[Previous: lines 779-799]
Joseph narrates. Herod has been cheated of the knowledge of exactly who and where the baby Jesus is. Now read on!
“Ille autem, ut sese delusum denique sensit, [800]------------
accensus furiis suspectam misit ad urbem
mille viros ferro instructos; qui mœnia furto
per noctem ingressi, teneros, quicunque reperti,
infantes matrum jugularent ubere raptos,
quò numero in tanto caderet quoque regius haeres. [805]
Ipse sed in somnis visus sum voce moneri
praecipitem celerare fugam, loca linquere nota:
‘Surgeage,rumpe moras,puerum tecum arripe, matremque
et septemgemini cursu pete flumina Nili;
hinc terram cole, quae procul his haud dissidet oris, [810]
nec refer inde pedem, nisi te priùs ipse vocâro;
rex etenim letum infanti molitur acerbum.’
Consurgo, et plenus monitis, matri omnia pando.
Vidisses visu exsanguem, exanimemque puellam
huc illuc trepidare fugâ, et vix fidere nocti. [8I5]
Iam tum illi pectus gladius traiecit acutus
ah! miserae, ingenti labefactaque corda dolore.
Cedimus, et taciti malefidam linquimus urbem
per noctem, ac propero petimus nemora avia gressu.
Et iam palmosae saltus, atque ardua Idumes [820]
praetervectus eram; veteris iam mœnia Elusae;
quaque Asiam Libycis disjungit finibus omnem
Mapsa ferax oleae: ingredior pluviae inscia regna,
regna Phari; quibus est cœli vis cognita primùm,
astraque, lunaïque globus, solisque meatus. [825]
Ignotos passim montes, ignota saluto
flumina, turrigerasque legens praetervehor urbes,
iamque papyriferi ripis Anthedonis ibam.
“When he realised he had been deceived, he [800]------------
grew furious, and sent to that city
a thousand swordsmen. They were told: creep in
at night, stealthy-like, and rip the youngest
infants from their mothers’ breasts—kill them!
In amongst that murder he’d slay the royal heir. [805]
But I received a warning in a dream:
a voice told me to leave the places I knew:
‘Flee, no delay, take the child and his mother
run to the sevenheaded stream of the Nile;
live there henceforward, far from these places, [810]
and do not return until I myself call you back;
for the king is plotting cruel death for the child.’
I woke and told my wife what we had to do.
Blood left her face, the girl was so terrified
going here and there, not trusting the dark. [8I5]
Already a sharp sword had pierced her breast:
ah! poor one, her heart now soaked in sorrow.
We obeyed, leaving the dangerous city
that night, hurrying through a pathless forest.
We skirted the hills of palm-rich Edom [820]
and the ancient walls of Elusa,
where Asia and Libya’s shores are divided
by Mapsa’s olive-trees: into the rainless,
kingdom of Pharaoh, where men first studied
the stars in their paths, the moon’s globe and the sun. [825]
We passed unknown mountains, unknown rivers
and cities with lofty fortifications and towers,
coming to Anthedon, where papyrus grows.
This is Vida's version of the Flight Into Egypt, an episode in Matthew's Gospel that is not in Luke's (according to Luke, the Holy Family went to the Temple in Jerusalem, and then home to Nazareth [Luke 2:22–40]). Matthew is adumbrating a theme that likens Jesus to Moses, appealing for a 1st-C Judean audience; and to that extent he [2:15] cites Hosea 11:1 (‘... and out of Egypt I called My son’) as prophetically fulfilled in the return of Joseph, Mary and Jesus from Egypt. Seems a stretch to me, but what do I know? At least Vida dials down the miracle-ing:
The story was much elaborated in the "Infancy Gospels" of the New Testament apocrypha with, for example, palm trees bowing before the infant Jesus, Jesus taming dragons, the beasts of the desert paying him homage, and an encounter with the two thieves who would later be crucified alongside Jesus. In these later tales the family was joined by Salome as Jesus' nurse. These stories of the time in Egypt have been especially important to the Coptic Church, which is based in Egypt, and throughout Egypt there are a number of churches and shrines marking places where the family stayed. The most important of these is the church of Abu Serghis, which claims to be built on the place the family had its home. One of the most extensive and, in Eastern Christianity, influential accounts of the Flight appears in the perhaps seventh-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, in which Mary, tired by the heat of the sun, rested beneath a palm tree. The infant Jesus then miraculously has the palm tree bend down to provide Mary with its fruit, and release from its roots a spring to provide her with water.Instead this is a nicely written little passage: a pen-portrait, small scale, of parental anxiety, the hurried, fearful flight of the refugee, grabbing what they can and dashing off in the dark, before Herod's soldier, or the secret policeman, or the SS-stormtrooper (or the ICE officer), comes banging on their door. Vida is capable, as he shows here, of some psychological acuity in his writing. Not that he always manages it.
At the head of this post: The Flight Into Egypt (c1500), by Joachim Patinir (in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium
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