«Translatio» et Histoire des idées / «Translatio» and the History of Ideas

« Translatio et histoire des idées » est le troisième volume du projet de recherche Translatio, focalisée cette fois sur les déterminants de la traduction, exposés et débattus au cours du colloque éponyme qui s’est déroulé à l’Université de Varsovie en octobre 2017. L’importance de ces déterminants vient du fait que, s’inscrivant dans le domaine de la communication interculturelle, ils président à l’élaboration d’une culture plus riche, plus universelle. Les conférences précédentes : « Translatio et littérature » (2009) et « Translatio et culture » (2013) étaient consacrées à examiner, premièrement, le rôle de la langue dans la divulgation de la littérature, au sens très large du terme, et, secondement, le conditionnement culturel de la traduction, ←9 | 10→autrement dit le degré d’ouverture à l’Autre et à son environnement. L’acceptation de l’Autre et de l’étrangéité de son comportement, ou, au contraire, son refus sous prétexte de l’inadéquation de son mode de vie à celui, jugé présomptueusement unique et bon, dans la langue et culture cible se trouvent à la base de la réflexion sur le transfert interculturel. Les traductions où l’Autre n’est pas accepté mènent à des hypertextes modelés selon les ouvrages existants et jugés probants dans la culture cible. L’étranger assimilé perd son identité culturelle, politique, morale: son système de valeurs nié, l’Autre arraché à son univers devient semblable au petit voisin des alentours, tel Montaigne dans la traduction de Boy-Zelenski. Autre exemple: la tragique Iphigénie d’Euripide, devenue la biblique Iphis, amoureuse dans la version de Racine, patriotique dans celle de Zawicki reste un témoignage de la métamorphose des mythes, tout en reflétant les modèles domestiques.

L’objet de la conférence « Translatio et histoire des idées » fut la réflexion sur le contrôle qu’exercent sur le transfert des textes et des idées les agents de pression qu’impose la société elle-même, soit sous l’égide de croyances soit sous forme d’instruments de pouvoir. La conscience commune et celle, individuelle, du traducteur y jouent aussi leur rôle. Le présent volume montre plusieurs exemples de cette intertextualité qui grâce à la translation alimente la chaîne des idées qui, toujours renouvelées, deviennent modernes mais dont les origines remontent, à travers les traductions à des époques différentes, à des théories très anciennes, parfois préhistoriques. Signalons-en quelques-unes pour indiquer la dimension quasi cosmique de la translatio ainsi que sa disparité sémantique: une traduction sous une de ses multiples formes que ce soit version, adaptation, paraphrase et autres se trouve presque toujours à l’origine de l’œuvre nouvelle. Les liens subtils et complexes se tissent, à travers des traductions multiformes, entre le raisonnement humaniste moderne et la pensée antique, comme le montre la quantité grandissante d’articles scientifiques. Traduire un texte, c’est le faire entrer dans un champ de confrontation avec d’autres textes et d’autres idées, c’est lui donner une vie nouvelle où il sera discuté, accepté ou rejeté. Ce fut le cas des écrits politiques et moraux toujours débattus sur la scène du théâtre mondial des idées, comme le montre l’exemple de Machiavel, ou des textes confessionnels venant des religions et des cultures différentes. Les traductions répressives par lesquelles nous comprenons aussi bien les textes coloniaux, où « la langue est un pouvoir », que les textes traduits sous les régimes politiques, auto- ou pseudo-démocratiques où « l’idée est un pouvoir », constituent les exemples convaincants du rôle des instruments de pression administratifs. La mémoire collective et la conscience individuelle du traducteur se manifestent dans les traductions des textes, marqués socialement ou moralement, qui semblent heurter les convictions personnelles du traducteur ; cette problématique est présente dans les essais d’intervenants s’exprimant sur les sujets tels que genre ou sexualisme. Les traductions jouent aussi des rôles aussi disparates que l’expression du deuil, comme c’est le cas des traductions émouvantes d’Homère sur la mort, ou celui d’éléments du schéma narratif romanesque comme en témoignent les libres traductions des chroniques latines dans un intertexte collatéral au roman. La manipulation ou le parti pris étatiques ou privés sont également présents : les ←10 | 11→essais sur les supports de connaissances, comme Wikipédia qui devrait, par principe, rester objective, ou sur la traduction de l’épopée nationale, sacrosainte, quoique controversée, pour les Polonais. La richesse des textes réunis reflète la complexité de la problématique et permet, espérons-nous, de mieux comprendre le rôle du réseau des déterminants dans l’activité traduisante.

Complexity in Medieval Transmission of Scientific Texts: The Versions of Gerardus Cremonensis’ De Crepusculis¹

Abstract: The Liber de crepusculis by Gerard of Cremona is the Latin version of a lost text written by the Andalusi judge Ibn Mucādh al-Jayyānī. Authorship of the original Arabic text was attributed to Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) until the Hebrew version by Samuel ben Judah of Marseille was discovered. In this work, I present a synopsis of the history of the transmission of this text on the astronomical phenomenon of dawn and dusk, in four languages (Arabic, Latin, Hebrew and Italian), over a period of more than 500 years, in order to reflect on the adaptation process of the contents in the different languages, and contribute new perspectives on the transmission of scientific text in the period between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Keywords: translation, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Alhazen, Gerard of Cremona, Samuel ben Judah, Liber de crepusculis

1 Introduction

Toledo was one of the most outstanding intellectual centres in the 12th century. Translations were part of a programme of intellectual enrichment against a backdrop of backwardness and penury that gave way to a blooming of knowledge. It was Charles Homer Haskins who, for the first time in academia, studied the rise of translation in the 12th century, in his acclaimed work The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. Subsequently, this led to the appearance of other contributions by historians, such as Jacques Le Goff and Jacques Verger, on intellectuality and medieval civilisation, and the emergence of medieval universities in the West, respectively. However, it was the work of José Martínez Gázquez that signalled something far more thought-provoking than the historical phenomenon of the 12th-century western renaissance: “the necessitas et utilitas of medieval translations is related to ←13 | 14→the ignorantia or state of loss of learning and knowledge by the Latins at the onset of the Middle Ages” (Martínez Gázquez, 2017: 131).

Gerard of Cremona (Cremona, 1114–probably Toledo, 1187) arrived in Toledo in search of Ptolemy’s Almagest, which did not exist in Latin translation. On discovering that it only existed in Arabic, he decided to study the Saracen language in order to understand it and translate it into Latin.

Et cum ab ipsis infantie cunabulis in gremiis philosophie educatus esset et ad cuiuslibet partes ipsius notitiam secundum Latinorum studium peruenisset, amore tamen Almagesti, quem apud Latinos minime reperiit, Toletum perrexit, ubi librorum cuiuslibet facultatis habundantiam in Arabico cernens et Latinorum penurie de ipsis quam nouerat miserans, amore transferendi linguam edidicit Arabicam (Martínez Gázquez, 2007: 48).

The Almagest (Gr. Μαθηματική σύνταξις; Ar. al-mijisti) by Ptolemy was conserved down the centuries thanks to translations into Arabic and Latin. Pedersen (1974: 15) pointed out a possible initial translation into Syrian, but today it is known that the Almagest was first translated into Arabic in the late 8th and early 9th centuries by Baghdad-based translator al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ibn Maṭar (Brentjes, 2007: 460–461). His translations of Ptolemy’s work greatly influenced the teaching of books by Ptolemy and Euclid in Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Latin spheres. Gerard of Cremona’s translation of books I to IX of the Almagest is based on the text by Ḥajjāj, except for the catalogue of the stars, found in book VII. The other three books of Gerard of Cremona’s translation derive from the texts of Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn and Thābit ibn Qurra (Brentjes, 2007: 460–461).

One of the Arabic texts translated by Gerard of Cremona was a treatise on the determination of twilight written by the Andalusi judge Abū cAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Mucādh al-Jayyānī (Calvo & Casulleras, 2006). Until Torricelli (1608–1647) and Pascal (1623–1662), the calculation of the height of the atmosphere was a problem of atmospheric physics in optical terms. In the Arabic-Islamic context, it was considered an extension of the problem of determining the duration of twilight (morning and evening, dawn and dusk) (Sabra, 1967; Goldstein, 1976; Goldstein, 1977). This question was vital for regulating aspects of Islamic ritual (cibādāt), particularly for determining moments of prayer (Aguiar Aguilar, 1995; Aguiar Aguilar, 2003).

Gerard of Cremona’s translation began a rich multilingual transmission of text on which I will focus in this work. Here I will address issues relating to De crepusculis and its Arabic predecessor, both the attribution of authorship to Ibn Mucādh, and the attribution of the text to Alhazen. I will comment on the content of the final phrases of the text where Gerard of Cremona explains that he did not translate the entire Arabic treatise. I will conclude with a reflection on the intense and wide-ranging translation movement that took place in Spain in the 12th and 13th centuries, within the context of our interest in the Latinisation of science led by the Hispanic centres of medieval translation and their Arab predecessors.

2  Western Texts on the Determination of Twilight²

Ibn Mucādh al-Jayyānī wrote on the calculation of the height of the atmosphere, a text that was, for a time, attributed to Alhazen, Abū cAlī al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Haytham al-Baṣrī (Vernet, 1986), the author of the Kitāb al-manāẓir (Book of Optics), known in its Latin translation as Opticae Thesaurus or De aspectibus. The Hebrew version by Samuel ben Judah of Marseille (b. 1294. fl. ca. 1335) was discovered by Sabra. The De crepusculis by Gerard of Cremona was also translated into Italian in the 14th century and included by Pedro Nuñez in his De Crepusculis Liber Vnus (Lisbon 1542, reprinted in 1573 and 1592). The other copy of the De crepusculis was printed by Friederich Risner (Basel, 1572. Facsimile edition, 1972). In 1992, Smith published an edition of the Latin text and the translation into English. The Hebrew text conserved in the BnF, discovered by Sabra and the main source of his article published in 1967 in Isis, was published by A. Mark Smith and Bernard Goldstein in 1993, along with the Italian version of the Liber de crepusculi. It includes a description of manuscript 1036 in the BnF, where the Hebrew version of Ibn Mucādh’s Arabic treatise made by Samuel ben Judah in the 14th century is conserved.

2.1 Latin Translation of Ibn Mucādh al-Jayyānī’s Maqāla fī l-fajr wa-l-shafaq by Gerard of Cremona

In addition to translating Ptolemy’s Almagest, Gerard of Cremona’s 70 or more translations include the De crepusculis, the Latin translation of the treatise on twilight by Ibn Mucādh, which he named Abhomadi Malfegeyr, in all likelihood a Latin adaptation/corruption of the lost tract which, according to a 14th-century Arabic source, would be Maqāla fī l-fajr wa-l-shafaq (Aguiar Aguilar, 1995). Twenty-five copies of this short text made between the 13th and 16th centuries are known to exist (Smith, 1992: 90–94). However, the existence of the Arabic original or any copies is not known.

Ibn Mucādh’s two fundamental aims, as given in the De crepusculis by Gerard of Cremona, are the following:

1. To explain twilight and its causes (Ostendere quid sit crepusculum et que causa necessaria faciens eius apparitionem in hoc tractatu volo), and the reason why the sky lights up before dawn and also why light is still seen on the horizon when the sun sets.

– Theorems: The theorems set out by Ibn Mucādh are similar to the first two theorems explained by Aristarchus of Samos in his Περὶ μεγεθῶν καὶ ἀποστημάτων [ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης], On the sizes and distances (of the sun and the moon) (Goldstein, 1977: 113). Some copies contain illustrations of the geometrical solution to the problems posed, others do not.

– End: The phrase ‘Et illud est quod voluimus’ (and this is what we wanted) closes the section that explains the theorems and leads into the final paragraph. Gerard of Cremona’s De crepusculis ends as follows:

Hic eius est finis quod intendit in hac epistola. Quedam autem sequuntur in Arabico que ego pretermisi, quia in eis nulla est utilitas. Non enim continentur in eis nisi quedam in quibus laudat Deum more Saracenorum et reprehendit illos qui querebant quis fructus esset in hoc quod ipse dixit in hac epistola. Et dixit illos esse redarguendos qui non comprehendunt insensibilia cum sensibilibus. Et quia in eis que dicit nulla est utilitas, ideo pretermisi ea.

Here marks the end of what the author wanted to say in this epistle. The Arabic version, however, contains certain things that I have omitted, since they include nothing of real import. There is nothing more than a few lines in which the author praises God in the Saracen manner and reprehends those who have questioned the interest there might be in what he has written in this epistle. And he stated that those who do not understand insensible along with sensible things are mistaken. But as there is nothing worthy of mention in what he says here, I have omitted it.

Gerard of Cremona ends his translation by saying that he did not translate the entire Arabic text. He provides two details that are interesting for my analysis of the text, aimed more at the cultural rather than the physical-mathematical content, which are the following:

1. He decided to eliminate the phrases praising God more Saracenorum.

2. He decided not to translate the explanations provided by Ibn Mucādh about those who questioned the interest in the theme of his maqāla.

– Samuel ben Judah of Marseille’s Hebrew translation of the treatise on twilight by Ibn Mucādh. BnF ms. Hebrew no. 1036, fols. 7r–9v. Goldstein (1977) published his translation and commentary, while the transcription of the Hebrew text was published by Mark and Goldstein (1993).

– Samuel ben Judah of Marseille’s Hebrew translation of Azarquiel’s treatise on the movement of fixed stars. BnF ms. Hebrew no. 1036, fols. 10r–21v.