Translating and Transforming: CS Lewis' Insights on Language and Literature

I was unprepared to be so moved by CS Lewis’ essay on Layamon's late 12th c. Brut (a medieval tinkering of Wace’s work on the Arthurian legend). Lewis gives a tour thru many of the changes made by Layamon—changes that admittedly are better.

Layamon filters Wace’s work through Anglo-Saxon blood, and the new meter comes in the accents of Hrothgar: “Lord, master, Christ, prince of glory, protection of middle earth, comfort of men, by thy gracious will, prince of angels. Make thou my dream turn to good.”

Layamon’s additions are improvements because “they smell of real country and first-hand observation.” Layamon speaks as a man who saw broken-winged cranes torn by hounds and felled men like steel fish lying in streams. Note the translation by Lewis in footnote 1 of the attached below.

Arthus hitched up his shield before his breast and began to rush like the howling wolf when it comes, all hung with snow, out of the wood, and means to get its teeth into any beast that pleases it.

Concepts that are vague in Wace become concrete in Brut. Additions to the text focus the mind on unforgettable imagery—Arthur’s face draining of color when as a boy of 15, he receives the call to be king after the death of Uther—and then the face fills with red as he accepts the crown.

Lewis’ essay shows how freely men once felt to change a text, and by modern standards, the medieval freedom to improve a previous author’s work is egregious. But Lewis invites us to consider communal authorship like that of a cathedral: made of Saxon, Norman, & Early English.

Are these changes a betrayal of the first text? Do they show disagreement? Lewis argues no. The changes show indebtedness. [See attached below].

In that way it might even be true that they are sometimes most indebted to the originals where they most improve them; that the more completely they are carried away by the story or the doctrine, the more of their own they mix with it. I think we can understand this in light of those occasions when we have remembered a good passage from a book as being even better than it was. We look it up, perhaps in order to quote it; and find that what we had seemed to remember as the master touch was never there at all. We have added it. But it was the vitality of the passage which enabled, and forced, us to do so. The author’s imagination has fertilized ours. Similarly, perhaps, it is just because Wace’s narrative has taken complete possession of Layamon’s mind that he sees—and may even believe that it was Wace who showed him—Arthur’s changes of colour when they came to offer him the crown.

Where Do Quotes Live in the Heart?

My heart was strangely pulled in thinking of that experience of indebtedness we feel to an author after having first encountered them.

How many times have we fondly remembered a quote, only to reread it years later and realize upon returning it had shrunk in size (or had it just grown in memory?). Was the quote not altogether as strong as we had first thought? Or did we merely remember the force it had on us?

These encounters with works that seize our hearts seem to take on power as they pass through our minds, and in passing thru they take on a tincture of ourselves, becoming something new. The medieval man, Lewis posits, added his own experience to the text as an ode of thanks.

My mind was also drawn to how taking in a work also changes the work, especially for how that relates to translation. It is all well and good to ascribe to the principled position of formal equivalence. We want our translations (especially of the Bible) to be word-for-word, not thought-for-thought. None of this dynamic equivalence, thank you very much.

And yet when it comes down to the actual work, I find choosing the right word a challenge. Which word in the wide bank of choices is the “right” choice? Which word do I choose for my word-for-word translation when every word in the original language, whether Greek, Hebrew, of Latin, has a dozen choices in English? Sometimes there are seldom one-to-one equivalencies. Translation work is not like math work. It is not as simple as balancing sums. Some things don’t carry over into English.

And even if we are able to get our word-for-word translation, sometimes the end result is a stuttering, wooden mess. Yes, every word is “correct,” but it is unreadable. The living power of the language has been stripped, and we are left with a mere skeleton that would be better fit for a museum.

One example: I’ve been plodding through Girolomo Zanchi’s 1594 Latin commentary on Ephesians. Here is how I worked through one passage:

Vbi docet, Christum non antè sedisse ad dexteram Patris, nisi postquam resuscitatus à mortuis, ascendit in coelum: & quidem sedere eum non vbique, aut in terra, sed in supercoelestibus locis.

A strict word-for-word translation renders:

Where he teaches, Christ not before sat at the right hand of the Father except after being resurrected from the dead ascended into heaven: and indeed not in every place or in earth, but in supercelestial locations.

No one talks like that. The words are all “correct,” but the sentence is wrong. Word order is mainly irrelevant in Latin because it has cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, etc). The words themselves piece together the sentence like magnets snapping into place. But in English, this process of designing a sentence takes manual effort and a bit of artistry. Which clause should go where for the sake of clarity? Translation requires transposing. 

One of the reasons why CS Lewis’ essay on medieval books affected me is because I realized that I am unconsciously making the same changes when translating Latin. I examine a sentence and think, “How would I phrase this concept if I were writing it?” And a part of me is added to the language. I have painted a new corner onto an existing painting. I might wish that Zanchi were reproduced without a tincture of self, but that cannot happen. I have to add my own way of speaking and personality, even without intentional self-insertion, as I work like a medium allowing his voice to speak.

In the end, here is my translation:

In that passage, he teaches that Christ (not before but after being raised from the dead) ascended to heaven and sat at the right hand of the Father. He is not seated everywhere, or on earth—but in the heavenly realms.

I added full stops where Zanchi had colons. I added a parenthesis to separate thoughts. I added an em dash to highlight how the tumbling clauses come to height in the conclusion. I chose heavenly “realms” instead of “locations,” despite the word being loci. Why did I do it this way? Because it is how I would speak. 

I was affected by Lewis’ essay on the genesis of medieval books because I realized that there is no way for a person, apart from being brought up learning Latin on his mother’s knee, to read an ancient document without inserting a part of themselves. And in that translation, we have changed the work to be something in our own image.