secretary of state for the Duke of Lerma, though his austere moral character did not fit in well with political intrigue. While based in Madrid, he often retired to Logroño for a calm spot to write. He wrote both poems and dramas, and was praised by great writers of his day like Lope de Vega (1562-1635) and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). Not long after writing his Poema heróico de la invención de la Cruz , in 1648, he suffered a stroke and remained paralyzed on his right side for the rest of his life. He died on Madrid, on March 5, 1658. Though praised by writers of his day, known as "the Cavalier of the Rose," after one of his sonnets, he is little-known now. He wrote many...

"On the Holy Birth of Christ" By John Mauropous (c. 1000 - 1070s) Introduction John Mauropous was born in the region of Paphlagonia (in north-central Turkey), before moving to Constantinople, where he became a poet and scholar. While acting as court orator for Constantine IX Monomachos (r. 1042-1055), Byzantine Emperor, he was also a teacher, whose most famous pupil was the many-faceted Byzantine writer Michael Psellos (1017 - c. 1078). Around 1050, though, John fell from favor, and became Metropolitan of Euchaita (modern Avhat, Turkey), which he considered as exile. After prodding his friends, particularly Psellos, he returned to Constantinople near the end of his life, spending his last years in the Monastery of Agia Petra. John's writings include a number of poems of various sorts (including autobiographical poems and funeral orations in verse) as well as letters, sermons, and canons (a style of Byzantine liturgical poetry). He seems to have prepared hi...

Introduction Sor Francisca Josefa del Castillo (1671-1742) was a Poor Clare in what is now Colombia. She was born to weathly parents and, at the age of 18, entered the Monastery of St. Clare in Tunja, her birthplace. There she remained for the rest of her life, taking final vows in 1694, at the age of 23, and being appointed abbess four times. At the instigation of her confessors, she recorded her mystical experiences and feelings in poems and in an autobiography. The following is her most famous poem, #45 in her  Afectos espirituales  ( Spiritual Affections ). Another name for the poem is "Deliquios del Divino Amor en el corazón de la criatura, y en las agonías del huerto" ("Swoons of Divine Love in the heart of the creature, and in the agonies of the garden"). "El habla delicada" The delicate speech I esteem from the Lover milk and honey distills among roses and lyres. His mellifluous word cuts me quick like the dew and there flowers with it the hear...

Holy Prophet Micah "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"--Mic 6:8 A Christian's task is simple: to love God with his entirety, and to love his neighbor as himself.  All other duties and tasks in the Christian life derive from these two.  As the Lord Himself said, "On these two commandments all the law and the prophets are suspended."  We must always return to these two commandments as we navigate our way through the stormy seas of earthly life. God calls each of us to be Christian in a particular way, and He lays out a path for each of us, a particular path.  It is in fulfilling this particular path that each of us can honor God most perfectly.  Even if one way of life is objectively greater than another, it does not mean that it is better for each Christian to follow the greater way if he is not so called.  One of the great...

 "When you see the cross, know and believe that you are seeing Christ enthroned on it; when you pray before the cross, believe that you are doing so concerning Christ our God and not with inanimate matter. For it is Christ Who receives the veneration you offer before the cross; and it is He Who hears the supplications of your mouth and fulfills the desires of your heart, which you ask with faith. Whoever does not honor the cross, or insults it, insults Christ Himself."--St. Nerses Shnorhali We are to preach nothing except Christ Crucified, following the example of Paul: on the Cross Christ bore our iniquities.  He was lashed, stripped, beaten, plucked, mocked, and finally forced to carry His death-wood to the Place of the Skull, where men of hubris dared to kill the Almighty Author of Life.  Yet He did this willingly!  It is this which changes the Crucifixion from merely a horrific deed of men into an infinitely loving act of God.  For it was God Who deign...

"When the priests and the people which stood in the Temple Court heard the Expressed Name come forth from the mouth of the High Priest, they used to kneel and bow themselves and fall down on their faces and say, 'Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom for ever and ever!'"-- Yoma 6:2 For many cultures throughout the world, a name is a powerful thing.  It was no different for our forefathers in faith, the sons of Israel, for to them had been revealed the Holy Name of God.  His Name was seen to be so powerful that only the high priest could pronounce it, and that only once a year.  The Name was so great and so holy that Jews to this day do not pronounce it when reading the Scriptures, instead only saying "Adonai" (Lord).  For the holiness of God is an immense flood that soaks everything relating to Him, so that from the Ark of the Covenant to the Holy Name, all is imbued with His sanctity.  And this sanctity is of such a power that the one wh...

 "Myrrh is fitting for the dead, but Christ has shown Himself not subject to corruption..." --Troparion of the Myrrh-Bearers Christ is risen!  He is risen from the dead, He is risen from the tomb!  The rock which once held His Body is now rolled away, and He walks once more among the living, eating with them, speaking with them, proclaiming the Gospel to them.  To so many does He appear: to Peter and John and the rest of the Eleven, to the 500 disciples, to the men on the road to Emmaus...yet He first appears to the myrrh-bearers.  They who were at His side for His burial He honors with the first revelation of His Resurrection. It is these first witnesses, the myrrh-bearing women, whom we celebrate this week, and in doing so, we frequently bring to mind once again the burial of Christ.  Thus on Sunday the troparion of procession on Holy Friday is repeated: "The noble Joseph took down Your Most Pure Body...," but the hymn does not end as it did t...

  The Protection of the Theotokos Hymns of petition to the Theotokos are of no recent invention in the Church: indeed, the oldest hymn to her, known in Latin as the "Sub tuum praesidium," dates back to a Coptic text in the 3rd century.  Further hymns have not been infrequent in the intervening centuries, and Christians around the world pray constantly for her intercession.  She is also not tardy in responding to these requests: do we not have an entire feast recalling her protection of Constantinople?  The miracles wrought through her intercession, through the means of icons, springs, statutes, or merely prayers, are countless, and so she has inspired many to proclaim the greatness that the Lord has bestowed upon her, the greatness she prophesied in her canticle: "From now will all generations bless me."  Her greatness has inspired saints (such as St. Romanos the Melodist and St. Bernard of Clairvaux) and those whose fate is not known for certain, such as...