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14 pages, 266 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Czesław Miłosz’s Translations as “Re-Visioning” of the Psalms: Poetry and Eschatology

by Ewa Chrusciel

Religions 2023, 14(2), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020174 - 29 Jan 2023

Viewed by 1719

This article focuses on Czesław Miłosz’s translations of parts of the Psalms and their influence on his poetry. For Miłosz, poetry had an eschatological dimension, a view deeply influenced by his distant cousin, the Lithuanian poet and playwright Oscar Miłosz. In his essay [...] Read more.

This article focuses on Czesław Miłosz’s translations of parts of the Psalms and their influence on his poetry. For Miłosz, poetry had an eschatological dimension, a view deeply influenced by his distant cousin, the Lithuanian poet and playwright Oscar Miłosz. In his essay “A Few Words on Poetry,” Oscar Miłosz claimed that since prehistoric times, poetry has always followed the mysterious movements of the great soul of the people. He criticized his contemporaries—the French Symbolists—for their elitism, which perpetuated the schism between the poet and the great human family. He predicted that the new poetry would be that of the Bible: “a spacious prose hammered into verses.” For him, a truly inspired poet of the future will be able to transcend his paltry ego. Czesław Miłosz—thanks to this significant influence—resisted literary fashions. Moreover, in times of despair or dry spells in his writing, Miłosz would turn to translating the Bible. In his poem “Ars Poetica?” he writes: “I have always aspired to a more spacious form / that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose/and would let us understand each other without exposing / the author or reader to sublime agonies.” Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

16 pages, 299 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“Thou Art Skylarking with Me”: Travesty, Prophecy, and Ethical Mutuality in Moby-Dick

by Larry D. Bouchard

Religions 2022, 13(12), 1141; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13121141 - 24 Nov 2022

Viewed by 1672

Abstract

“A Bosom Friend,” Chapter 10 of Moby-Dick, concludes with a literary travesty on the Golden Rule, a norm of obligation to others as to self. If God’s will is that we treat our neighbors as ourselves, and if the narrator, Ishmael, desires [...] Read more.

“A Bosom Friend,” Chapter 10 of Moby-Dick, concludes with a literary travesty on the Golden Rule, a norm of obligation to others as to self. If God’s will is that we treat our neighbors as ourselves, and if the narrator, Ishmael, desires his neighbor Queequeg join him in Presbyterian worship, then he must join his new friend’s devotion to his god, Yojo: “ergo, I must turn idolator.” This is after Ishmael has heard Father Mapple’s sermon on Jonah, and after Queequeg has become his bedmate at the Spouter-Inn in New Bedford. Queequeg also heard Mapple preach, though left early to return to the inn. So the sermon scene is framed by Queequeg scenes. From one angle, putting Yojo beside the biblical God, or whale hunting with the Golden Rule, can seem to dismiss as absurd these juxtapositions’ terms and questions: of sin, the designs of God, and prophetic calling versus fate, chance, and whoever happens to be one’s neighbor. From another angle, were such terms merely ‘travestied’ as negation, little import would remain in deploying them. This essay considers how, in Chapters 7–12, 16–18, 94, and elsewhere in Moby-Dick, Melville’s juxtaposing parody, satire, travesty and the like with compelling religious and ethical concerns—a rhetoric he occasionally calls “skylarking”—contributes to the novel’s realization of a narrative ethics of mutuality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

15 pages, 277 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Bible in Native American Literature

by Scott Richard Lyons

Religions 2022, 13(11), 1120; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111120 - 18 Nov 2022

Viewed by 2359

Abstract

For at least a century the Bible played a significant, positive role in Native American letters starting with the eighteenth-century writings of Samson Occom. A product of the Great Awakening, Occom’s engagements with the Bible resembled those of other Protestant thinkers and writers [...] Read more.

For at least a century the Bible played a significant, positive role in Native American letters starting with the eighteenth-century writings of Samson Occom. A product of the Great Awakening, Occom’s engagements with the Bible resembled those of other Protestant thinkers and writers of his time, although his sermons were sometimes specifically tailored for Indian audiences and topics. After Occom, Indian authors in the nineteenth century such as Elias Boudinot and William Apess drew upon the Bible to make arguments against removal and “scientific racism.” In the twentieth century writers like Zitkala-Ša and Charles Alexander Eastman cast a critical eye on Christianity and reconsidered the virtues of traditionalism. John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks (1932) was the century’s fullest literary depiction of a traditional religion, but it came at the cost of concealing Black Elk’s actual religion, Catholicism. During the 1960s and 70s oral tradition was privileged over sacred scripture, as seen in N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968). While the Bible makes fewer appearances than it used to in Native American literature, it would be premature to suggest that Christianity is finished in Indian country. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

37 pages, 981 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Three Contemporary Russian Poets and Biblical Tradition: Sergey Zavyalov, Natalia Chernykh, Jaan Kaplinski

by Igor Georgievich Vishnevetsky

Religions 2022, 13(11), 1103; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111103 - 15 Nov 2022

Viewed by 2064

Abstract

The poets in question belong to different generations, as well as different cultural, ethnic, and even religious backgrounds. Ethnically Mordvinian Zavyalov (b. 1957), who is also a noted scholar and translator from Ancient Greek and Latin, and ethnically Russian Chernykh (b. 1969), who [...] Read more.

The poets in question belong to different generations, as well as different cultural, ethnic, and even religious backgrounds. Ethnically Mordvinian Zavyalov (b. 1957), who is also a noted scholar and translator from Ancient Greek and Latin, and ethnically Russian Chernykh (b. 1969), who is trained as a librarian and grew up among hippies, are both Eastern Orthodox Christians. Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021), half Polish and half Estonian, was born and died a Roman Catholic, yet for a considerable part of his life, until his gradual switch from the Estonian language to Russian, considered himself a “pagan.” The article focuses on these poets’ different forms of engagement with the Holy Scripture and practices of the Christian Church. Zavyalov’s groundbreaking experimental poem Advent: Leningrad, 1941 (Рождественский пост, 2009) intertwines fragments of liturgical services and recommendations for fasting around the time of Christmas with the voices of the besieged city, dying from famine during WW II. His poem’s cathartic effect is remarkable: the death is negated by Christ’s birth and history starts anew. His most recent poem I Saw Jesus: And He Was Christ (Я видел Иисуса: и Он был Христос, 2022), which will be discussed in this article, engages with the Holy Scripture and the practices of the Russian Orthodox church in an even more direct way. Chernykh’s poetry of recent decades deals with the relevance of the Bible for a practicing Christian in a largely non-Christian world. Furthermore, Kaplinski’s posthumous Russian collection Winged Fingerprint (Отпечаток крылатого пальца), which is to be published in 2022, can be described as a dialog with the Biblical God and death “after the end of everything.” The most prominent voice in Estonian letters, Kaplinski transforms his later lyrical poetry written in Russian into a spirited prayer for the salvation of everything seemingly “insignificant”, left out of “larger history”. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

15 pages, 356 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Richard Simon, Biblical Criticism and Voltaire

by Jan Starczewski

Religions 2022, 13(10), 995; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100995 - 20 Oct 2022

Viewed by 2559

Abstract

French Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire’s ambivalence vis-à-vis the biblical text is well documented. On the one hand he highlights irregularities and contradictions in Scripture to undermine the clergy’s authority and legitimacy. On the other, he clearly was fond of reading it and the sheer [...] Read more.

French Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire’s ambivalence vis-à-vis the biblical text is well documented. On the one hand he highlights irregularities and contradictions in Scripture to undermine the clergy’s authority and legitimacy. On the other, he clearly was fond of reading it and the sheer volume of his work devoted to it confirms that he was certainly not indifferent to its content. This article shows how Voltaire’s use of different biblical scholars, particularly the seventeenth-century French biblical critic Richard Simon, informed his understanding of Scripture and how it manifested in his works, both those of a satirical and of a serious tone. This analysis problematizes the role of religion and of biblical criticism in French seventeenth and eighteenth-century literature. If Richard Simon’s method was not always welcomed during his lifetime, his main goal was to pursue truth. Voltaire, however, used the tools of Simon to undermine traditional Christianity and to emphasize his own understanding of what religion entails. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

16 pages, 1789 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Bible between Literary Traditions: John C. H. Wu’s Chinese Translation of the Psalms

by Xiaochun Hong

Religions 2022, 13(10), 937; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100937 - 9 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2713

Abstract

In the history of Chinese Bible translation, the Psalms have been a privileged site for the encounter between biblical thinking, poetics, and Chinese classical literature. This encounter was initiated by the translators of the Delegates’ Version, followed by John Chalmers, and outstandingly represented [...] Read more.

In the history of Chinese Bible translation, the Psalms have been a privileged site for the encounter between biblical thinking, poetics, and Chinese classical literature. This encounter was initiated by the translators of the Delegates’ Version, followed by John Chalmers, and outstandingly represented in particular by John C. H. Wu吳經熊. In his version of the Psalms, underpinned by his cultural stance of “beyond East and West”, Wu borrows numerous Chinese idioms and popular verses and transposes Chinese traditions from Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Specifically, Wu’s rendition inaugurates an intertextual dialogue between the Psalms and Shijing, involving the disciplines of both comparative literature and comparative scripture at the same time. By adapting various Chinese classical poetry styles for his version of the Psalms, Wu transforms their spiritual traditions and broadens their representation spaces by injecting a Judeo-Christian spirit. Relocating the biblical texts among multifarious Chinese literary traditions, Wu’s translation of the Psalms achieves a deep interaction between the Bible and Chinese culture, provokes questions, and provides insights regarding the relation between biblical theology and intercultural poetics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

16 pages, 267 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“Let Us Have Our Libertie”: John Milton and Aemelia Lanyer Read Eve’s Fall

by Shaun Ross

Religions 2022, 13(10), 934; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100934 - 9 Oct 2022

Viewed by 1882

Abstract

This essay compares two Renaissance poetic narratives that interpret the story of Eve’s fall in Genesis: Aemelia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It explores how each uses Eve’s fall to ground a radical call to liberation from [...] Read more.

This essay compares two Renaissance poetic narratives that interpret the story of Eve’s fall in Genesis: Aemelia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It explores how each uses Eve’s fall to ground a radical call to liberation from oppressive hierarchical structures. In Milton’s case, these oppressive structures are political and ecclesial, while in Lanyer’s case they are the hierarchies of gender. It goes on to argue that there is a chiasmic relationship between these two narrative exhortations to liberty. In Paradise Lost, Milton’s endorses a political autonomy for the male subject that not only retains, but actively depends on the subordination of women to men’s domestic and spiritual rule within marriage. In Salve Deus, Lanyer utterly rejects the idea that women can only relate to God in such a mediated fashion. Yet, because of her precarious position as a commoner, and as a woman writing about religious matters, she depends on a more traditional appeal to her social superiors. The essay concludes with a consideration of Lanyer’s and Milton’s position within the evolution of modernity and what philosopher Charles Taylor calls a “direct-access society.” Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

13 pages, 279 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Michael Edwards: A Poet’s Vision of the Untimely Message of God

by John Marson Dunaway

Religions 2022, 13(10), 895; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100895 - 23 Sep 2022

Viewed by 2291

Abstract

Michael Edwards, professor of English literature at the Collège de France in Paris, poet, critic, and the first British subject to be elected to the French Academy, has turned his attention in recent years to biblical literature. In 2016 he published Bible et [...] Read more.

Michael Edwards, professor of English literature at the Collège de France in Paris, poet, critic, and the first British subject to be elected to the French Academy, has turned his attention in recent years to biblical literature. In 2016 he published Bible et poésie (Paris, Fallois). A translation of the sequel, Pour un christianisme intempestif (Paris, Fallois), was released in February of 2022 by Fortress Press under the title, Untimely Christianity. In the same year, the English translation of his 2016 volume, under the title The Bible and Poetry, will be published by New York Review Books. This study examines the poet-scholar’s perspective on scripture, on theology, on the art of translation and his opinions of various modern translations of the Bible and highlights the most useful insights he contributes. The notion of Christianity’s radical alterity is an important key to Edwards’s work. Christianity is foreign to us, it is strange, so the scriptures that reveal it are also radically other. We Christians have been so desensitized to that otherness by our familiarity with the text that we seldom are challenged by it with the force that energized it originally. Its immense countercultural potential for transforming us and our world is blunted so that we don’t truly hear the voice of God in it. Edwards’s essential purpose is to help us reawaken our ability to hear the Bible in its untimely, countercultural power. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

12 pages, 269 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Or, The Modern God: Biblical Allusions in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

by Robert S. Kawashima

Religions 2022, 13(9), 870; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090870 - 16 Sep 2022

Viewed by 12398

Abstract

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is largely organized around its explicit reference to Milton’s retelling of Genesis 2–3, Paradise Lost. Unfortunately, this reference to Milton has discouraged scholars from going back to the Old Testament itself. In fact, the novel contains three crucial biblical [...] Read more.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is largely organized around its explicit reference to Milton’s retelling of Genesis 2–3, Paradise Lost. Unfortunately, this reference to Milton has discouraged scholars from going back to the Old Testament itself. In fact, the novel contains three crucial biblical allusions. Most obvious, of course, are the allusions to creation (Genesis 1–3), which contain details not found in Milton’s epic. The biblically literate reader will be able to discern two more crucial biblical allusions: one to Exodus 32–33 and the other to the Book of Job. In both of these texts, we find a man—Moses and Job, respectively—seeking an audience with his creator, such as that Adam and Eve enjoyed in the garden. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

16 pages, 549 KiB

Open AccessArticle

From Timothy Tingfang Lew to Bing Xin: The Bible and Poetic Innovation at Yenching University

by Yi Yang

Religions 2022, 13(9), 850; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13090850 - 13 Sep 2022

Viewed by 1905

Abstract

The sweeping spread of Christianity in China since the late Qing Dynasty contributed to the construction of modern Chinese literature. Among scholars, this view is widely recognized. However, how the Bible as literature crossed the linguistic boundary and specifically influenced modern Chinese literature, [...] Read more.

The sweeping spread of Christianity in China since the late Qing Dynasty contributed to the construction of modern Chinese literature. Among scholars, this view is widely recognized. However, how the Bible as literature crossed the linguistic boundary and specifically influenced modern Chinese literature, especially the study of Chinese vernacular poetry, has not been thoroughly researched. Yenching University (1919–1952), a legendary ecclesiastical university in Peking, is famous for producing many famous modern writers. In the 1920s, at this university, the Bible deeply inspired and influenced several key writers in the history of modern Chinese literature and culture. This paper will review the poetry of these writers and analyze the following three questions: (1) How did biblical poetry take root in a historically non-Biblical cultural context through Christian higher education? (2) How was biblical poetry inherited and recreated in early twentieth century China in the circumstances of Yenching University? (3) How did Bible-inspired poetry contribute to and change the creation of modern Chinese literature? Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Bible in Literature: New Approaches to Literary Engagement with the Bible)

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