Milli mála - 01.01.2012, Page 199

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PÉTUR KNÚTSSON
phrase: was it ventus ‘wind’ or spiritus ‘breath, spirit’? For we would
be speculating indeed if we assumed that this choice of possibilities
had not also occurred to him.
I have already stated my resolve to avoid discussing any writerly
intention, and yet now I am speculating on a possible esoteric
meaning behind the puff of the word in Ancrene Wisse. I ask the
reader to bear with me briefly – I have a point to make. The writer
introduces his point with the phrase Thench yet on other half ‘On the
other hand, consider.’ Let us see for a moment how far we can go
with the idea that on other half is hinting at another mode of
reasoning, ‘on the other side’ of the discourse, inviting us to choose
the other reading: Quid verbum nisi spiritus? ‘What is word but
wind-as-breath, wind-as spirit?’12
The Ancrene Wisse was indeed translated, about a century later,
into Latin. The manuscripts at this point use ventus, the metrologi-
cal wind: Iterum cogita, quid est verbum nisi ventus ‘there again,
consider: what is a word but wind’ (D’Evelyn 1944: 37). This was
the choice of the translator in another century, and does not enter
into my argument, except in one small detail. The introductory
phrase Thench yet on other half becomes in the later Latin Iterum cog-
ita, ‘there again, consider,’ as studiously down-to-earth as its choice
of ventus. If there is any hint of the esoteric in the original, the later
Latin version has suppressed it.
On other half is a common phrase in Middle English, used to in-
troduce a new turn in the discussion. The phrase can however be
used in a more mystic context: the mid-14c. Ayenbite of Inwyt or
‘Remorse of Conscience’, in the section Vor to lyerny sterue ‘Learning
how to die,’ speaks of the boundary between life and death and the
division of the soul from the body, using half to signify either of the
material and spiritual aspects of life: and yef [if] thet bodi is of this
half: the herte / and the gost [spirit]: is of other half. A little later,
speaking of the ‘little stream’ that separates life from death, we
read: Dyath [death] is of this half, lif [life] of othre half.13 Interest-
12 Spiritus would be the preferred term in classical Latin for the bodily breath. My thanks to Sigurður
Pétursson, who to my delight suggested this translation before I had mentioned my own
preference. Tibi certe spiro, Sigurde.
13 Morris 1866: 72 (fol. 21 in the manuscript).
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