The Book of Theseus

    

                                            l o n g p o s t

    In the wake of the attack on Salman Rushdie, I would like to preface this post with a few words: political attacks on artists are nothing new. Excommunication, exile, death threats, assassination attempts, imprisonment, torture–these are the real life physical and psychological threats many the greatest minds have had to face for the transformative power of their ideas. I have never read Rushdie. He will lose an eye, due to the attacker stabbing his face. He will lose an eye, but he will gain two, as today my eyes will begin to read The Satanic Verses that the extremists find so intolerable. Reading will be my revenge. Writing will be my diplomacy. I will hold my ground in writing what I believe because of the integrity of writers like Rushdie who refuse to be anything but honest. I don’t know what that means yet for these two books, but I do know it will involve taking risks where I might otherwise go for people pleasing. Now is not  the time for intellectual meekness, there is too much at stake, too many people who are yet to be born into this world that we are now shaping.

The Greatest Epic You’ve Never Heard Of

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on developing a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s first great epic, “LaTeseida,” AKA the “Book of Theseus'', which is subtitled (or rather subverted by a second title) “The Marriage of Emily.”

This book has two translations, one from 1974 by the comprehensively talented Bernadettte Marie McCoy and in 2002 by the erudite Vincenzo Traversa. My translation will be cross referencing both with versions of the Medieval Florentine Italian. I saw versions because there are many. These are the days before the printing press, when every word of every book that existed had to be handwritten. Boccaccio, being an unsatisfied perfectionist regarding this epic (which he hoped would be as foundational to the Italian language as The Aeneid was to Latin), was constantly revising, writing in the margins and changing the story. As a translator, this is both a relief and a challenge. On the one hand, I can let go of the mythical idea of a final and true translation, taking instead a broader vision for what the story made possible. On the other hand, the source material for my translation becomes much larger and asks for an interpreter as much as a translator, which seems a more difficult task. I want to respect the possible visions Boccaccio had for this story and make extensive use of the scholars that have worked hard to keep this story alive, but I also wish to make this story living to new readers. I talk about how I plan to do this below (invitations).

There are issues with both of these existing translations, and as you can see, even more issues with recovering a so-called original or definitive version from Boccaccio himself, but the translations that exist are fairly solid iterations to build from. The real issue is the problem of accessibility. For me, the issues of accuracy and other scholarly squabbles are secondary to the fact that any version of the Theseiad in English is functionally unavailable to the average reader. This is the first great epic in Italian, the first book printed in that language, a book that was widely read across Europe by the literate classes, and recited out loud to those from illiterate classes, a book that for 500 years drew crowds of listeners, eager readers, inspired musicians, painters, yet more poets, a book that recounts the story of the western world’s first democracy is virtually lost to history.

 As my previous translators and their devoted readers can attest, the reasons for its absence from the book market have nothing to do with its merit or importance to the history of literature. In the English language alone we have divinely inspired adaptations that were foundational built directly from Boccaccio’s Teseida produced by arguably the two greatest English poets who ever lived, Shakespeare and Chaucer. The plot synopsis itself reads like an unavoidable classic–nothing less than military colonization that led to the founding of Athens and the establishment of the Greek empire. Boccaccio himself had dozens of famous models of this story to work from. It seems a strange and conspicuous gap in literary history that we should have so little accessibility to this book. 

When I first set out to track this book down I discovered that these two translations were only available for reference. Interlibrary loan on World Cat helped me out a lot. Only a few hundred copies of this book are around in English, and they are guarded jealously by those who own them, whether they be libraries or professors. Translations for this book which could (and will be after I am finished) be freely available in the public domain. Instead, they run 300-1,300 dollars as used paperbacks online. This is as absurd as it is antithetical to the entire purpose of Boccaccio writing in Italian, which was to make the story as accessible as possible by making it in the contemporary, changing language of the living, breathing society that surrounded him. This is a story for the people, by the people. Boccaccio was not an aristocrat, he was a bastard, he worked his whole life in jobs he fucking hated in order to get by, please his family–sounds pretty familiar, right?

Invitations

My first invitation has been to the publishers and scholars involved in the existing translations of the story to make their books available in a print-on-demand format and for eReaders like the Kindle. This should have been done ages ago, I’ll make no secret of my frustrations that scholars of the middle ages act like technology and readership hasn’t changed since the middle ages. This is a story in the public domain, a classic–okay this is beginning to sound less like an invitation and more like a threat. And while we’re at it, why don’t we record an audiobook version of this story? If others don’t do this, I will do it myself, though I have no experience in any of this. I would rather an imperfect version is available than none at all.

My second invitation is a bit lighter and directed towards the public. I thought it would be fitting not only to make public the final, end product of this labor of love, but to invite people in on the beautiful fun of translating a classic like this. For this reason, I’ll be making announcements and updates on my progress and offering you all the opportunity to make comments on the google doc in which I am creating, or rather, recreating this lost literary masterwork. I do not speak Italian, much less medieval Italian, but for this project, I will be learning basics that will help me tune these two English translations to the chords of the original sources. It will not be perfect or totally true to the original, for example, this will be a more or less prose translation, as opposed to a metered poetic version. It will be the best that I, and whoever cares to join, can do.

The decision to do a prose translation itself will likely have scholars including poor Boccaccio upset. We will not be the first to “ruin” the poem. As I’ve mentioned, Chaucer and Shakespeare, to my mind, made lesser versions of it in their inspired adaptations. Shakespeare, in the Prologue to The Two Noble Kinsmen explicitly and here I cannot help but quote at length:

“Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives;

There, constant to eternity, it lives.” 

….

How will it shake the bones of that good man

And make him cry from underground “O, fan

From me the witless chaff of such a writer

That blasts my bays and my famed works makes

lighter

Than Robin Hood!” This is the fear we bring;

For, to say truth, it were an endless thing

And too ambitious, to aspire to him,

Weak as we are, and, almost breathless, swim

In this deep water. Do but you hold out

Your helping hands, and we shall tack about

And something do to save us. You shall hear

Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear

Worth two hours’ travel. To his bones sweet sleep;

Here he is talking about Chaucer, but he may as well also have been talking about Boccaccio. I suppose that’s more credit than Chaucer gives his source in the opening lines of the Knight’s Tale when he says, “The stories of old have made known to us that there was once a king named Theseus.” Boccaccio was hardly old to Chaucer, who likely met the man shortly before ripping off his story, but that’s another story. My point is that it’s okay to be rough around the edges  with this story, and our attempts at  rendering it, if they fail, will hopefully inspire competitors to succeed where we have not. 

In another post, for those who are brought into the inner circle working on this project, I will outline my beliefs about how Boccaccio wanted this story told, and how we can render a translation that both respects his intentions as well as the interpretive history of the story and the ways it has brought so much value to people throughout history. Often these are the same, but at times, we will have to choose. This is because different people read different versions, and because the print version eventually codified certain versions of the story. For now, I will say that this is an anti-war novel, and our translation will reflect that.

The Mirror Work

I consider this project to be a twin to another project that I am working on which is effectively a mirrored story set in a near future sci-fi Mexico City, where the foundations of a political world are being built while surrounded by increasing chaos and barbarity. Rather than using Shakespeare or Chaucer’s version as a template, I have found in reading Boccaccio that I have a brother who is telling this story for the same purpose as I am. Chaucer and Shakespeare made light of this classic story as a response to Boccaccio by creating comic adaptations. While I hope to make you all laugh in my translation and its twin from the future, the purpose is not to make a criticism of chivalry or the absurdity of romantic medieval love, or at least, not primarily. 

My reading of Boccaccio is that he has made of this classic tale a spiritually radical, proto-feminist, anti-war epic. I have to drop my professional pretense here and say, these pointers don’t even begin to depict the humanitarian mission Bocaccio is on in this story. 

Imagine being this young Italian poet on the frontiers of what is about to become the Renaissance, the great rebirth of culture, the explosion that brought us modernity. You count Petrarch and Dante as your close friends and teachers. You see in their work the seed of an entirely new soul being kindled within the dark ashes of war, famine, plague, exile. You see the foundations of a new psyche being constructed within the hearts of these writers. You see hope, peace, progress, sanity. You want to write a book that encapsulates the spiritual ascension of rising from the ashes of unnecessary violence. You’ve written short works to some renown, but this grand moment requires grand action. You do not feel up to the task. How could you compare to those teachers and friends, let alone the ancient masters who penned the tale in days of old? You look around you. You realize nobody will do it if you do not. Your friends encourage you, they make it bigger than your fear. They help you to know  that your work is an act of love, that it will bring you closer to God. And so, with apprehension, sincerity, and honesty you decide to tell the tale of the founding of the first known democracy, or rather, you decide to retell, and to contest against even the greatness of Homer and Virgil who gave their whole language nobility.

 At night, you pray to God with utter devotion and surrender to allow His glory to pour through your heart and mind so that you may accomplish his purpose. You pray to the muses, which are the imaginary children of God, to come to you, to whisper in your ear, to tug your heartstrings with the music of love, for clarity of cognition, precision, and blessed compassion. “How am I” you ask yourself, “to write a story in an anti-war war book? A love story which is the antidote to devastating hatred?” In the morning, in front of the empty page, you cry for a moment in gratitude for being who you are, that all the suffering you’ve endured will, at least to you, and perhaps a friend mean something, teach something essential about how to live by divine will. You surrender yourself, opening to the words, struggling when necessary, hoping, praying for truth, beauty, and love to somehow materialize through the mystery of silence. You lose yourself within the beating heart of your imagination. God alone can work such miracles.

You can begin to understand the liberties I may take in my translation or in my mirror-story. This is not just the work of a scholar or even a poet, but a devout soul seeking the perfection of wisdom. The other titles come secondary to the purpose of shepherding humanity beyond its sin and senseless suffering. I do not just want to write these books, I want to be the person who can write these books. I want to invite any who have interest to partake in this process. How can someone write a book about democracy alone? It can not be done alone and maintain the name of democratic.

The Order of Time

I feel perhaps akin to how Boccaccio may have felt writing in 1339 on the eve of what would either be a second dark age, or an irreversible liberation of the human spirit. We live in times that feel like they could either be the end or the beginning of a new political paradigm. We are struggling to find our way, trying to resurrect the best of what history can tell us about how the enduring virtues of our human goodness can triumph, even if we stumble, or make mistakes we can’t fix. We are the same age, 27, writing at a point of transition when the blithe pleasures of youth give way to the honor of maturation. Nobody is asking us to be perfect, they’re just asking us to be kind and thoughtful. 

The literary supergroup that will form the core of my editorial team is aptly named “The Order of Time.” This is especially fitting because of these two books, which share the umbrella title of “The Mirror Project.” One is set in the ancient past, the other in the near future, while I am in  the middle reconciling the two, giving meaning, purpose, and progress to the often arbitrary movement of time. History repeats itself, cycles, and it is amazing to me that what can lay dormant as a seed for over a thousand years  from the Thebiad of Statius to Bocaccio could one day re-emerge and take the world by storm.

And it is worth describing for a moment what kind of storm it created. The Theseid was very popular in its own time and for about four centuries after its publication. It was read by intellectuals and professors and endured in the hands of the aristocracy, getting printings and reprintings and influencing artists, writers, merchants, the clergy, and politicians. It became the most popular book among the emerging literati of the middle class as well in the 15th century and on, getting translations into French and Greek (French then was the lingua-franca). According to some scholars The first printed edition was published in Ferrara in 1475 and the Teseida thus became the first text to be printed in the Italian language.5 If true, that would be enough to put the text center-stage in any course of Italian literature. Translations into English have been very few and far between. To make matters worse, as I’ve mentioned, no eBook exists, and hard copies run up to thousands of dollars. 

This translation is sure  to be a quiet resurrection rather than one that springs to life  in a lightning bolt of popularity and readership. There will be a small, but devoted  group of scholars and intellectuals that will find my translation with great relief and gratitude for the service we’ve done. I believe people will be inspired by how this translation came about and forgive its imperfections because of its sincerity and the way in which it has come about by peer to peer workshopping. Everyone loves when a work of passion is given away for free, and it has been a joy so far to make it free.

Dedications and acknowledgements

Boccaccio wrote an extended dedication in the opening section of the book, stating that he was writing for the love of his life, Fiammetta, a person who likely did not exist and was simply an imaginary muse. He stated explicitly to anyone who would listen that he was writing the first epic in the Italian language, and was answering the call of Dante who first declared that there was no military epic yet told in their vernacular. 

The dedication and acknowledgements will be one and the same. Democracy belongs  most to the ones who build and maintain it, and so it should celebrate and edify them, as humble as these builders typically are. There are professors, family, friends, the Order of Time, students. In time their names will all materialize on what is sure to be a lengthy litany of gratitude that prefaces the book. All in time.

 The context of this translation and its mirror is less auspicious than its sources, but no less radically sincere or centered on love. My books share this with Boccaccio, they are about love, for those I love. There is so much still to learn about this book, so much to add to this post, I am sure, but this feels an adequate moment to release one other from this introduction. I hope you join me in embarking on this voyage. Pray with me now, to the muses, to grant us success in our endeavor! Let inspiration come to all who pray for it! May we all find a safe port after  stormy weather! May we all find great love needed to build a whole new civilization!

Do but you hold out

Your helping hands, and we shall tack about

And something do to save us.