Custos, quid de nocte? June 11, 2012
Posted by cantueso in art, Bible, painting, poetry.trackback
.
They are calling me from Seir:
“Watchman, what of the night?”
“Watchman, what of the night?”
The watchman said:
“There will be day, and there will be night.
“Just keep asking.”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
Mostly these verses are translated as oracle, but in everyday language an oracle is a nameless Greek fortune-teller’s advice and is therefore misleading. The Latin translator chose onus, meaning burden. It could also be a curse or a prophecy.
Maybe Isaiah is angry at people who ask for a prediction when they don’t want to see the obvious.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
Great poetry has this in common with any simple joke: if the meaning has to be explained, then the charm is off. Yet if the joke or the verse are any good, their meaning unfolds little by little, mostly.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
And this is a translation of a text that has been translated over and over for nearly 3000 years and so there are many versions. Larousse says that Isaiah was an advisor to the king and the country was at war.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
Here is the Latin version, for centuries the only text known, and not many people had access to it, but it does sound truly Latin :
Ad me clamat ex Seir:
Custos, quid de nocte?
custos, quid de nocte?
Dixit custos:
Venit mane et nox;
si quæritis, quærite;
convertimini, venite.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
The pictures are Isaiah by Marc Chagall. Isaiah’s most famous prophecy is about God’s Holy Mountain where all creatures will get along with each other, remember?
“The lion will graze with the lamb…. for there will be no pain anymore anywhere in my Holy Mountain”.
Below is one of the three Isaiah tapestries designed by Chagall for the Israeli parliament:
.
They are at http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/chagall2.html and explained by J. Baal-Teshuva***.
I don’t know why the colours change so much from one reproduction to the next. Look! This picture is the same as the one above it!
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
There is also an Isaiah fresco by Raphael :
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
Now Luther’s version. Nobody after him could translate the Bible into German as vividly as he had done:
Jesaja 21 (1545)
Dies ist die Last über Duma:
Man ruft zu mir aus Seir: Hüter, ist die Nacht schier hin? Hüter ist die Nacht schier hin?
Der Hüter aber sprach: Wenn der Morgen schon kommt, so wird es doch Nacht sein. Wenn ihr schon fragt, so werdet ihr doch wieder kommen und wieder fragen.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
.
***Baal-Teshuva is the editor of the 1995 Chagall retrospective still available at ABE books. There, in his introduction, he quotes Chagall : “As you get older, you see through yourself, as if from outside, and paint your inner life as if you were painting a still life.”
.
Luther is much easier to read than the convoluted John Calvin. Luther has an earthiness of a simple country parson that loved his beer and food and family along with being a brilliant theologian.
But did you know he was also a poet ? He wrote the lyrics for some of the most famous Xmas songs. And I think he was also a composer, but basically a poet.
Some of these modern translations do without the poetry. They are skeletons, of some use for an anatomy lesson, but not otherwise..