Contents
Editorial
- Translation
Articles
- The Transatlantic Slave Trade in Translation: Dido Belle, Justice and Jane Austen, Penny Mawdsley
- Translating and Transferring, Dinah Livingstone
- The Sovereignty of Good and the Kingdom of God, Frank Walker
- Lost in Translation?, Dominic Kirkham
Poetry and Short Prose Extracts
- October Night, Ernst Jandl, translated by Dinah Livingstone
- Helen Thomas visits Ivor Gurney, Kathryn Southworth
- Meditation in a DC-3, Ernesto Cardenal, translated by Dinah Livingstone
- A Declaration to the Powers of England, and to all the Powers of the World, Gerrard Winstanley (extract)
Reviews
- Stephen Mitchell reviews Alive in God by Timothy Radcliffe
- Dave Francis reviews The House of Islam by Ed Husain
- Edward Nickell reviews Stories We Tell Ourselves by Richard Holloway
Regulars and Occasionals
- Letters to the Editor
- Comment: The US Election 2020, Francis McDonagh
- Revisiting: Andy Kemp revisits The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill
- As I Please: And so it goes on…, John Pearson
Editorial: Translation
This title of this Sofia is ‘Translation’ – all kinds of translation.
Where do novelists get their ideas? From imagination and above all, from life. Penny Mawdsley describes how Jane Austen translated from life to art. She took the true story of Dido Belle, daughter of a West Indian slave and a British naval officer, who was brought up by her great uncle Lord Mansfield, and ‘translated’ it into her novel Mansfield Park with its heroine Fanny Price.
I have written something about different kinds of translating and transferring (both words come from the same Latin verb). Then I consider the Great Translation (to which SOF contributes), expressed in the Christmas hymn: ‘He came down to Earth from heaven’. In a change of genre from literal accounts to ‘poetic tales’, the divine supernatural is translated ‘down to Earth’.
Frank Walker describes a practical ‘translation’ of the ‘kingdom of God’ into the humdrum – and as he says, quite commonplace – human kindness of looking after someone terminally ill at home.
Dominic Kirkham asks whether the original Jesus got lost in translation.
There is plenty more in this Sofia. Andy Kemp revisits Christopher Hill’s classic work on the English Revolution, The World Turned Upside Down. Francis McDonagh comments on the US election. There are the usual letters, reviews and John Pearson’s As I Please. Letters to the Editor with comments and responses are always welcome.
The poem below is a translation both from German into English and from 1950s Austria to lockdown Britain today.
Dinah Livingstone
Letters to the Editor
Sofia 137
It’s a long time since I last reported on my condition. May I do so, briefly? I’m frailer. My sight is weaker and more blurred, and my mobility less good. I live in quite deep isolation now, but my head is tolerably clear, and I still enjoy thinking. The plight of the churches, worsened by the Covid pandemic and by very serious moral scandals, is wretched. What of the Christian tradition. Can hope survive? I still stick to the position I had reached when I stopped writing in 2015, but there’s also plenty to think about.
Love to you all,
Don Cupitt, Cambridge
What an extraordinarily thought-provoking issue! Framed, as it were, by Alison McRobb’s reference to the tripartite ‘body, mind, spirit division’ (p. 5) and Dinah Livingstone’s lovely trinitarian epigram, ‘Being generates Word and together they breathe Love’ (p. 19); and with Dave Francis’ insightful analysis of what everyone should learn about religion (a project at which most churches fail miserably), the magazine offered a tempting cupful of ideas. But the cup became a chalice with Grenville Gilbert’s breath-taking exegesis of resurrection: ‘…her form is nowhere now….yet mention her name and she is straightway present’. And for me the chalice overflowed with Tony Windross’ Cosmic Gratitude, for long ago I noted that the Didache (a very early Jewish/Christian document) set forth two Eucharistic rituals, both of which centred, as the word indicates, on giving thanks – words of folks not looking for salvation, but just being grateful for simple blessings. Therefore, despite this excellent issue’s title and at the risk of seeming bumptious or unappreciative, I wonder whether Christian worship would not do well to give less voice to praise and more to gratitude.
Tom Hall, Rhode Island, USA
Thank you for another Sofia. Other than browsing quickly I haven’t got any further than the stunning picture on the cover. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. What strange times we are living in – everything just seems such hard work (like constantly being on a tightrope and trying to keep a balance). So I’ll just read Tony Windross before bed!
Janet Carpenter, Kirby Muxloe
Great cover photo, congratulations. (I haven’t looked inside yet, but wanted to comment on the cover!)
David Lambourn, Bungay