--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > Nice. Do you happen to have (or have the URL of) > > the original Spanish version of this poem, or even > > the name of the translator? I ask because I have > > been unable to find either on the Web today... > > Still don't know the translator, but for those > who, like me, were curious as to what the original > looked like, here t'is: > > Entréme donde no supe, > y quedéme no sabiendo, > toda sciencia trascendiendo.
I only typed in about half of the Spanish poem (because I got tired of typing), but it was this first verse that concerned me anyway. When I read the first translation that gullible_fool posted, something didn't sound quite "right" about it to me, because San Juan de la Cruz was a very *personal* mystic, writing primarily about his own subjective experiences, and didn't tend to use more general, abstract words like "unknowing." So I was curious. A more literal translation of the first line might thus be, "I entered where I did not know." That could mean many things. It could be that he did not know the "where" or the "place" that he entered, or it could mean that he entered a "place" where he did not "know" *anything*. But the key issue is that he didn't enter into an abstract place of "unknowing," but into a place where *he* "did not know." It's the *personal* element to his poetry that I was looking for. But the most fun translation issue in this first (and recurring) verse is the word 'sciencia.' That's not Spanish; it's Catalan, and in Catalan it was used in the 16th century to refer to everything from 'science' itself to astrology, alchemy, and more generally, any form of organized or systemized knowledge. So the last line of the recurring stanza is even more of a mystery than the first, since St. John could be saying "trancending all knowledge," as the first translation implied, as a way of saying that what he experienced was not "understandable," or he could be saying "transcending all forms of systemitized knowledge," implying the more common mystical stance that one could have a sense of "understanding" while *in* the altered state of attention that is *not* "understandable" when trying to describe it or remember it afterwards, using the language of any kind of formal or systemitized knowledge. The latter sounds more "right" to me, given some of his other poems. Who can tell, especially when one doesn't even speak Spanish, much less Catalan? Still, it's fun to play with these things... Damn! I've turned into cardemeister... :-)
