Book 5, lines 743-57

[Previous: lines 721-56]

Iamque trabi applicitus tergo altè haerebat: in illum
versi omnes observabant, quae funere in ipso
signa daret, quae spes, aut quae fiducia victo.                 [745]
Ille autem tacitus iamdudum cuncta ferebat,
immotusque: decor roseo nondum omnis ab ore
cessit; adhuc oculis divinum est cernere honorem:
tantùm respersusque genas, pallentiaque ora
humectat cruor, et mixto cum pulvere sudor                    [750]
plurimus, infectique rubent in sanguine dentes.
Qualis, qui modò caerulea perfusus in unda
Lucifer astrifero radios spargebat Olympo,
si mundi species violetur clara sereni,
Et subitâ incipiat cœlum pallescere nubes,                      [755]
nondum omne occuluit iubar, obtusaque nitescit
pulcher adhuc facie, et nimbo tralucet in atro.

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He hung high, his back against the beam. To him
all eyes turned, watching to see what his death
would mean, what signs or hope it might impart.            [745]
For a long time he bore it all in silence,
unmoving: his lips were still a rosy red
his eyes still gleamed with divine power
but his pale cheeks and face were spattered with
watery blood mixed-in with sweat and dirt,                     [750]
and blood even stained his teeth bright scarlet.
As when, bathed in the blue waves of the sky,
the morning star sparkles over Olympus—
if the clear serene grows blemished by
the sudden arrival of many pale clouds                            [755]
its light, not entirely veiled, still glimmers
beautifully, though weaker, at the edges.

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Another short linking passage, leading into a longer episode in which Jesus’s mother, Mary, arrives at the cross to grieve for her son. If the blood-red teeth looks a little odd to you it may help to know that Vida’s line 751 infectique rubent in sanguine dentes reworks a bit of Vergil: ore eiectantem mixtosque in sanguine dentes, [Aeneid 5:470]—the rather more kinetic consequences of Entellus and Dares boxing match, in which the latter ‘spat from his mouth clotted gore and bloody teeth’ (Vida’s infectus means ‘dyed, stained, having been dyed’ and only secondarily ‘tainted, corrupted, infected’).

The final epic simile, in which Jesus’s divinity is still visible, like the light shining around clouds (oddly, Vida specifies pale clouds, pallescere nubes, ‘clouds growing pale’, not dark thunderheads, although on second thoughts perhaps that's not so odd), identifies him with the morning star. That is, as you can see, 753, ‘Lucifer’: a rather striking comparison. It's not one Vida has invented, mind you: to quote Andrew Hill: ‘Christ is described as the “morning star” in 2 Peter 1:19 (phosphoros) and in Revelation 2:28 (aster proinos), and He identifies Himself as “the bright morning star” (ho aster ho lampros ho proninos) in Revelation 22:16’. There is a fair amount of star language in the Old Testament describing the coming Messiah (cf. Num. 24:17; Mal. 4:2).

At the head of the post: Salvador Dalí's ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ (1951), presently in the collection of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow.

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