A painting of Saint John the Evangelist (artists unknown).

‘To Saint John the Evangelist’ by Eustache Deschamps, Translated by Margaret Coats

The Society

December 27, 2021

Beauty, Chant Royal, Culture, Poetry, Translation

14 Comments

14 Responses

1. 

   James A. Tweedie December 27, 2021

   Margaret, Your “Translator’s Note” is just as inspiring as your translation of this devotional poem to St. John. Some theological events or concepts defy ordinary language and require the creation of new words or the redefinition of old words to describe them (such as St. Paul’s/New Testament’s reinvention of the old Greek word, agape). It is ironic that St. John’s assumption could also be termed a “translation,” giving yet another layer of meaning to your resurrection of this old text for our edification!

   St. John is, indeed, a translucent figure insofar as his identification as the author of the Gospel and three letters is undisputed but his identification with the Apocalypse and many of the details of his life in Asia Minor is the subject of much conversation among biblical scholars.

   Unlike Mary, however, St. John has a revered tomb near Ephesus over which Justinian built a great basilica. Support for the tradition of his assumption, on the other hand, is the claim that when the tomb was opened during the reign of Constantine the Great, it was (supposedly) found to be empty. Also, unlike the other apostles, saints and martyrs, there are (as is also true of Mary) no recognized physical relics of his body.

   This is, of course, while central to the theme of the poem, a digression from the more important matter of noting the beauty of Margaret’s translation and how well these ancient words still speak to us of piety while touching our hearts with love of its unknown author.

   As Deuteronomy 29:29 puts it, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” So it is with faith itself, for there is a great deal of “translucence” around the edges which surround and glorify the clear, central, and certain revelation of God’s saving love for the world in Jesus Christ.

   Thank you, Margaret, for the gift of this poem.

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     Margaret Coats December 27, 2021

     Thank you, James, for your praise of my verses; this unusual poem took some very careful thought to make it clear, and I’m glad that came across to you. And thanks for adding intriguing information about the now ruined basilica in Turkey; perhaps you have been there! As Justinian came a couple of centuries after Constantine, the tomb would already have been found empty when the basilica was built. I don’t know where Deschamps got his story, but the two emperors might also have heard what he says. The body of Saint John was laid in a tomb by the people of Ephesus, then a burst of celestial brightness happened there. Deschamps clearly thinks John disappeared into heaven, his body having characteristics that made Our Lord able to pass through a locked door after His resurrection. I wonder if no one until Constantine (about 200 years later) was bold enough to look inside John’s tomb! Justinian may have considered the tomb a relic of John, in the sense that clothing and personal possessions are relics of the second class, while a part of the body is a first-class relic.

     You are right that there is much translucence surrounding all that is clearly revealed to us. Saint John, as Jesus’ special friend and close companion, has a great share of it. When I submitted this poem, Evan Mantyk reminded me that Sir Gawain invokes Saint John when a lady is apparently trying to seduce him–part of the Christmas story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Evan did schools a great service by offering his excellent contemporary translation free to anyone!

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2. 

   Brian Yapko December 27, 2021

   Margaret, thank you for another marvelous translation – this deeply felt poem by Deschamps. You make the process look effortless when it must have taken hours of painstaking work to take Medieval French and make it work for a modern English-speaking readership. The poem is beautiful in both the original and your translation. It is quite fun to see how much Middle French yet resembles modern French.

   Am I right to assume that this form is a variation of a chant royal? However, the 8 line stanza with a rhyme scheme of ababbcbc speaks to me more of a ballade. Also, you – or, rather, Monsieur Deschamps — have 4 stanzas rather than 5 for a chant royal or 3 for a ballade. In addition, there is a 6 line envoy of bbcbbc rather than one of 5 lines. In addressing other poetry, you have taught me enough to accept that there is no reason to be critical of Deschamps’ deviation from the fixed form. I would just like to know that my analysis of the form – one which makes note both of the traditional form as well as its differences from that traditional form – is not off base.

   I would also like to compliment your fidelity to the rigorous rhyme scheme. You present inspired and fresh meaning using only three rhymes in 38 lines – no easy task!

   As for the content, it is quite inspired. St. John was indeed blessed to be entrusted by Christ with not one but two monumental tasks – to care for His suffering mother and to write the non-synoptic Gospel. He is a most meaningful subject of veneration. I’m curious about Deschamps’ emphasis on his virginity. Must John be presented thus to be worthy of Christ’s commission? At any rate, what a wonderful thing to present this poetic offering during Christmas! Thank you very much, Margaret!

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     Margaret Coats December 27, 2021

     Brian, you are quite right that Deschamps places great emphasis on virginity in this poem. Medieval authors believe that virginity is a higher state than marriage, even when both spouses are faithful to their vows. This is the traditional teaching of the Church; I was surprised to find it clearly, if not emphatically, stated by the mid-16th century Council of Trent. And why? Ultimately, it has to do with the potential depth of the person’s devotion to God. Saint Paul explained that while marriage and virginity are both good, spouses must try to please one another, while the virgin need only please God. Notice that I said “potential depth of devotion.” Any human being can become sinful or negligent, but the virgin, by a conscious choice of God alone, earns credit for the attempt to make God a more complete gift of self.

     In Deschamps’ poem, John makes the greatest possible use of his place in history, by devoting heart and body to Jesus as his best friend, and to Mary as the mother entrusted to him. And because Jesus and Mary are the pre-eminent models for virgins of both sexes, he could not have done better, and no one can do as well as he. In large part, John is qualified for his two commissions because, in the divine mystery of Jesus’ sacred heart, he was chosen above others, and corresponded to that unique grace and love. Eustache Deschamps, husband and father that he was, overflows with these ideas in his poem.

     Now for the easy part of your question! A chant royal is a ballade of four or five stanzas. If the poem goes on to six stanzas, it’s a double ballade, because it doubles the ballade’s usual number of three stanzas. Five-stanza chants royal are far more common than ones of four stanzas. Form handbooks in English will tell you that a chant royal must have 11 iambic pentameter lines per stanza. Don’t pay any attention. These forms are not fixed, as anyone who reads many of them will find out. As for the envoy, six-line envoys are characteristic of Deschamps himself; he just happens to like them, and he would have felt entirely justified with an aabaab envoy in this poem rather than bbcbbc. I plan to write a full essay on chant royal, so I’ll save further explanations for it.

     I ‘m delighted you liked the poem and my translation!

     Reply
3. 

   Joseph S. Salemi December 28, 2021

   It is a rare skill to be able to translate a complex poem from a foreign tongue into English while maintaining the rhyme scheme and staying true to the poem’s meaning. In some poems, to be sure, it is well nigh impossible. Margaret Coats has pulled this task off more than once with medieval French texts, and her results demand admiration.

   Just imagine: Writing a poem of 38 lines with only three rhymes (in this case ooh–, ee–, and eer), and at the same time being obliged to take into account the meaning of the original text from which one is translating! It is a tour de force.

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     Margaret Coats December 29, 2021

     Many thanks, Joseph, for these highly appreciative comments. In this particular poem, I was very fortunate to be able to use twelve of the original rhyme words that are almost the same in English. Looking them over, though, I realized that French rhyme is rather demanding when a vowel ends the word. The rhyme sound is not just -ee, but -tee. Every single French word with the “b” rhyme sound ends in the consonant-plus-vowel combination of -tee. Many medieval French authors, like Deschamps, obviously consider a rhyme sound to consist of two parts (vowel and consonant). A word chosen to rhyme with “charity” in this poem must match it with the -tee sound chosen by the poet. Many English words ending in -ee (such as “sea,” “tree,” or “knee”) would not be acceptable because the consonant part of the rhyme does not match. Again I was fortunate that -tee is the easiest -ee rhyme to match in English! Finding and imitating this kind of rhyme practice leads a translator to think carefully about what rhyme really is.

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4. 

   Susan Jarvis Bryant December 30, 2021

   Margaret, I have just read your breathtakingly beautiful translation and the comments beneath and can only add that I’m in awe of your skill. You bring us poetry full of wonder derived from your knowledge and translate with a passion that may well bring us poetry that outshines the original! I am only educated in secondary school level French, and this limits me as far as commenting goes… but, I have a feeling I’m right. Thank you!

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     Margaret Coats December 30, 2021

     Susan, I don’t feel any obligation to translate the flaws of my favorite authors, and thus I am sometimes aware that I am doing them editorial favors, by re-arranging sentences or glossing an unusual word within my translation of a poem. But this is just part of bringing an old poem into the comfort range of modern readers, which is a translator’s job. There are French/English dictionaries online, but if a translator can do no more than use one and present the results, that does very little to display the skill or outlook of the original poet. I like to think I am getting to know these predecessors of ours, and then doing my best to give you readers a good introduction to them. If I like them and their work, they deserve an English introduction of high quality!

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5. 

   Yael December 30, 2021

   Wow, another translational treat, thank you Margaret. I just got around to savoring your poem, because I got busy and I wanted to make sure I had adequate time to read and enjoy. Between the original and your translation there is so much material to stimulate the thoughts and senses on the eternal and inexhaustible topic of our Savior and His contemporaries that this is a work which will keep on giving.

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     Margaret Coats December 30, 2021

     Yael, you are just the reader Eustache Deschamps wanted! It is obvious in this poem that Deschamps was fascinated by Saint John and his relation to Jesus and Mary. And by the eternal effects of John’s love of them! When a poem invites a reader to that kind of contemplation, it is well worth translating, and I am glad my work led you in that direction.

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6. 

   R M Moore January 5, 2022

   Dear Margaret, Thank you. Please let me write that the style found in the Gospel of St. John shows forth elegance and precision of language, not only in the choice and arrangement of expressions, but also in his mode of reasoning and construction. We find here nothing barbarous and improper, nothing even low and vulgar; insomuch that God not only seems to have given him light and knowledge, but also the means of well clothing his conceptions. Critics of Saint John generally conceive, with respect to language, as the least correct of the writers of the New Testament. His style argues a great want of those advantages which result from a learned education: but this defect is amply compensated by the unexampled simplicity with which he expresses the sublimest truths, by the supernatural lights, by the depth of the mysteries, by the superexcellency of the matter, by the solidity of his thoughts, and importance of his instructions.
   The Holy Ghost, Who made choice of him, and filled him with infused wisdom, is much above human philosophy and the art of rhetoric. He possesses, in a most sovereign degree, the talent of carrying light and conviction to the mind, and warmth to the heart. He instructs, convinces, and persuades, without the aid of art or elegance.

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     Margaret Coats January 5, 2022

     Thank you, Mrs. Moore, for giving us the benefit of your study of Saint John’s Gospel! You provide the details of his style inspired by the Holy Ghost, to which Eustache Deschamps says, “O man of marvels!” It is good for us as poets to hear this further consideration of the evangelist’s writing. The closer the attention a writer pays to whatever inspiration he may receive from God, the more he can “carry light and conviction to the mind, and warmth to the heart.” We need art and elegance, as did Saint John, to do what the Holy Ghost does immediately and directly.

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7. 

   Margaret Coats January 11, 2022

   I’ve received questions by e-mail about this poem, which brought up further information about Biblical references and about artistic representation that I’d like to post here.

   First, what Biblical reference is there for what Deschamps writes? For line 5, “You fed at His own breast’s divinity,” see John 13:25 and John 21:20, both saying that John leaned on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper. In lines 12-13, Deschamps says John was present at Jesus’ death and had “the dignity to guard the flower of humility.” Mary is the flower of humility for her humble response, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” to the angel Gabriel’s message of high honor to her in Luke 1:38. From the Cross, in John 19:26-27, Jesus gave Mary to John as a mother to a son, thus providing her with a home and protector after His death. The final clause of these verses says, “The disciple took her to his own.”

   Strong ecclesiastical traditions, both Eastern and Western, say that John and Mary went to Asia Minor, where John governed the Christian churches of the region from Ephesus. John remains the principal patron saint of those areas, despite the very important figures of Paul and Timothy also working there. John the writer of the Apocalypse (final book of the Bible) says in Apocalypse 1:9 that he writes from exile at Patmos, an island off the Asia Minor coast. Christian traditions East and West have generally identified this writer with John the Evangelist, although some Biblical scholars disagree.

   Regarding Saint John’s bodily assumption, see John 21:23, where John reports that Jesus said of him, “So I will have him remain until I come, what is that to thee?” John acknowledges that this had already given rise to a belief that John would not die. The evangelist points out that Jesus did not say John would not die, but only the exact words reported, which John repeats but does not interpret. These are two interpretations of them in ancient traditions. One says that John did not die, but remains sleeping under the earth until Jesus returns. The far more widespread interpretation says that John did die and was buried, but was at once assumed bodily into heaven. Many feast days commemorate the assumption, with Greek churches celebrating it in September, and Latin churches in June, where the date became associated with the birthday of John the Baptist at Midsummer. There is also a Greek feast day in May for the opening of John’s tomb (only to find it empty) by Constantine, himself a saint to Eastern Christians.

   There are pictures of John’s assumption on Eastern icons, but the picture most relevant to Deschamps’ poem is a fresco by Giotto at Santa Croce in Florence. The best online view of it: visittuscany.com/en/attractions/giotto-frescos-in-santa-croce
   Scroll down a little to get to the picture, then double click on it to see it without website clutter. It is labeled, “Ascension of St John in the Peruzzi chapel.” On the left are persons looking at the empty tomb in puzzlement. On the right are others looking up, one of them shading his eyes. In the center is John’s body rising up, surrounded by a prism of light rays, as Jesus pulls him from above. The scene depicts lines 28-30 of the poem, “There shone a sudden burst of clarity/Too bright for Christians of that polity/To see the holy body disappear.”

   I wonder whether Deschamps might have seen the fresco or a work based on it. It was painted about 1310. Deschamps did spend much of his career as a diplomat; his poems indicate travels to the Low Countries, Bohemia, England, and Spain. If he made it to the important city of Florence in Italy, he could have seen the work of a recent, influential painter who treated John’s assumption much as Deschamps does in words.

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8. 

   Margaret Coats January 18, 2022

   This adds one more bit of information about Saint John’s assumption and its representation in art and literature. In Dante’s Paradiso, the saint says that his body is earth on earth, and not in heaven. The date of the final cantos of Paradiso is undoubtedly later than the date of Giotto’s fresco–and years after Dante had been exiled from Florence. Dante was thus setting himself against popular piety in his home city, and denigrating an artist who had painted what is now considered the best life portrait of the poet, during his years in Florence.

   Reply

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