Jérôme, interprète et traducteur du Cantique des cantiques
(2016) Traditio et translatio. Studien zur lateinischen Bibel zu Ehren von Roger Gryson — ISBN: [978-3-451-31103-1], p. 31-48, published
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- (en) Jerome affirms on several occasions that the relationship between the Bride and the Groom of the Song of Songs was perfectly chaste and that they lived “as brother and sister” (cf Ct 4,9-5,1). He is particularly explicit on this subject in Against Jovinian, two chapters of which he devotes (I, 30-31) to explaining that the poem contains “all the mysteries of virginity”, because “the virgin fiancé is praised by the virgin fiancée and in turn praises her”. Jerome, for example, finds a confirmation of the wife’s chastity in the image of the closed garden and the sealed spring (Ct 4,12) and the husband’s in the assertion of the Groom’s “whiteness” (Ct 5,10) or else in the verse “I am a flower of the fields and the lily of the valleys” (Ct 2,1) which Jerome interprets as a word of Christ virgin, given that “virginity is always compared to flowers” (Letter 65,2; cf Letter 130,8). Furthermore, Jerome readily presents the heroine of the Canticle as a model to his female correspondents, whom he encourages to persevere in virginity or continence - or even to men, like the widower Pammachius, who Jerome invites to invest himself in a life fully dedicated to Christ while identifying himself with the wife of the Canticle (Letter 66,10). Despite his explicit declarations, Jerome is sometimes caught up in a literal interpretation contradicting his most explicit assertions on the virginity of the poem’s protagonists. Thus, in Letter 22, he cites the verse “His left hand is under my head and his right will embrace me” (Ct 2,6; 8,3) to illustrate the fact that, in the Bible, “hands sometimes signify the work of the flesh”, which implies that the two beloveds’ union has been consummated. Much more, in Ct 5,4, he mistranslates the Hebrew in suggesting a physical contact between the two protagonists (the Bride’s entrails are said to have quivered “at the touch” of her companion, ad tactum eius), whereas the scenario excludes any contact between them at this point in the poem: the verses which follow show that when the Bride opens her door to her love he has already left (the Hebrew simply says that the Bride’s entrails quivered “because of him”, who had asked to enter). This misinterpretation is altogether surprising on the part of a translator who advocates an “asepticized” interpretation of the poem. Upon reflection, the paradox is perhaps above all for 21st century readers who initially, or exclusively, see the erotic behind words where the Ancients also, and above all, saw the mystical.
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Auwers, J.-M. (2016). Jérôme, interprète et traducteur du Cantique des cantiques. In Thomas Johann Bauer (éd.) (ed.), Traditio et translatio. Studien zur lateinischen Bibel zu Ehren von Roger Gryson (p. p. 31-48). Herder. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/185576