In The Blithedale Romance, the narrator relates the attrition of the city clothes brought to the country:
So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil,--"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "--which as Silas Foster remarked, when I translated the maxim, would be apt to astonish the women-folks.
Indeed the plan was Virgil's: the expression occurs on line 299 on the first Georgic. T.E. Page, the spoilsport editor of the Macmillan edition of the Eclogues and Georgics, says that nudus here means "lightly clothed". Likewise Mather and Hewitt, editors of an edition of The Anabasis tell one that the Great King's concubine, fleeing gymnē when the camp was overrun, went "lightly clothed". One might suppose that the editors had previously had to correct sniggering schoolboys.
The readings for the Third Sunday of Easter included a passage from John 21, telling of Peter tucking up his clothes and jumping from the boat to swim ashore. The Koine is gymnos, the Vulgate offers nudus. The current Lectionary, using the New American Bible, says that Peter was lightly clothed. But the Authorized, Revised Authorized, and the Jerusalem Bible all say "naked". Luther says "nackt". I am no scholar in these matters, but I would vote for the current Lectionary. For one thing, it apparently was an over-tunic that Peter tied around him.
Interesting. I have a friend who thinks I am pretentious because, when I have the opportunity to read a book in its original language (that is to say when a book originated in a language I've taken the time to try to learn), even a book as lowbrow (in her opinion) as those in the Maigret series, I will always read it in the original. I think this post of yours proves that my choice is a wise one.
ReplyDeleteI think that your choice is wise. It is frustrating to see what one suspects or knows to be a translator's slip and not have the original to check on.
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