Draft translation from Giorgio Agamben’s The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form of Life

Translated from Giorgio Agamben, Altissima povertà: Regole monastiche e forma di vita [The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form of Life] (Vicenza, Italy: Neri Pozza Editore, 2011), pp. 7-10.

[This rough draft translation is intended solely for purposes of personal edification and curiosity-satisfaction. Please do not cite without permission.]

PREFACE

The object of this study is the attempt—by investigating into the exemplary case of monasticism—to construct a form-of-life, that is to say, a life that is linked so closely to its form that it proves to be inseparable from it. It is in this perspective that the study is confronted first of all with the problem of the relationship between rule and life, which defines the apparatus through which the monks attempted to realize their ideal of a communal form of life. It is a matter not so much—or not only—of investigating the imposing mass of punctilious precepts and ascetic techniques, of cloisters and horologia, of solitary temptations and choral liturgies, of fraternal exhortations and ferocious punishments through which the monastery constituted itself, in view of salvation from sin and from the world, as a “regular life” [vita regolare]. Rather, it is a matter of understanding first of all the dialectic that thus comes to be established between the two terms “rule” [regola] and “life.”

Draft translation from Agamben’s Opus Dei: An Archeology of Office

From Giorgio Agamben, Opus Dei: Archeologia dell’ufficio [Opus Dei: An Archeology of Office] (Turin: Bollati Birnghieri, 2011), pp., 7-9. Translated by Adam Kotsko.

[This draft translation is intended solely for purposes of personal edification and curiosity-satisfaction. Please do not cite without permission.]

PREFACE

Opus Dei is a technical term that, in the tradition of the Latin Catholic Church, starting from the Rule of St. Benedict, designates the liturgy, that is, “the exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ… in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members” (Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, December 4, 1963).

The word “liturgy” (from the Greek leitourgia, “public services”) is, however, relatively modern. Before its use was extended progressively beginning from the end of the 19th century, we find in its place the Latin officium, whose semantic sphere is not easy to define and in which nothing, at least at first glance, would seem to have destined it for its unusual theological success.

Agamben translations: An announcement

I have been offered a contract to translate two works by Agamben in the coming year: Opus dei: Archeologia dell’ufficio and Altissima povertà: Regole monastiche e forma di vita. The two volumes represent sections 2.5 and 4.1 of the Homo Sacer series, respectively. Opus dei: An Archeology of Office is an investigation of the way that Christian liturgical concepts have informed modern ethical concepts, while The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form of Life presents Christian monasticism as an attempt to conceive of a form of life that would overcome the opposition between life and rule.

We have agreed that I will complete these translations by the end of the calendar year, so now I know how I’ll be spending my summer vacation.

Learning Hebrew

Let’s say I were to finally sit down and learn biblical Hebrew. What textbook should I use? Would it make any difference if I was hoping I could eventually also make sense of rabbinic Hebrew?

A Note on the Translation Industry

Against my better judgment I am sitting in on a few classes in the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University. I say against my better judgment because I have enough work to stay on top of without adding to it, but I also feel like I can’t pass up an opportunity to study some interesting texts with teachers whom I have and continue to have lots of respect for. Those who know of DePaul’s program will know that it is known for its emphasis on original languages as well as a celebration of translation. It may be one of the few places where, and I could be mistaken about this, but where a translation of a major philosophical book “counts” at the institutional level. I know it at least counts amongst the other faculty here.

The appeal of the idiosyncratic

Preparations for teaching have brought me into contact with two new translations: Robert Alter’s rendering of Genesis and Joe Sachs’s version of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Though the underlying texts could not be more different in style and genre, I think that the impulse behind the two translations is similar: to cut through a translation tradition that has impeded understanding, but more than that, has rendered the texts in question boring.

It is a gesture that I find profoundly attractive, a kind of “Protestant principle” of translation. Part of the appeal is probably the individualism of it, which sits well with someone like me, since I flatter myself that I have “charted my own way” without accumulating an approved pedigree. More than that, though, I think the attraction of this kind of radical retranslation is the sense that it’s not just possible to say something new about some of the most commented-upon texts in the Western tradition, but to see them again for the first time.

Genesis, for instance, is obviously one of the most familiar texts in the world to me, and yet Alter’s translation made it feel brand-new. I can’t say I’ve studied Aristotle anywhere near as closely, but the contrast between Sachs’s translation and the jargon-laden near-nonsense I struggled to work through before could not be clearer. I now want to read every translation both authors have done of their respective body of texts — which is especially striking in the case of Sachs, since I’ve previously had no particular interest in Aristotle.

Do others know of similarly iconoclastic translations of other major works?

Adventures in NT Greek: Is Jesus a vegetable?

Today I’m working my way through John 6, the famous “bread of life” chapter. I noticed something curious in a section where Jesus is contrasting the “true food” of his body with the manna Moses fed the Israelites in the desert. Throughout the passage, he uses what seems to me to be the more usual verb for eat, ἐσθίω, including when referring to eating his body. But when he’s drawing a contrast, he uses a verb I hadn’t seen before, τρώγω, which appears to connote primarily the eating of vegetables, particularly by herbivorous animals — but also human “snacking” on similar light fare. Are we to graze on Jesus, presumably as a food source that’s more reliable than manna, which only lasts a single day at a time?

The LSJ does have a later meaning for the term that says it is a substitute present tense for ἐσθίω, but there’s a verse in which both appear, in what’s hard not to read as a clear and intentional contrast: οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἄρτος ὁ ἐζ οὐρανοῦ καταβάς, οὐ καθὼς ἔφαγον οἱ πατέρες καὶ ἀπέθανον· ὁ τρώγων τοῦτον τὸν ἄρτον ζήσει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα (6:58; “this is the bread that comes down from heaven, not like the fathers ate and died; the one who eats this bread will live forever). Of course, there is the tense issue that the LSJ mentions….

While I’m here, I have another issue: when the disciples are gathering up the leftovers from the feeding of the 5000, the text uses the verb συνάγω. Is this meant to evoke the synagogue, and hence to symbolize gathering up the “remnant” of Israel?

Adventures in NT Greek: Even though no one cares….

I think I just read a passage in Hebrews that incidates that God is a great father, similar to Abraham… UPDATE: I promise this post is more than just noodling around with Greek grammar. Probably more worth reading than my other Hebrews posts.

Adventures in NT Greek: Weirdness in Hebrews 11

Hebrews 11, the catalogue of heroes who acted “by faith,” is one of the most familiar passages in the New Testament, and I found it relatively straightforward for the most part. I did notice a couple strange things, however, which I’ll gladly share with you now.

Adventures in NT Greek: More weirdness in Hebrews

I am going to get through Hebrews if it kills me. I’m on chapter 10, anticipating that chapter 11 will be an easy read given its familiarity. Here’s a weird bit: