A good name is to be chosen, rather than great riches… Proverbs 22:1
Saturday 28/4/2018
Distance 30.3km Total Distance from Canterbury 708.3km
So today, a simple question. How would you pronounce Gy, the place I was aiming for today? It’s only two letters. There are not unlimited possibilities. But still, you could be right or you could be wrong. You could be conventional or you could be creatively individual – though you need French people to understand where you are referring to. Commit yourself now and I will tell you later. Continue reading “Day 28 – Dampierre-sur-Salon to Gy”
Tonight I am in Pavia, in Lombardia, still in the north of Italy with something between 700 and 800km remaining to walk. Pavia is an ancient cathedral and university city, on the banks of the Ticino River, which feeds into the Po. Continue reading “A real time update (3) Trinity Sunday”
Have the trumpet sounded everywhere… Leviticus 25:9
Friday 27/4/2018
Distance 21.2km Total Distance from Canterbury 678km
When I am talking to people who ask what I am doing, two things cause surprise. One is the distance. I don’t think the distance is really that remarkable in that basically it is 25-30km per day, (roughly 15-20 miles). You just keep doing it and it adds up! The bigger question is how do you get the time? And the answer to that is that I am enjoying a sabbatical year. What is that?
Back at the front end of the Bible, and in fact on page one, you may remember that God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. And so, in a sense, the Sabbath (the seventh day) was born. This occurs just after the end of Chapter 1, in 2:1-3.
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
If you continue to read Chapter 2 of Genesis you will find a different account of creation. We have already looked at that, it is the one where a man is created out of clay and then a women out of his rib. These two accounts are different and complementary, rather than contradictory. They are alternate ways of trying to explain a deep truth. They are different creation myths because they were written by different authors before being collected (a long time ago) into what we now know as the Bible.
So is this why we have seven days in a week? No. I think seven days in a week long predates the Bible by a long long way. Ancient peoples were remarkably good at astronomy. They were expert in observational astronomy. They noticed how the skies changed, the sun and the moon and the stars – a very prominent feature of the Creation story if you look at the first few verses of Genesis chapter 1. They didn’t understand what these lights in the sky were, or at least not in the same way that we do. But they could see patterns and could use them to make predictions about ‘times and seasons’ which were helpful once they started farming, or when they lived near a river that might flood in the rainy times. And they were able to incorporate their understanding of these changes into religious observance. Newgrange in Co Meath in Ireland is but one example. It includes a passage grave which is aligned with the rising sun on the morning of the winter solstice. It dates from around 3200BC. (This was a very long time before the Bible was written, although the stories in the Bible were old by the time they were written down).
Newgrange
I think we find it hard to understand how good ancient people were at understanding astronomy because we see so little of the sky. I went to stay in rural Africa for the first time for some months in 1978. I arrived on Maundy Thursday and the moon was full. (Easter is ‘fixed’, if that is the word, as the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Spring equinox. It is a bit more complicated than that but let’s not go there! It is why though there is always a full moon very shortly before Easter.) I walked to church the night I arrived, after dark, with no difficulty, because of the bright moonlight. I don’t think I had ever seen bright moonlight before, nor known just how bright it can be. It doesn’t happen in Liverpool! I lived in that same place again from 1982-84. There was no electricity and obviously no street lighting. It was dark from 7pm to 6am every day of the year, with almost no seasonal variation in day length. And so the sky became familiar. I came to understand a little bit more about it. And for the first time I understood something about the phases of the moon. I came to understand what my ancestors in Newgrange knew well, that there are (approximately) 28 days between new moons. Twenty eight is a big number to keep in your head, while four sets of seven is easier, and I think that is the basis of the seven day week. It gives order to things. Always when teaching Genesis to students from as many as 70 or 80 different countries or cultures, I asked them if they knew of people who had other than a seven day week. No one ever came up with an example, but in fact I had my own. In that place where I lived, there was a traditional week of four days. Eke, Orie, Afo, Nkwo in Igbo. I think this is really the only other division that works. Four weeks of seven days or seven weeks of four days can be grasped. Two weeks of fourteen days would be unmanageable and fourteen weeks of two days would be quite impractical. One thing that always struck me was that on (Western) Sunday at church, the priest would always announce when the next Sunday would be, as it came around on a different day every Igbo week. The base for counting in Igbo is 20 and when you get to twenty twenties, that is pretty well the end of counting. After that things are traditionally uncountable. Please note that the culture in Igboland is every bit as advanced as the culture in the West. The hospital where I worked was well-equipped, with operating theatres and an X-ray machine and we could do blood transfusions for instance. This was despite the lack of mains electricity. Kerosene powered fridges and deep freezes were another great revelation to me in Africa! Igboland is just as much part of the 21st Century as you and I are. But possibly much more in touch with its traditions than you and I are. People in Igboland know what their names mean for example – I think this is generally true in Africa. People in Africa generally find our western attitudes to the care of the elderly largely incomprehensible. But that is for another day. (I use the term Igboland, as Igbos do, simply to refer to that region in the Federal Republic of Nigeria where Igbo is the traditional language. For a while, fifty years ago it sought independence as Biafra, but that is long ago.)
The idea of sabbath becomes developed in Biblical times by the Jewish people and is laid down in the Book of Leviticus. Not many people read the Book of Leviticus. It is not big on plot. And it can seem rather repetitive and legalistic. But it has its own fascination with complex and logical rules about what animals are clean and what are unclean for example. I have (in a box, a continent away from me) a three-volume commentary on the Book of Leviticus which is about twice as long as the Bible itself. I miss it!
So back to the Sabbatical Year. Leviticus 25 says
The Lord said to Moses at Mount Sinai,“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the Lord.For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops.But in the seventh year the land is to have a year of sabbath rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards.Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. (25:1-5)
It is an idea whose time has come again with the growth in interest in sustainable farming. Ancient wisdom. That seventh year is the sabbatical year. A year of rest.
And then it is developed into the idea of Jubilee. Seven times seven is forty nine and the fiftieth year is then a year of jubilee.
Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years.Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land.Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you… (25:8-10)
That is where we get our own notion of jubilee from. The original Jubilee is fifty years. A time of restoration and cancellation of debts. The word comes from the Hebrew word yobel which means a ram. The ram’s horn is fashioned into the shofar, the trumpet like instrument used to call the assembly and proclaim the jubilee year. We call fifty years a Golden jubilee – that is our own culture. And twenty-five is silver. That is non-biblical, just half of fifty. And as it happens I am celebrating my own silver jubilee of ordination, which is how I come to have a sabbatical year. We will return to jubilee.
I slept well in my caravan and awoke refreshed and had something new to this trip – coffee in bed. The bar on the campsite was not open so I had to head into the town again for breakfast. A much easier walk than the same stretch at the end of the previous day. As I left, I read the noticeboards. I have to read all notices in all windows, all noticeboards, all fliers, just to be sure I am not missing anything. So I was interested to see that there was something about a GarageMort, which sounded a bit ominous. The English version was not reassuring: it is translated as Dead Garage. I suspect it must be a technical term in caravanning.
Garage Mort
Dead Garage
As i mentioned above,from 1982-84 I lived in a small market town in Nigeria, called Afikpo. Afikpo is about 5 degrees north of the Equator, and it is in what would have been tropical rainforest, if the forest had not long ago been cleared. I was working as a paediatrician in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital there. It was exceedingly well set up and well run by Medical Missionaries of Mary, from Drogheda in Ireland and had a long and interesting history, and a rather sad history during the Biafran War, of fifty years ago. Around the hospital and especially in the operating theatre, there were pieces of equipment with little plaques on saying they had been donated by the UK government or by the Government and People of USA. There had been a huge relief operation during the Biafran famine.
In more peaceful times, foreign aid continues. In the village administration compound there were a couple of snow ploughs, a fraternal gift of the Russian people, whose grasp of geography and climate was somewhat lacking. In the village there was a library building, which had a generator for electricity and so had light at night to allow youngsters to study. There was no public electricity in the area at that time. The library had a small and eclectic selection of books and when you opened them they often had an inscription to show their origin . So there were, for example, donations from the British Council. Three titles stand out in my mind. There were half a dozen copies of Camping and Caravanning in Europe a comprehensive paperback. There were also eight copies of a Biography of Morecambe and Wise, at that time at the height of their popularity as comedians in UK but not known elsewhere. You had to imagine their biography had not sold well at home. And even more extraordinary there was a mint condition brand new copy of the then standard British textbook of Paediatric Cardiology. Even then it must have cost nearly 100 pounds. It was not there because of me although I was the only person within at least a hundred mile radius who would have found it remotely useful. I popped down to consult it from time to time. And I fondly imagined being on a camping holiday in Europe. So my connection with camping and caravanning has a long history!
A very welcoming placeThe welcoming hosts
As I said, I went into the village for breakfast and found a bar which had coffee but nothing to eat. It was the most expensive cup of coffee I had found in France to date, at 3 Euros, but nonetheless welcome. I suspect the bar owner had considerable expenses. His last remaining strands of hair were pulled back into a ponytail and then dyed luminescent lime green. I can’t imagine this is cheap. There was an interesting large collection of beer signage, including this. Beamish is like Guinness, but is produced locally in Cork in Ireland.
So back on the road. I had been advised by my friend at the Tourist Office yesterday that I would be able to get pilgrim accommodation at the next tourist office when I got to my destination and she assured me of the opening hours.
There is not a huge amount to say about the journey. It was straightforward, according to the book, and involved no getting lost. It was though a rather hot day again. As usual I stopped at church doors and tried them hopefully. Two had a big impact on me that day.
The second was just before Dampierre sur Salon, my destination, the parish of St Leger. It was full of the usual array of Saint Joans of Arcs, and St Therese’s, and St Catherine with her wheel. But there was something new. I really liked this of a a very stylish hunter with his dog , blue lederhosen, a hunting horn, a crossbow and a wonderful hat.
St Hubert
If you have time do read his story here. It is more interesting than some! He is the patron saint of hunters, and is the patron saint in particular of ethical hunting whatever that may be. Maybe only hunting animals that want to be hunted and killed?? Anyway. His dates were 656-727. After his wife died in childbirth he devoted himself to hunting, presumably to ease his sorrow. One Good Friday as he was hunting he was amazed to see a stag with a cross upon its head. He heard a voice telling him to turn to God and mend his ways. Which he did. And subsequently became a priest and then a bishop, so he managed to continue his attachment to special head gear.
The stag was a talking stag – why are we not surprised? And during the vision it is said to have lectured Hubertus into holding animals in higher regard and having compassion for them as God’s creatures with a value in their own right. For example, the hunter ought to only shoot when a humane, clean and quick kill is assured. He ought shoot only old stags past their prime breeding years and to relinquish a much anticipated shot on a trophy to instead euthanize a sick or injured animal that might appear on the scene. Further, one ought never shoot a female with young in tow to assure the young deer have a mother to guide them to food during the winter. Such is the legacy of Hubert who still today is taught and held in high regard in the extensive and rigorous German and Austrian hunter education courses. You will never be disappointed if you look into a church!
The other church I wanted to look into was in a village called Framont. There are two churches in Framont, because two villages were combined into one, not all that long ago in 1972.Here I went up to the church and found the door locked, never a surprise. But a voice behind me said did I want to get in for a look. Yes I said. I have the key he said, and he went into his house, next to the church and came back bearing a large old key of which St Peter himself would be quite proud. And he opened the door and showed me in. It was not a very special church as churches go, but was well kept and obviously still in use. I asked him how old it was and he said he didn’t really know but together we scrambled into an old disused room to one side and found an inscription on a wall saying 1759 which marked a time when it had been repaired in the past.
We came out and went back to the garden where he and his wife had been carefully planting out a tray of very large-flowered Bizzy Lizzies. You see them in B&Q and they are called New Guinea variety. We chatted for a few minutes. and she told me it was their wedding anniversary that very day. Not only that, it was their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Their Golden Jubilee. And here they were in the garden together, as they had been I suppose countless times before. No big excitement, just obvious contentment. I congratulated them, and they asked me to bless them, which I did. Then I asked them to bless me, which they did. And then we were all overwhelmed with fulminating hay fever with tears streaming down our faces. It was an enormously touching experience. Here they are, Madeleine and Michel.
Everyday is someone’s jubilee. You don’t have to wait 50 years to join in the fun. Make the time now, celebrate, rejoice and, if you need to, put things right – restoration is a big part of jubilee. Sound the trumpet!
Happy and sad, I said farewell to Madeleine and Michel. I hope they had a wonderful evening with their family. The next village was called Achey. I am not making this up!
The words of a song by Billy Ray Cyrus stayed with me for the rest of the day…I’m not sure why…
Three things are too wondrous for me... Proverbs 30:18
Thursday 26/04/2018
Distance 40.1km Total Distance from Canterbury 656.8km
Langres is a sizeable town and it was very encouraging to arrive yesterday. It has shops, something which yet again I had not seen for several days. It’s always reassuring to have just a little bit of food in the bag, just in case. It also has a fine cathedral which I was able to inspect fully on my early arrival. There were many interesting things to see and a nice and welcoming lady giving information. Continue reading “Day 26 – Langres to Champlitte”
My apologies for the delay in uploading the blog. It has not stopped, but several things have conspired against it in the past ten days or so. It is a rather laborious process involving a lot of transferring of photos and text between phone, camera and tablet. Continue reading “A real time update (2) – Pentecost”
And a certain young man was following along with him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And they arrest him. But he cast aside the linen cloth and fled naked. (Mark 14:51-52)
Wednesday 25/4/2018
Distance 24km Total Distance from Canterbury 616.7km
It is the feast day of St Mark the Evangelist. The first person to write a gospel. I don’t really want to say it is the best gospel, but it is definitely in the top four. I have spent a lot of time teaching it and at one time knew it more or less off by heart, though no longer. Continue reading “Day 25 – Mormant to Langres”
Like clay in the hands of the potter, so are you in my hand, says the Lord (Jeremiah 18:6)
Tuesday 24/04/2018
Distance 19.1km Total Distance from Canterbury 592.6km
From Chateauvillain to Mormant was not very far. It was one of the quietest days I have had and i have had quite a few already! I knew I was going to stop at a B&B in Mormant, so no anxieties about accommodation and no hurry. Continue reading “Day 24- Châteauvillain to Mormant”
Distance 20.6km Total Distance from Canterbury 573.5km
I was sad leaving the Sisters at Clairvaux and somehow they, and the women visitors and the unseen prisoners stayed with me along the route. By chance, I heard an extraordinary sermon about prison and prisoners on last Sunday (as I am writing this). But we will have to wait for the blog to catch up with that I am afraid! Continue reading “Day 23 Clairvaux to Chateauvillain”
The merciful precepts of Christ will at last suffuse the [Penal] Code and it will glow with their radiance. Crime will be considered an illness with its own doctors to replace your judges and its hospitals to replace your prisons. Liberty shall be equated with health. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. The cross in place of the gallows: sublime and yet so simple. The Last Day of a Condemned Man, Victor Hugo (1829)
Sunday 22/4/2018
Distance 15.3km Total Distance from Canterbury 552.9km
Once again I chose to have a lighter day, if not exactly a day off, on Sunday. I vacated my wooden tent and walked back into the town. It’s a smart little place, almost bustling. There were people out and about. The sound of church bells announced Mass. The church was very beautiful indeed with fine windows.
Christ on the road to Emmaus
It dates in part from 12th century. Large and enthusiastic congregation. Liturgy done well. Leaflets for all with the words and music and good direction from choir mistress. Youngish priest. Nice ceremony of ‘presenting’ a baby, who will be christened in the coming weeks. God bless young Victoir. We will come to his namesake in a moment.
Bar-sur-Aube
And I saw something I don’t think I’ve seen before – the altar servers went to the back of the church before Communion and led up in procession those who would receive, starting with those in the back row. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. (Luke 14:10) A little bit of liturgical choreography, very affecting.
At the end of Mass the priest chatted with the people. Young. He told me he served over 30 communities. He asked me to bless him as a pilgrim. I asked him to bless me as a priest.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), who was born in Besançon, which I will reach later along the route, is one of the greatest literary figures in France. Think of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame. Born into a Catholic family, he became less sympathetic to religion, and in particular Catholicism,as he got older. But even his late work from 1869, The Man Who Laughs, includes the lines Thanksgiving has wings and flies to its right destination. Your prayer knows its way better than you do, suggesting he retained a spiritual outlook.
The quote at the top of this post is from an early work. In his youth he was a practising Catholic. In his youth he was also a royalist, but in later life he was a commited republican. What did not change during his life was his opposition to the death penalty and a concern for the welfare of prisoners and more generally for the oppressed working classes . At the same he expressed views about the role of women and about colonial empire building and slavery which would be considered quite un-PC today.
He wrote a novel called Claude Gueux in 1834. I haven’t read it, but you can read a synopsis of it here. It sounds grizzly – what we would call Dickensian. And the themes are related to what would come later in Les Misérables in 1862. And it is set in Clairvaux. And to Clairvaux I went. It was a short enough walk and included a long straight stretch through a wonderful forest. This was not the kind of forest I get lost in, and no hacking through the undergrowth. But it was a forest on a hill! Look.
We have heard of Clairvaux and St Bernard already. He it was who was the great friend, and perhaps even idol, of William of St Thierry.
St Bernard of Clairvaux
The monastery was established in 1115, a daughter house of Cîteaux, and hence a Cistercian Abbey. The Cistercians were historically a reform of the Benedictines, moving back towards a more austere lifestyle. The Cistercians or Trappists are what we think of as an enclosed, silent order. When a man becomes a Cistercian monk he enters a particular Abbey which he does not then leave. In 1098 Robert of Molesmes had founded Cîteaux. Bernard became the charismatic leader of the reform movement. He was deeply spiritual and an effective leader and recognized for his wisdom He founded Clairvaux and it grew. And it grew. And it grew. It was extended and rebuilt twice, in 1153 and again in 1708. It was huge, almost like a small village though enclosed by a wall. The monks farmed, keeping cows and growing wheat. They milled wheat and oil (from walnuts). They made bread and cheese. They forged iron. They had fish. They were self sufficient. Mostly they prayed, and they studied.
They still followed the Rule of St Benedict which prescribes a balance between work, prayer and study, and also emphasizes hospitality. Although monks move away from the world, they do not turn their backs on the world. And they are practical : If someone’s work takes them so far away that they cannot return to the chapel for common prayer, they should pray the office where they are… (Rule of St Benedict 50) I think that applies to pilgrims too. And it is why church bells are so important.
The abbey flourished and had a magnificent abbatiale or church.
I visited the abbey. I didn’t visit the church because it had gone. I would show you my photographs but I didn’t take any. To get into the abbey I had to deposit my passport and turn off my phone. And no cameras allowed. Clairvaux Abbey is now a high security, long stay prison. I had to go into a French state prison to see the buildings. Five of us had a tour. A large door opened, we were led in, and the door was locked behind us.
What happened? The French Revolution happened. To simplify matters hugely, the French Revolution did for the French monasteries what the Reformation and Henry VIII and Cromwell did for monasteries in England, Scotland and Wales (and Ireland). After the Revolution of 1789 the monks (few at that time) left Clairvaux and in 1810 Napoleon introduced a new penal code and Clairvaux became a prison and it still is. His penal code stayed in force until 1994. At its height as a prison Clairvaux had 3,000 inmates including women and children. The abbatiale was demolished. To this day it remains a prison for those with very long sentences, so drug offences, violent crimes and terrorism. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, otherwise known as Carlos the Jackal is there, serving three life sentences.
The prison is under the joint administration of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture. The tour guide gave an interesting overview of the various phases of construction of the abbey and then led us in further, with more opening of doors and gates which were again securely locked behind us. The abbey is enormous and the buildings have majestic proportions. The tour, for obvious reasons, does not bring you near to current inmates. The accommodation used for prisoners now is built on the sight of the demolished abbey church.
Large parts of the original abbey remain. When there were 3,000 prisoners it would all have been in use. As parts of the abbey have been vacated by the prison service several have now been restored, particularly the building which used to house the lay brothers (less educated men who were still monks but did more manual work). It is mostly bare stone and is done very skilfully. You are walking into buildings which must be very like they were in 1708, including the dormitory and eating area. Plans for restoration continue. The prison is due to close within the next ten years. It is not clear what will happen then though the hope is the Ministry of Justice might pass it all over to the Ministry of Culture.
The tour continues then to the original grand cloister a walled garden with the rooms of the monks in the upper storey. These were very big rooms! And here you see how the prison worked. The cloister garden was an exercise yard. The old ornamental fountain was replaced by ‘sanitary facilities’, now gone. The upper floor with the monks individual rooms was divided in the prison by a sort of mezzanine to make another floor. And here we are able to see the ‘chicken coops.’ These are individual wire cages with a bed and a bucket. Like a battery farm. They look medieval. But they were in use until the 1970s. Almost unbelievable. Hard to imagine an inmate in any way becoming rehabilitated. But in their day the chicken coops (that is what they are called in French) were seen as an enlightened advance on rooms for thirty men together which we also saw.
The final room we saw was another restored room of great beauty. I think it was the old refectory or dining room which during the prison years had been turned into a chapel for inmates. (3,000 people were obliged to go to Mass every Sunday.) It was beautifully finished, in stark contrast to the misery it had contained.
Where did I stay? Apart from the prison it is a tiny village. In the main street directly opposite the 12 foot outer wall is a convent of the Sisters of the Fraternity of St Bernard of Clairvaux. Three ladies live there and I think Victor Hugo would approve. They live and breathe the ‘merciful precepts of Christ.’ They do not work in the prison. They accommodate and help the families of prisoners who have come to visit, often from very distant parts of France. When I was there, there were 3 women and four or five toddlers. They were safe and well and happy and relaxed in contrast to what must be very difficult family situations. It was lovely to see how the Sisters related to them. They were like grandmothers to the children or even great grandmothers! The accommodation was simple but homely. My room included a cot and soft toy animals.
Above is the view from my bedroom. Note the outer wall on the street. I could easily have thrown a parcel in! Then a second wall. Then that is the outside of the great cloister. So the upper windows are covering the floor that had been divided in two, and contains the ‘rooms for 30’ and the chicken coops.
Above is the tiny chapel in the Sisters’ house.
Above is serious breakfast! They also supplied me with a sandwich for the road.
The Sisters are fascinating to talk to. Very dedicated to their work. They had worked elsewhere before coming here. Pierrette had worked with lepers in Cameroon not far from where I had once lived. They explained there was never Mass on Sunday but sometimes they could get to Mass on a Wednesday. Before I set out I celebrated Eucharist with them, not for them on Monday morning. No vestments to be found. They sang the ‘Celtic Alleluia’. The wine was champagne – (not Mumm!). The sound of children having noisy breakfast outside added something. It is not a big house.
Srs Blandine, Yvette and Pierrette
I was very inspired to have met Blandine, Yvette and Pierrette. Their work is hidden but I think makes a real difference. Ointments and oil shall be applied to limbs that were once shackled and branded. Infirmities that once were scourged with anger shall now be bathed with love. That is what young Victor Hugo said. The Sisters live in the literal physical shadow of a place of torment and anguish for over 200 years. And quietly they show their love.
As I said goodbye they got down to business. One of the visiting women and her two children needed to get back to the Pyrenees. But once again une grève, a strike of the SNCF the French railways.. They would sort something out…..
Distance 30.3 km Total Distance from Canterbury 537.6km
Sometimes it is the journey where the day’s adventure lies and sometimes the journey is straightforward but what comes after involves some risk. This was one of the latter days,
The phrase in Italian Traduttoretraditore is a sort of proverb which means something like ‘all translators are traitors’, or ‘he who translates is a traitor’. It loses a bit in translation, because it is a kind of pun in Italian because the words sound very alike. Anyway it embodies the notion that it is always difficult to translate from one language to another. It is very hard to pin down the meaning of a word, because words have multiple meanings and also the meaning of words changes over time, sometimes quite quickly, especially but not exclusively in youth culture. Continue reading “Day 21 – Brienne Le Chateau to Bar-sur-Aube”
