2.3. The
Poetics:
William of Moerbeke’s Translation
Compared with the commentary of Averroes/Hermann, Moerbeke’s translation strikes us as considerably more faithful to Aristotle, though at times it too falls victim to misleading Greek manuscripts.13 When in 1457b 32 Aristotle says that a shield could be called a “a wineless wine bowl” (aoinon), Moerbeke reads oinou and translates “puta si scutum dicat ‘fyalam’ non Martis sed vini,” “as if you were to call the shield, not the cup of Mars but a wine cup”) (p. 27).
Faced with the riddle of the dry suction cup, and following the reading he found in his manuscript, he translates “virilem rubicundum ut est ignitum super virum adherentem” (“a manly red like something fiery sticking to a man”) (p. 28). But he translates “seminans deo conditam flammam” (“sowing the god-created flame”), as well as other citations, correctly.
Tragodia and komodia are translated correctly (albeit with a simple calque). But let us not forget how obscure these terms could appear to a man of the Middle Ages: according to William of Saint-Thierry (Commentarius in Canticum canticorum, PL 180), a comedy is a story that, though it may contain elegiac passages that speak of the pains of love, ends happily; for Honorius of Autun (De animae exilio et patria, PL 172), tragedies are poems that deal with war, such as Lucan’s Pharsalia, while comedies, like the works of Terence, sing of weddings. Dante too refers to his work as a Commedia not because it is a theatrical work but because it has a very happy ending. Hugh of Saint Victor (Didascalicon II, 27, PL 176) says that the art of performance gets the name of “theatrical” art from the word “theater,” a place where the ancient peoples gathered for amusement, and in theaters dramatic events were recited aloud, with readings of poems or representations involving actors and masks. In the Poetria of John of Garland (Johannes de Garlandia), we find a classification of literary genres in which tragedy is defined as “carmen quod incipit a gaudio et terminat in luctu” (“a poem that begins in rejoicing and ends in lamentation”), while comedy is “carmen jocosum incipiens a tristitia et terminans in gaudium” (“a light-hearted poem beginning in sadness and ending in rejoicing”) (cf. De Bruyne, Études II, iii, 3). One of the few texts in which an idea of classical tragedy can be identified (based, however, on hearsay) is the Ars versificatoria of Matthew of Vendôme (II, 5, in Faral 1924), where among the arts tragedy is cited “inter ceteras clamitans boatu” (“shouting various loud cries in the midst of the group”), which (citing Horace, Ars Poet. 97) “projicit ampullas et sexquipedalia verba” (“spews forth bombast and sesquipedalian words”) and, continues Matthew, “pedibus innitens coturnatis, rigida superficie, minaci supercilio, assuetae ferocitatis multifarium intonat conjecturam” (“relying on buskin feet, an inflexible appearance, and a menacing brow, thunders forth a multitude of warnings, all with her customary ferocity”). Not much to go on as a clue to Aristotle’s concept of tragedy, but enough to recognize what ancient theatrical actions were like, seeing that the theater the Middle Ages had in mind evoked the antics of minstrels and histriones, along with the sacred mystery play.
Accordingly, in Moerbeke’s translation (pp. 9–10), mimesis is rendered as imitatio, pity and fear with misericordia and timor, pathos with passio; the six parts of tragedy become fabula, mores, locutio, ratiocinatio, visus, and melodie; it is understood that opsis has to do with the mimic action of the hypocrita or actor; peripetie and anagnorisees (idest recognitiones) are mentioned; and the distinction between the poet and the historian is clear. The oppositions between a clear and a pedestrian style are faithfully presented, though glotta is translated as lingua, making the nature of the barbarism somewhat less than transparent. Moerbeke translates 1457b 6 et seq., where metaphor is defined, in an acceptable manner.
In the crucial 1459a, 8, where Aristotle says that “to use metaphor well implies an ability to see the likenesses in things,” and he uses in this context the verb theorein, Moerbeke translates “nam bene metaphorizare est simile considerare” (“for to coin good metaphors is to consider likeness”) (p. 29). Perhaps the verb considerare has a weaker connotation than the Greek word, but it points in any case to the universe of knowledge.
To sum up, the Latin reader could have acquired a reasonable idea of Aristotle’s text from Moerbeke, but with nothing that underscored with particular energy the cognitive aspect of metaphor’s implications.
2.4. Aristotle’s
Rhetoric:
Hermann the German’s Translation
In section 2.1 we recalled that three translations of the Rhetoric had appeared: one from the Arabic by Hermann the German, an anonymous Translatio Vetus, and, between 1269 and 1270, the version of William of Moerbeke, from the Greek. For a long time the received wisdom concerning Hermann’s Rhetoric was imprecise. The title, Averroes in Rhetoricam, led some scholars to conclude that it was a translation of Averroes’s Middle Commentary. Then, because of the existence of other manuscripts that bore the title Didascalia in Rhetoricam Aristotelis ex glosa Alpharabi (whereas al-Farabi’s commentary was incomplete from the start), it was believed that Hermann’s text was based solely on Arabic sources. Only quite recently (Bogges 1971) was it determined that Hermann had translated the text of Aristotle from the Arabic, inserting passages from Averroes’s commentary and from Avicenna’s Shifa when the manuscripts at his disposal were lacunary (but invariably making the insertion explicit). In his translation of al-Farabi’s glosses, Hermann explicitly claims to have translated Aristotle’s Rhetoric from Arabic to Latin, and he repeats the claim in the prologue to his translation of the Rhetoric.
We shall consider later the problems that this extremely arduous translation, of whose insufficiencies the translator himself was fully aware, posed for the Latin reader. Furthermore, we know of only two complete manuscripts and one fragmentary one, which leads us us conclude that it had a very limited circulation.14
An example of the translator’s embarrassment is provided by the notion of ta asteia. At the end of chapter 10 Hermann decides to skip portions of the text of Aristotle that he is unable to translate, and he goes on to comment: “Plura talia exempla ad idem facientia, quia greca sapiebant sententiam non multum usitatam latinis, dimissa sunt, et subsequitur quasi conclusio auctoris” (“Many like examples of the same import have been omitted for they smacked of the Greek idiom not much used by the Latins, and the author’s conclusions as it were follow immediately after”). To say nothing of the fact that in one manuscript (Toledo, cf. Marmo 1992: 32 n. 8) in chapter 11 we find: “Ideoque pulchre dicit Astisius in suis transsumptionibus quasi ante oculos statuende ea que transumendo loquitur” (“And this is why Astisius expresses himself so well in his transumptions that almost place what he is talking about by transference before your very eyes”). Where the form Astisius suggests that the Arabic original had interpreted asteia as a proper name, and that Hermann had gone along with this interpretation.