My Humanist Excercise

So, one of the ways John Milton used to learn about literature and language was that he would take poems and other pieces and translate them into another language, sit on them for a couple days, then translate them back. This would increase understanding not only of the foreign language, but would also give a new light to the content being translated. So, in the spirit of Renaissance Pedagogy, I took it upon myself to translate the first 6 lines of Paradise Lost into Chinese. Just for reference, here is the original:

Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing heavenly muse,

 (I know what you must be thinking "6 whole lines, careful there," but it's a lot more time-consuming than I expected!) Here is the Chinese:

Fleecy Things

I've had a lot of things on my mind, but as I've been thinking about redemption, I've wanted to revisit some of the thoughts that were going through my head when I wrote my sonnet, "Lamb Child." This is a paired sonnet to accompany the first. I'm not quite content with the start or the end yet, but in any case, you can decide what its all supposed to mean...

FLEECY THINGS
And now a solemn lay to thee rehearsed
Of stripèd beasts and shade-shorn fleecy things.
"Dear lamb, knowst thou who made thee in the first?"
And hearest thou that lark forlorn that sings
the night'ngale song? Learn from the blessed day
How heaven beckoned back the dayspring star
With closèd mouth in silent kyrie.
Behold the Tyger mute, stripes made to bear;
His regal pelt unparted stand and see!
Oh thou that grazed Elysian pastures fair,
Did he who made that slouching beast make thee?
     Lamb child, forsake desire, rebuke thy art
     And open now the pyx box of thy heart.

Psalm 100

Sonnet
From Far and Wide with joyful revelry
Praise and serve the Lord and come and sing
With gladness in your hearts before his chivalry.
O search your hearts and know that He is King!
Our Lord with kindly touch our souls hath made
And to Him great obeisance shall we show
For we are His and His we shall remain,
As tender sheep in watchful care to grow.
O come! Come in to Him with grateful heart
Let court and gate reverberate with praise.
For thankful people with Him will not part
And always bless His name with all our days.
The Lord is Good and is forever kind.
His truth it will endure through earth's unwind.





Psalm
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

Lamb Child

Remembrest thou that silent, starry floor,
Or thrones of ember, song, and silver light?
Recallest thou that bright empyrean shore,
And sphere-song that reproves the blackest night?
How art thou fallen from this sorr'wing sky
O Lucifer,           thou morning star and son
Of that bright glory forfeited, to fly
In proud rebellion earliest begun.
For thou in fatal flight didst fall to earth--
As Icharus, his waxy wings diswed--
No child of life, no son of mortal birth
But ashen babe of feral fires fed.
    Lamb child, far from thy long forgotten home
    How long in solemn darkness needst thou roam?

This sonnet is based loosely on Isaiah 14:12. One of the things that I am most excited about this semester in terms of literary content is trying to understand Lucifer better through Paradise Lost. Does God love him? Do we love him, and should we? On my mission, I cringed a little when an old man prayed for Satan, but I wonder if he was not so far from truth: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" (Matt 5:44). 

Melancholy (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Difficulties of Life)

As I was reading the dual poems I found myself more drawn to “Il Penseroso.”  I began reading the introduction to the two poems with the thought, “Why on earth would you want to be melancholy?”  My reading for “Il Penseroso” ended up being colored by the first footnote from “L’Allegro” concerning the word Melancholy.  In the footnote, they mention a connotation for melancholy:  “Aristotle remarked briefly that all extraordinary men in the arts and sciences were melancholic, thus associating melancholy with genius” (1929).  In the opening lines of “Il Penseroso,” Milton banishes the opposing Mirth calling it “vain deluding joys” that “Dwell in some idle brain” (l. 1, 5).  He then goes on, saying of Melancholy, “Hail divinest Melancholy, / Whose saintly visage is too bright / To hit the sense of human sight; / And therefore to our weaker view, / O’erlaid with black, staid Wisdom’s hue” (l. 12-16).  With melancholy comes experience and with experience comes wisdom, a far more valuable thing for mankind than a bit of pleasure (as nice as that is at times).  I think Milton’s point is that the pleasures of experience (or melancholy) are not instantaneous, but require time.  Certainly this is a viewpoint that appeals to me from an LDS perspective (2 Nephi 2: 15:  “…it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.”).

I don’t believe that Milton is absolutely writing off Mirth, but his point in “Il Penseroso” is that we can’t live in it all the time.  The greater light and wisdom comes from our daily experiences.