  In the twelfth century—the time of the great Crusades—we find the noblest and purest of Latin hymns. It is the age of Hildebert, Abelard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter of Cluny, and Adam of St. Victor. But among them all I find no one who has inspired a deeper and more lovely desire for the heavenly land than Bernard of Cluny. The information about him is very meagre. He was born at Morlaix in Brittany, of English parents. He seems to have attained to no ecclesiastical dignity—such men seldom care for baubles and trinkets. But his is as true a soul as ever burned like a star on a summer night, against the warm, obscure, palpitating heaven of eternal hope. The date of his prominence is fixed by the fact that Peter the Venerable was his abbot, and it is therefore included between 1122 and 1156. I have (in The Heavenly Land) myself assigned the Laus Patriae Coelestis—his famous and only poem, which is addressed to Abbot Peter, to 1145 or thereabouts. His single up-gush of melody is a lamentation over the evil condition of the times in which he lives. They were indeed days to sadden the soul of the saint; and he called his poem De Contemptu Mundi; for he despised the immundus mundus—the foul world in which he was forced to remain. It consists of some three thousand lines of dactylic hexameter, and was first published (so says Trench, who is its step-parent) by Matthias Flacius Illyricus in his scarce and little known supplement to the Catalogus Testium Veritatis. In this “Catalogue of Witnesses to the Truth” he gathers all those who have testified against the papacy, and the supplement, Varia doctorum piorumque Virorum de Corrupto Ecclesiae Statu Poemata (1556), is made up of hymns and poems in which the pious within the Church, as well as without her walls, sorrowed over her corruption. Bernard’s poem is sometimes known, therefore, by his own title, De Contemptu Mundi, and sometimes by that given by Trench to his cento of about one hundred lines, Laus Patriae Coelestis, the “Praise of the Heavenly Land.” From this cento one would derive altogether an erroneous idea of the whole; but Dr. Neale, who wrote with the full text before him, although he paraphrased but part of it, tells us that the poem, in great part, is a bitter satire on the fearful wickedness of the times. It was the part Trench passed by for which Matthias Flacius Illyricus, its first editor, cared the most. The sins and greediness of the Court of Rome are the theme of the eighty-five lines he has embodied in the text of the Catalogus itself. By both that and the poems of his supplement, he sought to justify the Protestant Reformation on the side of Christian discipline and morals. The translators have had a hard problem in Bernard’s poem, and but few have attempted to “bend the bow of Ulysses.” Dr. Neale has achieved the most popular and useful result, in the version from which “Jerusalem the Golden” has been extracted, but he does not pretend to literalness. “My own translation,” he says, “is so free as to be little more than an imitation.” Dr. Coles has gone straight away from the dactyls and made a version in anapests—a metre which does not do justice to Bernard. Archbishop Trench has rendered a few lines in the same measure as the original. I have myself followed (in 1867) the exact metre and rhyme of the original poem; but such a version is rather curious than useful. The translation signed by “O. A. M., Cherry Valley,” is in its typography, while fine and clear, affectedly antique. The metrical power of this version is inferior. It is dactylic but not fluent, and does not at all represent the original. That by Mr. Gerard Moultrie is praised by Dr. Trench as metrically close and poetically beautiful. I have no hesitation in saying it is the best version which has appeared in English. It seems to keep both to the spirit and the letter of the original, and is in all respects a remarkable achievement. It, however, omits the double rhyme, and thus avoids the chief difficulty of a reproduction of the form of the original. That by Rev. Jackson Mason (1880) will not stand a comparison with Mr. Moultrie’s, as it halts and breaks in its measure and produces an effect on the ear far from pleasant. The difficulty of translation is due entirely to the character of the verse. Bernard himself declares “unless that spirit of wisdom and understanding had been with me, and flowed in upon so difficult a metre, I could not have composed so long a work.” Not that this form of verse was original with him. Peter Damiani has used it in one of his hymns to our Lord’s mother: “O miseratrix, O dominatrix, praecipe dictu Ne devastemur, ne lapidemur, grandinis ictu.” And, to go farther back still, a certain Theodulus, who lived in the reign of the Emperor Zeno (474-91) wrote a poem of nine hundred lines on Bernard’s own theme, De Contemptu Mundi, in the same metre: “Pauper amabalis et venerabilis est benedictus Dives inutilis insatiabilis, est maledictus. Qui bona negligit et mala diligit intrat abyssum; Nulla pecunia, nulla potentia liberat ipsum.” A glance will show the nature of this trouble which the patient Bernard encountered. Take the two lines: “Hora novÍssima, tempora pÉssima sunt, vigilÉmus! Ecce minaciter, imminet Árbiter, ille suprÉmus.” That is: “These are the lÁtter times, These are not bÉtter times, Let us stand waiting! Lo, how with Áwfulness, He, first in lÁwfulness, Comes, arbitrating!” Of course it is infinitely harder to the translator who is restricted, than to the composer who can eddy around his subject—led by the rhyme as much and as freely as he will. And this is what Bernard always does. His verses are ejaculations, desires, lamentations, longings—measured out by the “leonine hexameter” which he employs. To show the beauty still untranslated, as well as to exhibit more of the structure of the poem, I append four of these lines: “Pax ibi florida, pascua vivida, viva medulla, Nulla molestia, nulla tragoedia, lacryma nulla. O sacra potio, sacra refectio, pax animarum O pius, O bonus, O placidus sonus, hymnus earum.” Thus Englished, closely: “Peace is there flourishing, Pasture-land nourishing, Fruitful forever. There is no aching breast, There is no breaking rest, Tears are seen never. O sacred draught of bliss! Peace, like a waft of bliss! Sustenance holy! O dear and best of sounds, Heard in the rest of sounds, Hymned by the lowly!” Or thus, less closely and more according to the spirit of the poem: “Peace doth abide in thee; None hath denied to thee Fruitage undying. Thou hast no weariness; Naught of uncheeriness Moves thee to sighing. Draught of the stream of life, Joy of the dream of life, Peace of the spirit! Sacred and holy hymns, Placid and lowly hymns, Thou dost inherit!” So strange and subtle is the charm of this marvellous poem, with its abrupt and startling rhythm, that it affects me even yet, though I have but swept my fingers lightly over a single chord. I seem to myself to have again taken into my hand the old familiar harp, whose strings I have often struck in times of darkness or of depression of soul, and to be tuning it once more to the heavenly harmony which the old monk tried to catch. Perhaps some day, when the clouds are removed, I shall see him, and understand even better than now the glory that lit his lonely cell, and made him feel that “Earth looks so little and so low When faith shines full and bright.” |
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