Copernicus & Mallock: Two Bizarre Books

[Owen Gingerich: The Book Nobody Read (2004)]

[Tom Phillips: A Humument (1980 / 2012)]

Sometime around noon on the 5th of November, 1966, the artist Tom Phillips was poking around an old warehouse in London, looking for bargain books:

When we arrived at the racks of cheap and dusty books left over from house clearances I boasted to Ron [Kitaj] that if I took the first one that cost threepence I could make it serve a serious long-term project. My eye quickly chanced on a yellow book with the tempting title A Human Document. Looking inside we found it had the fateful price. 'If it's a dime,' said Ron, 'then that's your book: and I'm your witness.' ['Notes on A Humument,' p.370]

45 years and five editions later, A Humument stands as a curious monument to human ingenuity. "Energy worthy of a better cause," as my father might say. Or energy very sensibly employed, perhaps? Who can say ...

Phillips does goes out of his way to mention the interesting fact that the warehouse stood on "Peckham Rye, where William Blake saw his first angels", and it was (of course) Blake who once reminded us that energy is "eternal delight."

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Sometime in October 1970, Historians of Science Jerry Ravetz and Owen Gingerich asked themselves whether (at the time or since) anyone had actually read Nicolaus Copernicus's ground-breaking text De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri sex [Six books on the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres] (1543). The question was prompted by the rather bad review Arthur Koestler gave the book in his 1959 classic The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. Koestler referred to Copernicus's book as an "all time worst seller" and "the book that nobody read." But was he right?

How can you actually tell if anyone read a book or not? A simple name on the fly-leaf is insufficient. I have lots of books in my collection which I've never read. Some of them are reference books which it's useful to have but which I'll never read cover to cover - others I'm been meaning to get to but haven't yet done so.

Nor is quoting from the book any kind of irrefutable proof. Plenty of people read the summaries and advertising copy for Copernicus's book, but did the do more than dip into its somewhat forbidding contents?

The answer (according to Gingerich) is marginal annotations. His conversation in York that Saturday evening in 1970 prompted him to look up a copy of the first edition at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. It turned out to be annotated from beginning to end, and thus suggested the interesting counter-question:

If it was read so rarely, why was the very next copy I chanced upon so full of evidence of a most perceptive reader, who had marked innumerable errors and who had worked his way through to the very end, even past the obscure material on planetary latitudes that brought up the rear of the four hundred page volume? [The Book Nobody Read, p.422]

And so began on what the blurb to his book calls "a thirty-year odyssey to examine every one of the hundreds of surviving copies of the original in order to prove [Koestler] wrong."

Once again, it sounds a rather unlikely way of spending one's time - fantastically arduous and demanding an almost insane level of precision in recording every detail of every copy (labour which eventually resulted in An Annotated Census of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 543 and Basel, 1566) (Leiden: Brill, 2002), to which The Book Nobody Read is a rather more lighthearted companion volume).

Along the way, Gingerich discovered a huge amount about the sixteenth-century scholarly networks, transcending religion and politics, which united the astronomers and mathematicians of the age, and which enabled them to copy and supplement each other's notes in the margins of copy after copy of De revolutionibus. Koestler's rather flippant and dismissive remark was proved not only to be "dead wrong" (as Gingerich puts it), but to mask a whole complex of fascinating (and hitherto undreamt-of) connections.

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[The Book Nobody Read]

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

1. Gingerich, Owen. The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. 2004. Arrow Books. London: The Random House Group Limited, 2005.
2. Rosen, Edward, trans. Three Copernican Treatises: The Commentariolus of Copernicus / The Letter against Werner / The Narratio Prima of Rheticus. Second Edition, Revised with an Annotated Copernicus Bibliography, 1939-1958. 1939. New York: Dover Publications, 1959.
3. Ptolemy. The Almagest / Copernicus. On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres / Kepler. Epitome of Copernican Astronomy: IV & V; The Harmonies of the World: V. Trans. R. Catesby Taliaferro, & Charles Glenn Wallis. Great Books of the Western World, 16. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: William Benton, Publisher / Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.
4. Koestler, Arthur. The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe. 1959. Introduction by Herbert Butterfield. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1972.

[A Humument]

Tom Phillips (1937- )

1. Phillips, Tom. A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel. 1980. Fifth Edition. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2012.

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So what's my point in comparing these two projects? They both seem to have occupied roughly the same period of time: forty-odd years for Phillips, thirty-odd years for Gingerich. Both have as their central object the illumination / elucidation of a single book: in Gingerich's case a (famously unreadable) scientific classic, in Phillip's a (not very widely read) Victorian novel, W. H. Mallock's A Human Document (1892).

Of course in the one case Gingerich's labours could be said to have cast light on an obscure sector of intellectual history; whereas Phillips' indefatigable cutting and pasting and colouring casts light on nothing except the strange workings of his own mind.

Or do they? Surely the mere popularity of Phillips's book - in contradistinction to Mallock's, which failed miserably to equal the success of his earlier satirical novel The New Republic (1877) - tells us something about the spirit of our own age, our postmodern distrust of the sanctity of the text, our singular dedication to game-playing and chaos?

Both projects are equally crazy. I guess that's what I'd like to suggest to you. I know that Gingerich's comes accompanied with all the panoply of "hard" science - the graphs, the tables of analysis, the famous names of the past - but then Phillips doesn't lack those scholarly trappings either. The fascinating notes on his project reprinted at the back of his book refer to it as "'a Gesamtkunstwerk in small format'", though a "full Variorum Edition may remain a dream (or a posthumous project) since the wheel is still turning and the odd spark still flies off" [p.383].

Both books, Phillips' and Gingerich's, are in fact "Human Documents" of the most fascinating kind: they show the unexpected consequences of immersion in virtually any product of the human imagination. The fact that they're both consecrated to particular copies of a single book doe tend to endear them to bibliophiles such as myself, but one can easily see how the principle could be extended.

In his lifetime, as the caricature below suggests, Mallock had a hard time reconciling the conflicting claims of religion and science. it's hard to know if he would have been pleased to see one of his novels at the centre of so arbitrary an embellishment as A Humument, but I doubt that he would have failed to see the point. If we can have no clear idea in advance of the end results of our investigations, then it doesn't pay to reject any possible line of enquiry out-of-hand. This applies to Phillips' work every bit as much as Gingerich's.

['Spy': Is life worth living? (Vanity Fair, 1882)]

True, one might call Copernicus an intellectual giant, Mallock a dwarf, but it's salutary to remember that - during their respective lifetimes - the opposite was the case. Mallock was widely read and well regarded, while - to those very few who had heard of him - Copernicus was known only as an obscure cleric in a small town on Poland's Baltic coast, who exhibited the strange quirk of devoting his spare time to celestial mechanics.

One book I found lurking in the back of a second-hand shop in Whangarei; the other was lent to me by inveterate poet and text-experimenter Richard Taylor. I leave it to you to guess which was which.

[Nicolaus Copernicus (Toruń, 1580)]

Oh, and last but not least: a Happy New Year to you all ...

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Xmas Poem

[Ponsonby (1960s)]


12-12-12
(after Dante, Inferno i: 1-30)

12 years into the new millennium
the shops and offices on Albert St.
are emptyingFOR LEASE

ON ADVANTAGEOUS TERMSThe bubble’s burst
Only the trees seem satisfied to lean
over the motorway approaches

greener – REDDER – LARGER than before
but on benefit day (as you might guess)
every bar and park-bench’s fullYour old

Ford Laser looks right at home
on Fanshawe St.Pull over
(no reason why) by Victoria Park

and walk up College Hill
where once the HYDRA bacon sign
frowned down on us with threats of

steelthough you’ve lost sight
of such-like pieties in these
pre-xmas madness days

So even when you get the fear
at the sight of some photographer’s
shop window full of soon-to-be

knocked-up teenagers in skin-tight
gownswith their barely human
dates crammed into tuxedos

horny wrists protrudinglike when
you’ve swum sideways out of a rip
and staggered ashore exhaustedglad

you made it but not sure how you did
you look down on spaghetti junction
and resolve to complete your gift shopping

then see The Hobbitfinally


[11-18/12/12]

[AUP New Poets 3: Janis Freegard, Katherine Liddy, Reihana Robinson (2008)]

So far only Katherine Dolan (published above as Katherine Liddy) has responded to the challenge to produce her own version of the opening of Dante's Divine Comedy. Her translation is characteristically sharp and focussed, I feel, with some particularly happy choices in "my self's mere" for lago del cor [lake of the heart], and "feral bush" for selva selvaggia [savage forest].

I very much admire her transposition of that trade-mark Dantesque extended metaphor about the swimmer escaping from the waves, too:

And just like one who, gasping,
spat up from the sea on the shore,
turns to the breakers and stares,

so my soul, still a runaway,
turned back to look on the pass
that never let out a living soul.

I suppose I still have to have a go at it myself (as promised), though, despite feeling a marked inability to compete with Katherine.

I don't know if the above can count as any kind of a translation, but it's the best I seem able to produce at present. I guess it's more of a continuation of the poem "Xmas" which I posted on this blog some six years back, on 3rd December 2006, than any kind of response to Dante's quest narrative.

Is he just a "garrulous old Italian," though, as Katherine claims in her comment? I take her point that a lot of people may undertake the task of re-presenting his words as a kind of embodiment of the spiritual path (a little like walking the lines of the Chartres labyrinth). I can't help feeling a certain awe at the precision and sharpness of his imagination, though, even after all these centuries.

It may be a bit much to claim him as a proto-SF writer (as so many have done), but his tale still remains far more readable and even terrifying than any other medieval (or even classical) epic I can think of - with the possible exception of certain sections of the Iliad ...

[Tara Beth Weishaupl: Walking the Chartres Labyrinth (2009)]

Divine Comedies (3): A Dante Translator's Primer

[Francesco di ser Nardo da Barberino:
Ms. of Dante's Divine Comedy (1337)]

A couple of years ago I posted a version of Eugenio Montale's poem "L'Anguilla" [The Eel] on this blog: first in my own translation, then as a literal Italian / English dual-text crib.

Quite a few of you took the opportunity to write in with your own suggested translations - while my one actually ended up in Marco Sonzogni's book Corno inglese: An anthology of Eugenio Montale's poetry in English translation (Novi Ligure: Edizioni Joker, 2009).

It occurred to me that it might be fun to try out the same thing with Dante. After all, as I've tried to illustrate in my last two posts, the English-speaking peoples seem to have a positive obsession with the Divine Comedy, so it seems a pretty safe bet that at least some of you are harbouring a secret desire to compose your own version of the whole colossal thing.

I don't think we can go quite that far (though if you do want to, there are plenty of resources to help you here). Instead, I thought I'd take the first 30 lines of the first canto - technically an introduction to the whole poem rather than just the first of three Canticas (which explains why the Inferno seems to have 34 cantos, rather than the 33 cantos of Purgatorio and Paradiso).

I've given them in various different versions:

1. First, in the original Italian;
2. Secondly, in Longfellow's nineteenth-century blank verse translation;
3. Thirdly, in Dorothy Sayer's mid-twentieth-century verse translation (which preserves the original terza rima rhyme scheme);
4. Fourthly, in Sandow Birk & Marcus Sander's millennial recasting into contemporary West-coast Valley-speak;
5. and Finally, as a dual-text, with my own literal prose translation (together with a few notes).

I promise to try my hand at a verse translation of my own if any of you do. Otherwise, I can't help feeling that there are quite enough of them in existence already.

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[Giotto (attrib.):
Dante Alighieri (c.1314)]

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Tant'è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,
tant'era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai.

Ma poi ch'i' fui al piè d'un colle giunto,
là dove terminava quella valle
che m'avea di paura il cor compunto,

guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle
vestite già de' raggi del pianeta
che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.

Allor fu la paura un poco queta
che nel lago del cor m'era durata
la notte ch'i' passai con tanta pieta.

E come quei che con lena affannata
uscito fuor del pelago a la riva
si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata,

così l'animo mio, ch'ancor fuggiva,
si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo
che non lasciò già mai persona viva.

Poi ch'èi posato un poco il corpo lasso,
ripresi via per la piaggia diserta,
sì che 'l piè fermo sempre era 'l più basso.

- Dante Alighieri (1308-21)

[Johann Neumeister & Evangelista Angelini:
First printed edition of Dante's Divine Comedy (1472)]

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[Southworth & Hawes:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (c.1850)]

MIDWAY upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.

But after I had reached a mountain's foot,
At that point where the valley terminated,
Which had with consternation pierced my heart,

Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders
Vested already with that planet's rays
Which leadeth others right by every road.

Then was the fear a little quieted
That in my heart's lake had endured throughout
The night, which I had passed so piteously

And even as he, who, with distressful breath,
Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
Turns to the water perilous and gazes;

So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,
Turn itself back to re-behold the pass
Which never yet a living person left.

After my weary body I had rested,
The way resumed I on the desert slope,
So that the firm foot ever was the lower.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867)

[Gustave Doré:
Divine Comedy, Plate 7 (1861)]

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[Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1928)]

Midway this way of life we're bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Ay me! how hard to speak of it - that rude
And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath
Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood;

It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death;
Yet there I gained such good, that, to convey
The tale, I'll write what else I found therewith.

How I got into it I cannot say,
Because I was so heavy and full of sleep
When first I stumbled from the narrow way;

But when at last I stood beneath a steep
Hill's side, which closed that valley's wandering maze
Whose dread had pierced me to the heart-root deep,

Then I looked up, and saw the morning rays
Mantle its shoulder from that planet bright
Which guides men's feet aright on all their ways;

And this a little quieted the affright
That lurking in my bosom's lake had lain
Through the long horror of that piteous night.

And as a swimmer, panting, from the main
Heaves safe to shore, then turns to face the drive
Of perilous seas, and looks, and looks again,

So, while my soul yet fled, did I contrive
To turn and gaze on that dread pass once more
Whence no man yet came ever out alive.

Weary of limb I rested a brief hour,
Then rose and onward through the desert hied,
So that the fixed foot always was the lower;

- Dorothy L. Sayers (1949)

[Dorothy L. Sayers:
Hell (1949)]

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[Sandow Birk & Marcus Sanders:
Dante's Inferno. Illustrated by Sandow Birk. 2003
(San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004)

About halfway through the course of my pathetic life,
I woke up and found myself in a stupor in some dark place.
I'm not sure why I ended up there; I guess I had taken a few wrong turns.

I can't really describe what that place was like.
It was dark and strange, and just thinking
about it now gives me the chills. It was so bleak
and depressing. I remember thinking I'd rather be
dead than stuck there. But before I get too far off track,
I should tell you about the other stuff that happened,
because, in the end, everything came out alright.

First off, I don't have a clue how I ended up there. I can't
remember anything about it because I had been pretty
tipsy when I wandered off the night before, and I was tired
and must've fallen asleep. After I got up, I wandered around
in the dark for a long time looking for a way out. Just when
I was feeling completely lost and was ready to give up,
I looked up and saw a faint light in the distance.
I figured that meant there must be a way out up ahead
somewhere. When I saw that light, I felt better, and the
fear I'd been holding inside of me that whole time started
to lift a little bit, because I figured I'd be outta there soon.
It felt like I'd almost been pulled over for something in a
car, but then the cop had turned away. I was sweating with
relief after making it through such a close call. As I started
up the hill, I looked back into the darkness behind me and
it seemed like no one could ever find their way out of there.

I was so exhausted; I sat down for a short rest,
then dragged myself uphill toward the glimmer
of light, leading with my left foot at every step.

- Sandow Birk & Marcus Sanders (2003)

[Birk & Sanders:
Inferno (2003)]

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[Christopher D. Cook, curator:
Dante in Translation Exhibition (c.2005)]

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
[In the middle of the road of our life]
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
[I found myself in a dark wood]
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
[because the straight way was lost]

You can see straight away just how accurately Longfellow has echoed the word order of the Italian. Unfortunately, that makes for pretty barbarous English:

I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

The noun-adjective inversion "forest dark" doesn't sound very idiomatic to me - neither does "the straightforward pathway." But is Sayers much better in this respect? There's been quite a lot of criticism of her decision to change the "road of our life" to "this way of life we're bound upon," but I don't myself see any falsification of the original meaning there. The expansions of simple Italian expressions - "wholly lost and gone" for smarrita, for example - required to pad out her lines to the requisite length (and to provide a convenient rhyme) seem rather more serious. Strangely enough, I find myself preferring Sandow and Birk's rather prolix - but conceivable - slacker-speak:

About halfway through the course of my pathetic life,
I woke up and found myself in a stupor in some dark place.

True, there's nothing to match "my pathetic life" in the original, nor does actually Dante find himself "in a stupor" - but both could be seen to be justified by the illustrations of the poet's spiritual state given further down.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
[Oh, it's such a hard thing to say what it was like]
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
[that wild and harsh great forest]
che nel pensier rinova la paura!
[that in thought it renews the fear!]

Longfellow's forest is "savage, rough, and stern;" Sayers' is "rude / And rough and stubborn." One can't really reproduce the effect of the expression "selva selvaggia" in English: perhaps the closest approach would be Shakespeare's "wood within this wood" (using "wood" in the old sense of mad, you understand) ...

Tant'è amara che poco è più morte;
[It was so harsh that death isn't much worse]
ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,
[but to treat of the good that I found there]
dirò de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.
[I'll speak of the other things I discovered there.]

Birk & Sanders' "other stuff that happened" actually isn't too far off from the simplicity of "l'altre cose ch'i v'ho scorte" - the real trouble with putting Dante into English is that one tends to lose the directness and casualness of his phrasing. Finding equivalent expressions tends to shift one into a rather more pompous register, partly, also, because of the (comparative) paucity of rhymes in our language.

Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,
[I don't really know how to repeat how I entered there]
tant'era pien di sonno a quel punto
[so full of sleep was I at that point]
che la verace via abbandonai.
[when I abandoned the true way]

Longfellow has him as "full of slumber," Sayers "heavy and full of sleep" - there's certainly no suggestion of his being "pretty tipsy," but then Birk & Sanders' Dante does seem to be far more of a contemporary Angeleno than a medieval Italian.

Ma poi ch'i' fui al piè d'un colle giunto,
[But since I had arrived at the foot of a hill]
là dove terminava quella valle
[there where that valley ended]
che m'avea di paura il cor compunto,
[which had filled my heart up with fear]

Birk & Sanders leave out the hill altogether at this point; Sayers makes it a "steep hill," Longfellow a "mountain." Some have seen it as Mt. Purgatory itself, which Dante is trying to approach without having first acknowledged and named his sins. Certainly its sunlit top looks like a prefiguration of the earthly paradise which he'll encounter towards the end of the Purgatorio. If so, he must travel pretty far (from the Earth's Antipodes to Jerusalem) in the next few lines of the poem.

guardai in alto, e vidi le sue spalle
[I looked up on high, and saw its shoulders]
vestite già de' raggi del pianeta
[already dressed with the rays of that planet]
che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle.
[which leads everyone straight on every path.]

The "planet" is the sun - Longfellow is probably correct in writing "Which leadeth others right by every road" [my emphasis], rather than Sayers' "Which guides men's feet aright on all their ways." The question is, though, is Dante himself included among those who are guided by its light? I don't see how he can be excluded from their number, however far astray he's gone lately.

Allor fu la paura un poco queta
[Then my fear quietened down a little]
che nel lago del cor m'era durata
[which in the lake of my heart had lasted ]
la notte ch'i' passai con tanta pieta.
[the night that I had passed so pitifully.]

There's not much that one can do with that "lago del cor" metaphor: Longfellow calls it "my heart's lake," Sayers "my bosom's lake" (mainly for metrical reasons, I suspect). Perhaps the idea of a lake of blood at the heart of every individual seemed more natural before Harvey's 17th-century discovery of the circulation of the blood ...

E come quei che con lena affannata
[And just like one who with panting breath]
uscito fuor del pelago a la riva
[escaped out of peril to the bank]
si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata,
[turns back towards the dangerous water and looks,]

Longfellow gives us "with distressful breath," Sayers cuts that down simply to "panting." Birk & Sanders try out the first of their substitute metaphors for Dante's originals. In this case, they turn the drowning swimmer to a DUI driver:

It felt like I'd almost been pulled over for something in a
car, but then the cop had turned away. I was sweating with
relief after making it through such a close call.

Personally, I rather like their boldness. I can see how purists might be irritated, though.

così l'animo mio, ch'ancor fuggiva,
[so my soul, which was still fleeing,]
si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo
[turned back to look again at the pass]
che non lasciò già mai persona viva.
[which no-one alive has ever yet left.]

Longfellow calls it "the pass," Sayers the "the dread pass," Birk & Sanders simply "the darkness" - whatever one calls it, it's clearly the same as the "dark forest" Dante's just emerged from: one might with perfect fitness call it the "Valley of the Shadow of Death," given the fact that no one has hitherto escaped from it alive.

Poi ch'èi posato un poco il corpo lasso,
[Then, after I had rested my tired body for a bit]
ripresi via per la piaggia diserta,
[I resumed my way along the desert shore]
sì che 'l piè fermo sempre era 'l più basso
[so that the more firmly planted foot was always the lower.]

Does he lie down for a sleep or simply have a bit of a sit-down?. Birk & Sanders are perhaps a bit over-explicit here:

I was so exhausted; I sat down for a short rest,
then dragged myself uphill toward the glimmer
of light, leading with my left foot at every step.

It's hard to dispute their reading of that last detail about the "more firmly planted foot," though - it clearly means that he's heading upwards (though he'll shortly be chased from his path by those three famous wild animals: the leopard, the lion and the wolf ...)

- JR: literal translation & notes (2012)

[W. S. Merwin:
Translation drafts for Purgatorio (2000)]

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So there you go. Not so easy as it looks, is it? Hats off to everyone who's ever accomplished the task of a Dante translation - even those (such as Seamus Heaney) who've only given us a few cantos out of the whole hundred ...

[Dante's Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets (1993)