The Psalms for All
Barbara Burns talks to Hannibal Hamlin, whose volume The Psalms in English, 1530-1633 has just been published in the MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations series.
BB. Your impressive collection of English prose and verse translations of the Psalms spans more than a century of the early modern period. Why were the Psalms such an important cultural phenomenon at this time?
HH. The Psalms have probably been among the best-known biblical texts for most of their history. Jews and Christians of all sorts still read and sing the Psalms, in most languages across the world, in public worship and private devotion. I’m also struck by how many modern and contemporary poets are still responding to the Psalms with their own adaptations and original poems. Paul Celan, George Oppen, Stephen Yenser, Khaled Mattawa, Grace Schulman, Denise Levertov, Mark Jarman, Jericho Brown, Jacqueline Osherow, Rita Dove, and Susan Stewart have all written Psalm poems. And recent albums by Paul Simon and Nick Cave are both called Seven Psalms.
Psalms Live by Shane and Shane; Psalms by Sandra McCracken
Martin Luther’s first Bible translations were Psalms, but Psalms were precious to Catholics as well as Protestants. The difference for Protestants was translation. Psalms were translated into vernacular languages along with the rest of the Bible, but there were further translations for singing or personal devotions. Even the act of turning the Psalms into English, or into meter, became a popular devotional practice. For poets, the Psalms offered an irrefutable justification of the practice of poetry, which wasn’t always seen as the best way to spend your time. If King David, as well as Moses and Solomon, wrote Psalms, and Psalms were poetry, as everyone from the Church Fathers on asserted, how could writing poetry not be an admirable vocation or profession?
BB. The anthology includes a broad range of translations by both men and women. There are kings and queens, clergymen, poets and writers, as well as lesser-known figures. There are Protestants, some of whom were martyred, and recusant Catholics. Why did so many people feel a desire to translate the Psalms, and what does this remarkable array of translators tell us about the religious landscape of the day?
HH. To me, this is one of the most exciting things about this anthology. Probably more than any other volume in the series, it offers a fair cross-section of English society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are Catholics and Protestants, and Church of England Protestants as well as radical separatists. Kings and Queens, as you say, as well as various aristocrats, but also ‘Dod the Silkman’ as George Wither called him derisively, and many other ordinary men and women from up and down the social spectrum.
And the Psalms were everywhere. Some translated them as part of officially sanctioned (in both, opposite, senses of that word) Bible projects, or to make them available for congregational singing. Some intended their translations for more particular religious communities, like recusant Catholics, Calvinists in exile, persecuted early reformers, Royalists in defeat. Many translated the Psalms for personal or even private reasons, after periods of illness, in celebration of their monarchs or patrons, for members of their families, or as part of their own devotional practice. The best English poets turned to the Psalms because of their reputation as the best poems ever written. Most had no idea what this might mean in Hebrew, but they were inspired to craft versions that reflected the best that English verse might achieve — as Donne put it in his poem on the Sidney Psalms, ‘the highest matter in the noblest form’.
BB. Why the Psalms? How did your own interest in this subject develop?
HH. Well, the story begins when I was nine years old and became a choirboy in the Anglican Church of Canada. One of the first things I learned was to sing the Coverdale Psalms to Anglican chant, and I also sang Psalm verses in anthems and motets and the music of the liturgy. Later on, I sang the Psalms to Gregorian chant in Anglican and Catholic churches, and in other musical settings like Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, the Bach Motets, or the Monteverdi Vespers.
When I finally arrived at graduate school, I began to realize just how many Renaissance poets, as well as ordinary people, had written versions of the Psalms, and also how the Psalms had become so familiar to my inner ear. I discovered I could hear them wherever they turned up, as allusions in works of literature like Shakespeare’s plays, Spenser’s great Faerie Queene, Milton’s epic poems, and in the lyrics of Donne and Herbert. The Psalms, it seemed, were everywhere in Renaissance England, which led me to coin the phrase ‘Psalm Culture’, and my career was off and running.
BB. Can you give us a flavour of the different approaches to translating the Psalms which your volume illustrates?
HH. I take a broad approach to ‘translation’, because that’s the approach taken in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of course, writers and readers were aware that some translations were closer to or freer with the originals than others. But it was a sliding scale, or really more of a bubbling soup. The most literal translations of the Bible, in the modern sense of the term, are the English prose translations that began with Miles Coverdale and were revised through until the King James Bible of 1611. All the English Bible translators were committed to what today is called formal equivalence, that is, trying to capture the sense of the original word for word, rather than rendering Hebrew and Greek idioms into English ones, or aiming to convey the sense of the original in familiar terms, which is the practice favored by some modern English Bibles.
This means that, despite the many advances in our understanding of biblical languages and cultures, the early translations are closer to the originals in some fundamental ways than some modern versions. Beyond the English Bibles, Psalm translators were generally ignorant of Hebrew, so most worked at second- or third-hand from translations in Latin or German or even English. For us, most of the results are paraphrases, but what’s the difference between a paraphrase and translating for ‘dynamic equivalence’, to use the modern term? No translation can perfectly transpose one language into another, because no two languages are exactly equivalent. Every translation is of necessity an interpretation. William Hunnis, who turned the seven Penitential Psalms into a book of almost one hundred pages, knew he was expanding the originals. But he might well have believed his interpolations were revealing meaning already implicit ‘between the lines’ or by reading verses in cross-reference to passages elsewhere in the Bible, which was common practice. Translating Scripture was also a peculiar practice for believers, since many understood the truth to be somewhere above and beyond the words on the page, whose meaning would be revealed by the Holy Spirit, whatever the choices of particular translators.
BB. You also include some so-called ‘collage Psalms’ which don’t correspond to the biblical Psalms as we conventionally know them. Can you explain what these were?
HH. This probably grew out of the practice of reading the Bible as a kind of massive hypertext, in which the meaning of a passage might be revealed by reading another passage somewhere else. This is why so many Bibles had (and still have) marginal cross-references. These were made possible by the addition of verse numbers to the Bible in the mid-sixteenth century. Once you started thinking in chapter and verse, you might start to combine these in original ways. So some Christians created new Psalms by recombining parts of the originals, like Frankenstein and his monster, except that for believers the truth remained ‘alive’ in every part, and the new ‘Psalm’ was not monstrous but pious, no doubt guided by the Holy Spirit. Some went further still and wrote entirely new ‘Psalms’, using biblical style or language, or just modeling their prayers and praises on the Psalms they knew. I didn’t include these, since they seem really beyond translation in any reasonable sense, but we could say they’re still on the spectrum.
BB. This has clearly been a very substantial project, resulting in a volume of over 650 pages. What were the most rewarding aspects of bringing this study to fruition?
HH. I suppose even I, after studying English Renaissance Psalms for 30 years, was still surprised to find how many Psalm translations, paraphrases, and adaptations I didn’t know existed. Some of these I discovered myself, others were introduced by friends and colleagues. John Stubbs is famous for slandering Queen Elizabeth, and losing a hand for it, but who knew he paraphrased the Psalms?
I also hadn’t known of the long collage Psalms of the weird doctor-magician Simon Forman. These, like the Psalms of Henry Clifford, Michael Cosworth, Sir John Harington, and Edmond Scory, survive only in manuscript and have never been published. Francis Davison put together a collection of Psalms by himself and those he knew or knew of, including Thomas Carew and John Donne, and these circulated in multiple manuscripts without ever finding their way into print. I’m sure there are other Tudor and Stuart Psalms in manuscript that I haven’t found, but that will be unearthed by others in due course.
One exciting discovery was not of an unknown Psalm translator but an unknown manuscript of one well known. The biblical translations into meter by George Sandys were popular in the seventeenth century, especially among Royalists, but a manuscript of several Psalms in the Bodleian seems to be the earliest record of his Psalm translation, apparently done at the command of Charles I. Gathering all these Psalms was a challenge, but editing them was another, some existing in multiple versions, some in peculiar formats, so I had to decide how to present them to a modern reader. Annotation was also a challenge, mostly in restricting myself to only what was necessary. Otherwise, the volume would have ballooned even larger!
BB. It’s probably unfair to ask if you have a favourite in this collection, but are there one or two examples which are in some way distinctive or important for you?
HH. I have to start with Philip and especially Mary Sidney. Their Psalms are starting to get the appreciation they’re due, but they really are some of the most magnificent poems of the English Renaissance, unfairly neglected for a long time because of our modern prejudice against so-called ‘unoriginal’ poems and religious verse. But there are also some much less well-known gems in the collection. Abraham Fraunce’s Psalms seem a bit strange at first, since he’s using a kind of Classical metre, but they’re very powerful and moving. Sir Thomas Wyatt is hardly an unknown poet, but his Penitential Psalms are really his magnum opus, a kind of penitential epic, and they deserve far more attention than they’ve received.
With vapoured eyes he looketh here and there,
And when he hath awhile himself bethought,
Gathering his sprites that were dismayed for fear,
His harp again unto his hand he rought.
Tuning accord by judgement of his ear,
His heart’s bottom for a sigh he sought,
And therewithal upon the hollow tree
With strainèd voice again thus crieth he.
Some really superb Psalms few if any will have read were composed by Joseph Bryan, Henry Clifford, and Phineas Fletcher. Psalm 104’s rich celebration of the natural world has inspired many poets, and though the wonderful version by Henry Vaughan was too late for the anthology, there are superb paraphrases by Sir Henry Wotton, George Sandys, and the Scot Sir David Murray. Each of them tweaks the biblical flora and fauna according to their own tastes and experience, though everyone seems fond of the rabbit.
BB. In what ways do these translations challenge conservative views on treating the Bible as Scripture?
HH. Well, I’d first point out that none of the translators I included probably considered the Bible as anything other than Scripture. With the possible exception of George Gascoigne (who is always slippery), they would all have thought of their work as having some serious devotional purpose, whether they were aiming at a literal prose rendition, a metrical version for singing, or an elaborate ‘artificial’ (in the positive, Renaissance sense) poem. Since at least the nineteenth century, there has been disagreement about whether we can read the Bible as literature. C.S. Lewis, for instance, wrote that to read the Bible as literature is not to read the Bible.
I can hardly tell people what to believe, but I prefer the argument of Robert Alter that, whatever else it may be, the Bible is and always has been literature, so to read it as if it isn’t is misguided. Jesus spoke constantly in parables, a kind of allegory. He also used metaphor, unless we assume he really was a door, a vine, and water. The Bible is rich in metaphor, simile, and other figures of speech, the dialogues in Job and the Song of Solomon are so artful some have tried to turn them into plays, and the stories of Saul and David are among the most powerful narratives of the ancient world. The Psalms are brilliant poems, showing to the highest degree the art and technique favored by ancient Hebrew poets, even if those differ from the meter and rhyme favored in European vernaculars. As I write in my introduction, I hope that the Psalms in this collection will appeal to some as religious writing, even Scripture, and not just as artful (or awful) poems, or the literary remains of a bunch of dead English Christians.
Archbishop Matthew Parker, who oversaw the translation of the Bishops’ Bible, and who wrote his own metrical Psalter, urged readers to do what they liked with the Bishops’ Bible. He hoped it would please, but if it didn’t, they should correct it ‘in the spirit of charity’. A diversity of translations was productive, and only encouraged the reader further in his pursuit of truth, which, for Parker, lay beyond any translation and perhaps even any Scripture, resting ultimately in God. I’m sounding like a preacher, but I like this idea.
BB. Finally, what do you do to relax?
HH. Oh dear. Never go to an academic for advice about work-life balance! Always too many books, too little time. On the other hand, I love books and reading and writing about them, so they’re my hobby as well as my vocation and profession. But I’ve always loved movies, having grown up in Toronto, one of the great movie cities. For me, Turner Classic Movies is one of the great American cultural institutions, right up there with the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum. Music is also important to me. I was a singer for many years, specializing in Renaissance and Baroque music, but I also love jazz, which might be what Bach would be playing if he were alive today. I don’t perform these days, but I’m always listening and taking in concerts when I can. I was in Paris recently and heard the English ensemble the Gesualdo Six perform Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah in the Church of the Oratory near the Louvre. Sublime. But I also heard the trio headed by tenor sax legend Charles Lloyd at the Tri-Cs Jazz Fest in Cleveland. I’m not much into football, but don’t tell anyone at Ohio State.
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