Translation and Mysticism

This book examines how mysticism can tell us about translation and translation can tell us about mysticism, addressing the ancient but ongoing connections between the art of rendering one text in another language and the art of the ineffable. The volume represents the first sustained act of attention to the interdisciplinary crossover of these two fields, taking a Wittgensteinian approach to language, and investigates how mystics and their translators manage to write about what cannot be written about. Three questions are addressed overall: how mysticism can be used to conceptualise translation; the issues that mysticism raises for translation theory and practice; and how mystical texts have been and might be translated. Walter Benjamin's 'The Translator's Task' is considered in detail as a controversial example of dialogue. Translation examples are given in a range of languages, and six major case studies are provided, including a close reading of Exodus and an analysis of a recent radical translation of Lucretius. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in translation studies, mysticism studies, theology and literary translation, as well as practising translators. For a video recording of the book's BCLT launch, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFRsXEhR6bQ

Philip Wilson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Translation at the University of East Anglia, UK, where he teaches Religion and World Philosophies, Philosophy Meets the Arts and Translation Studies.

Prologue: Gold and Crystal 1. Becoming Present 1.1 Translation and Mysticism 1.2 The Ineffable 1.3 Case study: Reading Mystical Texts for Translation 2. Eternity 2.1 Problem or Mystery? 2.2 Grammar 2.3 Case study: Moses and the Burning Bush 3. The Sounding of the Song 3.1 Translation and Gnosis 3.2 The Translator and the Task 3.3 Case study: Friedrich Hölderlin and Sophocles 4. Light from Darkness 4.1 Discovery, Construction and Declaration 4.2 Translation as Attention 4.3 Case study: Willis Barnstone and John of the Cross 5. Becoming the Script 5.1 Untranslatability 5.2 Translation as Performance 5.3 Case study: Translating the Spell 6. The Rose and the Wherefore 6.1 Problem and Mystery 6.2 Moving On 6.3 Case study: Emma Gee and Lucretius Epilogue: Staying in the Sun