[Previous: lines 439-531]
John is still narrating the miracles Jesus performed.
Sed quid non ipse evaleat? quin nos quoque missos------------
aegris jussit opem ferre, auxilioque levare
praesenti: mortis multos de faucibus atris,
non opibus homium, nulla revocavimus arte, [535]
verùm, implorato ter tantùm voce magistri
nomine, surgebant stratis, ibantque refecti.
Omni autem ex numero sese vix obtulit unus,
quem stimulis actum saevis, caecoque furore,
incassum victi tentavimus, acrior illum [540]
usque adeo magis atque magis vis intus agebat.
Cui cùm ferret opem Divus mox optimus ipse,
iratus, quòd parva sui fiducia nobis:
‘Corporibus tales facile,’ inquit, ‘pellere pestes.
Parcendum dapibus tamen, è cœloque petendum [545]
nec solis verò haec vobis concessa facultas:
sed nomen quicunque meum vulgaverit, omnia
fas audere, mei modõ ne fiducia desit.
Ille etiam jussos immani corpore montes,
transferet, et verso sistet vaga flumina cursu. [550]
Ite animis igitur certi, confidite, neve
instabili titubate fide: iacite aurea veri
semina ubique, orbem vestra perfundite luce
Obductum tenebris, atque alta nocte sepultum
vos hominum lux, vos squalentis lumina mundi.’ [555]
Sic fatus, nobis alios subjunxit, ut essent
consortes tantorum operum, sociique laborum,
et septem elegit decies; tamen ipse dolebat
exiguum numerum, neque tot satis esse ferebat
tanto operi; ac veluti qui centum vertit aratris [560]
tellurem, et campos rastris exercet avitos,
cùm matura seges jam flavis canet aristis,
si desint, qui messem operis (quae plurima) condant,
fluctuet, atque viros aliis conducat ab oris.
What could he not do? In fact, he sent us too,------------
to bring assistance to the sick, to save them
even from the very jaws of death, often,
through no ordinary or medical intervention. [535]
It's true! We’d say the teacher's name three times
and many rose up from their sickbeds, healthy.
Of all of these people there was only one—
a man stung by the goads of a blind anger—,
who defeated our power to help him—growing [540]
raving ever more and more crazily.
Until the best of divine beings helped us,
he was irritated by our lack of faith.
‘It’s easy,’ he said, ‘to drive pests from a body.
You must fast, and request the help of heaven, [545]
nor is this power granted to you alone:
anyone who has spread my teaching has it
provided only they believe in me.
Such a one can move the mass of huge mountains
and change the courses of rushing rivers. [550]
Go you all, therefore; be of good cheer, and don’t
let your faith fade: spread the gold of the truth,
seed it everywhere, flood the world with light
to banish the dark night that buries it.
You are the light of men, lamps to a squalid world.’ [555]
With such words he drew many more followers
made them partakers and allies in his work:
seventy in all. Yet he was dissatisfied
thinking this too little a number for
such great work—like a man with a hundred ploughs [560]
tilling and working his ancestral fields
who, as the crop ripens to yellow, worries
he lacks workers (needing many) for harvest
and so hires new labourers from overseas.
In line 555, squalentis is the adjective from squalor, a word that means both ‘stiffness, roughness, dryness’ but also ‘dirtiness, filthiness, foulness, squalor’. The English word obviously takes the latter semantic field as its ground, but Lewis and Short inform me that squalentis, when used as an adjective, only relates to the former—so, strictly, the line ought to read ‘You are the light of men, lamps to a stiffening world’ or perhaps ‘… to a desiccating world.’ I can’t quite wrap my head around that, though (I may be missing something obvious) and so have left it in the original, though it’s a bit of a cheat. Gardner has: ‘You are the light of men, lamps unto a sordid world’, which has the same problem (lamps don’t solve the problem of dirt after all; any more than they do of drying or stiffening). The provenance for this, of course, is Matthew 5:14, where in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus addresses all his followers: ‘you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden’ (in the Vulgate: Vos estis lux mundi. Non potest civitas abscondi supra montem posita). There’s no reference to squalor though.
Otherwise: the mission of the seventy is detailed in Luke:
After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go. Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves. Carry neither money bag, knapsack, nor sandals; and greet no one along the road. But whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it; if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you. And heal the sick there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, ‘The very dust of your city which clings to us we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near you.’ But I say to you that it will be more tolerable in that Day for Sodom than for that city. [Luke 10:1-12]Some versions of the gospel specify not 70 but 72 which (as the sum of four consecutive primes 13 + 17 + 19 + 23, as well as the sum of six consecutive primes 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19) is perhaps a cooler number.
At the head of the post: Holman Hunt's famous, or perhaps once-famous 1853 painting ‘The Light of the World.’ It has a complicated history, this canvas. Hunt began work on it sometime around 1849-50, often painting in the early hours of the morning (according to some stories, in a special hut he had built in the ground of Oxford University Press) to get the trees and sky right in the background. It was exhibited in 1853, and later donated to Keble College Oxford by Martha Combe, the widow of the man who bought it, on the understanding that it would hang in the chapel. But the architect in charge of building the chapel in the mid-1870s, one William Butterfield, didn't like the painting and made no provision for it in the completed building. It hung in the college library until 1895 when a different architect, J. T. Micklethwaite, built a side chapel to accommodate it.
The version above is not the Keble version. Hunt painted a second, smaller version of the image and that hangs today in Manchester City Art Gallery. But there's more: Hunt grew angry in old age that Keble College was charging visitors a fee to enter the side chapel and view the painting, and so spent his last years making a larger version of the image, in which Jesus is life-size. This was begun in 1900 and completed in 1904, but Hunt's eyesight was going, and his hands weren't as steady as they had been, so much of the actual work was done by an assistant, English painter Edward Robert Hughes. Hunt sold this version to shipping magnate and social reformer Charles Booth on the understanding that he would hang it in St Paul's Cathedral, where it could be seen by any and all. Booth did do this, but not before craftily sending the painting away on a 1905–1907 world tour where the picture drew large, fee-paying crowds. According to Jeremy Maas's Holman Hunt and the “Light of the World” (Ashgate 1984) four-fifths of Australia's five-million population viewed the painting: ‘in Melbourne in 1906 visitors stampeded, anxious to see it the moment it was open to the public. But if the crowd was rowdy at first, soon an air of reverential awe descended on the gathering. Men removed their hats, voices fell to a whisper. Some people stood or sat gazing at it for hours. A few visitors fainted.’ Eventually Booth made good on his promise, and the painting was installed in St Pauls in 1908.
[Next: lines 565-597]
No comments:
Post a Comment