The past week or so has been absolutely fascinating. I spent the majority of it wading through what has to be the most interesting of Old English prose texts -- The Wonders of the East, on which I was writing a rather long paper. It's a travel narrative, but not in the way one expects: it collates a series of places, along with the inhabitants (humans, hybrids and animals) of those places, proceeding in what seems to be a haphazard fashion from the landbunes at the beginning of Antimolima to a jarring conclusion in the story of a man, Mambres, who opens and learns from the magic books of his brother, Iamnes (note that his brother is damned, and inhabits a hell-pit, seað, of two by four cubits). It's a scary little paragraph, and it's not always thought of as part of the Wonders. However, you can find the text I'm looking at in Andy Orchard's excellent edition, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript.
Anyway, part of the project I'm working on included going through the entirety of the text, trying to make the places mentioned make sense in relation to each other. It was a tall order, mostly because, in my opinion, it's impossible -- an englightening observation, and one I started my bout with amateur cartography knowing, but not really believing. I believe it now. Anyway, one thing did come out of it. My poor brain, addled by hours of trying to make sense of things that don't make much sense, and rather annoyed that there's nobody leading this trek through the wilds of the Old English imagination, had a fanciful moment a few days ago. Suddenly, I'd turned the Old English Wonders of the East into an amusement park ride in my mind -- analogous, perhaps, to Disney's Jungle Cruise, narrated by a voice similar to Robin Williams as the Genie, from Aladdin (I was hanging out with my eight year old cousin about a week and a half ago while Upstate, and we definitely watched Aladdin, which must be why I can only hear this as his voice).
So, in a moment designed to counteract the overwrought seriousness of the past few longer posts, I give you what I'd like to call "Notes towards an Old English Jungle Cruise." Or, as I'm starting to think of it -- "This is my Brain. This is my Brain after Latin and Old English for One and a half Weeks."
***Warning: The following humor is meant to be groan inducing. If you've ever been on the Jungle Cruise, you'll know what I mean... It also works better if you imagine various audioanimatronic characters to go with the various places. But I couldn't think of a good way to reproduce that here...***
Well, folks, as we're starting out on our cruise of the Rivers of the East today, we set off from the colony of Antimolima, which is right next to the colony of Uncle Molima. Let's all take one last look at the dock -- as we may never see it again. My name is Al and I'll be your skipper, translator, guide and swimming instructor on this three hour tour...
...As we all know, Archemedon is the largest city in the world, after Babylon. It's a city with some great monuments, built by that most intrepid of explorers, Alexander of Macedon. The distance between Babylon and Archemedon is 300 stadia -- or the time it takes to walk the length of three hundred football fields -- or, in a larger measurement, 200 leagues, which is measured by walking for the amount of time it takes to get on that Captain Nemo ride...
...Continuing down this first river, we're entering the fabled land of Lentibelsinea. Here you'll find beasts with eight feet, gorgon-eyes and two heads. Nothing you want to run into at night -- why, I knew of a skipper who met one unexectedly while breaking the trail for this very tour, and boy was he petrified! Those little red hens seem pretty innocuous, but watch out -- if you touch them they burst into flame! That guy over there must have been trying to steal one, but he clearly got caught red-handed...
...Next we're approaching the colony called Locotheo, which is located between two of the great rivers of the world the Brixontes and the Nile. It's named for an old adventurer named Theodore, who went crazy trying to get out of this text...
...Uh-oh. We appear to have wandered into the Red Sea. I think I've heard stories about this island. We've found the island of the dreaded Donestre! Be careful folks, they like to impersonate your friends and family, to make a weary traveler think he can find some friends. They might also look a bit like soothsayers, but don't trust them to tell you your fortune : they're just trying to get a head...
...and now for the crowning acheivement of our Wonders of the East cruise, I'd like to introduce you to Arizona, our very own Phoenix. Every thousand years or so -- and kids, don't try this at home -- he bursts into flame and rises up young again from his own ashes. One guy tried to prove that this means not all smoking is bad for you, but I think that's just for the birds...
Well there you have it. My very first (and probably last) parody post. I hardly know what to think. I only hope the paper looks nothing like it.
This post was made possible by:
* This ( site of Disney Jungle Cruise Spiels, which refreshed my waning memory;
* The author of the Wonders of the East text, who has provided countless hours of enjoyment, both serious and not;
* My family's numerous trips to Disney World, which allowed us kids (Theatre-Sis, Opera-Sis and I) to memorize every ride there, so that we could more effectively build them in our basement;
* My mother's imagination, which inspires me to be creative, even when it seems a bit silly;
* My father's sense of humor and adeptness at really, really bad puns;
* All declensions and conjugations of Latin, which have so numbed my brain that I can no longer actually do work and thus spend my time being quite silly instead.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog, which if requested, will never, ever, attempt parodic humor again...
Monday, July 17, 2006
Donestres, and Healfhundingas, and Catinis, Oh My!
Posted by MKH at 3:06 PM
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11 comments:
Quite groan inducing... ;-)
I've actually never read _Wonders of the East-; I didn't realize Mambres and Iamnes show up in it! Does the text explain who they are? (The sorcerers bested by Moses in his Egyptian miracle duel...)
They do in fact show up, and your comment clarifies to me why the text reads the way it does, as Moses and Aaron are both mentioned. It's interesting that they are, and that they're out of context, so to speak. Do you know anything more about them?
Guess that explains a bit more about why their eternal punishment was a 2x4 hell pit.
oh, and to answer your question, aside from Iamnes said "ic withstod twam gebrothrum Moyses hatte 7 Aaron, tha worhtan tha micclan tacna 7 forebeacnu."
Oh, and it's only present in two of the three manuscripts -- I think it in the Latin and OE versions in Tiberius.
Very cool...
They're a standard part of the apocryphal exegetical tradition on the Exodus text. I believe there's at least one text that deals with them specifically (Penitence of... maybe?). Unfortunately, all of my books are packed execpt a few dissertation books for our move in a couple weeks so I can't tell you more at the moment...
To fill in some bibliography, and for those wondering what in the world is going on:
Iamnes and Mambres (with variations) seem to appear as the court magicians who opposed Moses and Aaron in both Jewish and pagan texts from about 100 B.C. on, and in Christian sources beginning with 2 Timothy 3:8f. Extant sources are in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic, besides Greek and Latin (the latter being the most relevant for Old English, of course).
There is a useful section on these legendary magicians, as "Jannes and Jambres," by A. Pietersma and R.T. Lutz, in "The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume Two: Expansions of "Old Testament" and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works," edited by James H. Charlesworth (Doubleday, 1985). I have relied on its list of languages.
Unfortunately for our purposes, Pietersma and Lutz translate only the fragments from the two Greek manuscripts of "The Book of Jannes and Jambres," but not the Latin and Anglo-Saxon fragments from a Cotton Tiberius MS., first published in 1861, containing remnants of "The Penitence of Jannes and Jambres." (Which was M.R. James' title in a 1902 article; see also his "The Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament," 1920.)
By their account, the names of the magicians apparently started out in Greek as Joannes (=Johannes) and Joambres, but Jannes and Jambres soon became standard, and for some reason (perhaps analogy with their adversary Moses) Rabbinic and Latin sources often have "Mambres." And Jannes suffered its own slighter deformation, taking it farther from its source, too.
As a side-note, those interested in the larger tradition will want to check the somewhat different version translated as "On the Wonders of the East [Letter of Pharasmanes to Hadrian]” in Richard Stoneman's "Legends of Alexander the Great" (Everyman, 1994), and the related material in that volume, and in Stoneman's translation of "The Greek Alexander Romance" (Penguin, 1991). As Stoneman indicates, the formal association of the "Wonders" textual tradition with Alexander himself seems to be secondary, although the Alexander legends provided a lot of its material from the beginning.
Ian > Thanks for all the information -- I'm sure a lot of people will find it quite helpful! I know I do...in the mythical time in which I will have time, that's something I will definitely look into.
Am I right in assuming you've done some work on the subject?
Derek> Wow, just realized I didn't finish the first part of my comment -- it was meant to read, aside from what I reproduced in the Old English, there isn't any context in the OE. But, as Ian's bibliographic info shows, there's a much wider context for it outside of OE.
Fascinating.
If I'm not mistaken, though they show up first as classic Egyptian magicians in some pre/non Christian classical texts and the Second Temple Jewish traditions associated these with the unnamed and unnumbered magicians in Exodus.
Charlesworth's is a great resource but does focus on the "original" form of the text rather than later developments more applicable to medieval stuff. Just don't rely on the edition of 1 Enoch in there; it's been pretty universally panned...
Alas, I find on re-reading that I cut a mention of the separate translation of the Old English "Wonders of the East" in Michael Swanton's Everyman volume of "Anglo-Saxon Prose." (In the 1993 expansion, which I own -- I'm not sure if was in the much shorter 1975 edition, which I haven't seen for decades.)
That would make two distinct versions available, in the Everyman series, from two languages -- if either volume were currently in print!
Yes, I've done a fair amount of reading in the Alexander texts. As a Tolkien fan, I couldn't resist the appearance of the Trees of the Sun and Moon, and other suggestions of where he was getting his imagery. ("Mandeville's Travels" was also helpful, as it turned out.) Until fairly recently, though, I was confined mainly to secondary sources, and the odd translation of an excerpt or two. (Rypins' "Three Old English Texts" was less than helpful.)
Orchard's wonderful volume, which I reviewed for Amazon a while back, and Swanton and Stoneman translations, clarified a lot that I had gleaned along the way.
Charlesworth's collection is getting a bit out-of-date: there is a "More OTP" translation project underway, and some texts have had more recent editions and translations. But is still invaluable: unless, of course, you happen to be fluent in Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, and Old Slavonic, as well as Greek and Latin, and have access to a first-class library.
(Amazon keeps getting the main title and volume subtitles mixed up, and sometimes treats volume one as the first edition of volume two; but offers a nice discount on either, once you find them, otherwise I couldn't have afforded both.)
I bought 'em a while ago...and yes, Jim Davila and his students are well at work on the next (expanded!) collection.
As you said, still a very useful collection; it's been several years since I've used any Ethiopic...
It turns out that there is an on-line version of M.R. James' "Lost Apocrypha" discussion, including the of the Jannes/Mambres tradition, including a translation from the Latin/Anglo-Saxon version, at
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/rak/publics/mrjames/james.htm
(Hope this comes through clearly.)
I owe Pietersma and Lutz an apology: they do in fact include a translation (presumably from the Latin) of the paragraph on the brother magicians from Cotton Tiberius B.V., folio 87, inserted on pages 440-441 of Charlesworth.
I had mistaken it for another fragment of the Vienna papyrus fragments of the Greek version, which it replaces at that point as offering a parallel to a Chester Beatty papyrus.
This is the same passage translated by M.R. James, and included in, e.g., Swanton's translation of the Old English "Wonders" -- it in fact forms a part of that redaction of the text (which indicates its eclectic sources.)
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