NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 22, 7 June 1923, Page 30

NOTES

Favorite Books Now and then prominent- men are invited by enterprising journals to supply a list of “the hundred bestbooks,” or of “the six books they would like to have on a desert island.” The lists vary as might be expected, and it is probable that no list gives us the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The man of common sense, faced with the prospect of life in a desert for a long time, ought to go for quentity as well as quality. Hence, we find the Bible and Shakspere almost invariably included. But is this playing the game ? The Bible is the work of many writers and it contains many books, Shakspere too contains a whole library of different works. • On the same principle one ought to be allowed to select all Dickens, all Scott, and all Balzac. If the selected six included the latter as well as the Bible and Shakspere, with, say, Dumas for the final selection, the average mortal need not worry for something to read even if no relief ship hove in sight for years and years and years. If the rule were strictly enforced it would be more interesting. Probably the majority of people best qualified to judge would select; St. John’s Gospel; The Imitation-; the Aeneid, St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa, Dante’s Divi-na Comedia, and Goethe’s Poems. Personally, this writer would ponder long before resigning Mick McQuaid. Imagine twenty-eight years of a weekly serial as a bulwark against Marie Corelli and Charles Garvice’s claims ! Translations Many people have to depend on translations for their knowledge of the works of the immortal writers. If you can read foreign languages you stand some chance of getting the spirit of the original, but if you depend on English your chances are remote. It is a sad truth that, with few exceptions, English translations are wretched, illiterate often, sometimes unfaithful, and hardly ever attractive. We all remember the awful style in which our Keys to the Classics used to give us a distaste for Homer or Vjrgil, and how they used to make us wonder what any sane person ever saw in the works of these ancient poets. Coming down to more recent times, what trashy things are the English versions of French masterpieces! English attempts to render Italian are awful and abominable from every point of view. And what is bad enough in prose is immeasurably beyond the dizziest limit if the translator tries his hand at verse. If you are not fettered to English the case is not so bad. The French are able to translate Russian literature remarkably well, and one can read a French version with delight. And if you want to explore the almost unknown (to English readers) wealth of Norwegian literature, you will find that the German translations, which we used to buy long ago in Reclam’s editions for a few pennies, are really admirable. Probably what is wrong with the English translations is that they are too often mere hack work, done by persons who know neither the original nor their own language sufficiently well to qualify them, for their task ; or else the translation is undertaken bv foreigners who know their own tongue but are not able to represent its genius in decent English, When we talk of Pope’s Homer, let us remember the caustic criticism; “It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but do not call it Homer.” If it occurs to you that Fitzgerald’s Omar is a good translation, remember that it is hardly a translation at all, and that it is rather a poem inspired by Omar, just as Byron’s “Know Ye the Land” was inspired by Goethe’s song: Kennst du das Land we die Citronen■ hluehn . Und in dunheln Lauh die gold, on gen gluehn. A Saint’s Masterpiece > When the Fathers of the Council of Trent placed the Summa of St. Thomas side by side with the Bible on the table round which they sat they paid to the

great Dominican scholar such honor as was never paid . before to any man. With a contempt begotten not of familiarity but of ignorance, scoffers deride the works of the master of Christian philosophy and theology, but for all their scoffing there is no work of human intelligence worthy to rank beside the large volumes which contain the harvest of the Saint’s studies on the eternal truths. For method, for clearness, for logical reasoning the Summa stands without an equal. To know it is to Snow, almost all that can be known about theology which is the most sublime study to which the mind of man can apply itself; to study it is to undertake a discipline and a training in clear thinking which is sought in vain elsewhere; to meditate on it is to enrich the mind and heart with spiritual treasures and with learning in its highest form. However, we are not at present concerned with that profound and monumental work, but with another little masterpiece of devotional literature which we owe to the same author. The feast of Corpus Christi brings to priests, with the regularity of the seasons, the office which Aquinas wrote from the fulness of his devout soul in order to honor the Blessed Sacrament and to make it loved among men. It is a wonderful office. It reveals the genius of the author at every turn. In the lessons for the second nocturne we have him at once as a matchless theologian and as a preacher who attains the highest flights of sacred eloquence. Take a passage at random from the second lesson, beginning: Nullum etiam sacrament um, etc., which we attempt to render thus: “There is no more salutary sacrament than this whereby sins are washed away, virtues increased, and the mind enriched with an abundance of all spiritual favors. It is offered up in the Church for the living and for the dead, in order that what was instituted for the salvation of all may benefit all. In fine, it is impossible to express the suavity of this Sacrament through which the fountain of spiritual sweetness is tasted; and the memory is recalled of that most surpassing love which in His Passion Christ disployed. Whence, that the immensity of this love might be more firmly fixed in the hearts of the faithful, at the Last Supper, having celebrated the-Pasch with the disciples, and being about to pass from this world to His Father, He instituted a;- a pp-pnnial memorial of His Passion this Sacrament, the fulfilment of the ancient figures, the greatest of His miracles: and IT© left to those who were to be saddened by Ills absence a singular comfort.” It would be difficult to produce any passage in which so much is compact in clear language as in that extract from St. Thomas's sermon. And no less wonderful are the hvmns of this office which prove that the Saint was a poet of first rank. In the Sacris Solemniis there is asplendid and triumphant ode in honor of the Eucharist, and the language vibrates with spiritual exultation. The Pange Lingua is the epic of the Institution, ending in the fervent adoration of the Tan turn Ergo in which the soul prostrates itself in adoration and wonder before the Miracle of the Love of Jesus Christ. The Verhum Supermini is a treatise in theology in the language of angels. . And if the Sistine Choir recently taught- us to appreciate the beauty of the closing stanzas—-the 0 Salutaris 71 —let us remember that there are also in this short composition four lines to have written which would have been more to the poet Sangulier than all his own works. They are :

Se nance ns dec!it socium, Convescens in edulium , Se maidens in ■ pretium, Se regnans dot in premium.

The Strasburg Clock

The wonderful working model of the Strasburg Clock, now on exhibition at the King’s Theatre, Dunedin, continues to attract throngs of interested and delighted sightseers. This beautiful model of the famous clock of Strasburg is now on its fourth and final week of exhibition in this city, and will be shown later in the principal provincial centres. . ' .