Reading, Writing, and Pet Ownership, circa A.D. 800

review of "Pangur Ban," translated by Seamus Heaney, in POETRY magazine, April 2006: the Translations Issue. PHOTO by Susan Rouse of her lovely one-eyed cat Nora.

I love to get POETRY in the mail every month, and I keep it in the car with a pen, to check any poem that I "get," and any review in it that says something that I wish I'd thought. Each issue has a few of those, and others that get a question mark.

The latest issue features translations, and I've checked every poem I've read so far. This posting is about the one that earned a check ++.

Although Heaney slants some of the rhymes to take off the sing-song edge, the rhymed couplets of four feet per line sound like a nursery rhyme. But the content speaks to any adult for whom reading, writing, and pet ownership are important.

It's Seamus Heaney's translation of "Pangur Ban" (a.k.a. "The Monk and His Cat"), an anonymous poem found in a ninth-century manuscript. I had run into this poem before, in Thomas Cahill's wonderful history - essay, How the Irish Saved Civilization. If I remember correctly, this poem was written in the margin of a page of text that the Irish monk had translated, along with a little self-portrait cartoon by the monk. According to Cahill, the monk would have been one of dozens who worked in isolated huts on the coast of the Irish isles. Each quatrain draws out a parallel between the cat's hunt for the mouse hidden in the wall and the monk's hunt for the exact meaning hidden in an ancient text.

It sounds like a lonely, cold, hungry life. But across a millennium, the monk tells us how he and his cat are contented to be absorbed in worthy work. More than once, the Monk writes of his being equal, a partner to the cat named Pangur Ban, which Heaney tells us means something like "white clay" (literally, white-colored-"fuller's earth"):

Truth to tell, just being here,
Housed alone, housed together,
Adds up to its own reward:
Concentration, stealthy art.

So here I am, nearly 1200 years later, dogs at my feet, typing on a web blog, searching for the precise phrase to express my wonder at how the essentials of life (at least, the life of the mind) have not changed. Except: I'm multi-tasking, keeping an ear out for the clothes drier, listening to the radio for tips and entertainment, thinking ahead to tasks I must complete before an appointment at 3:30. So there's a bit of envy here, that he may have had less distraction than I. Of course, think what he had to deal with: fleas (his own, not Pangur Ban's), leaks, finding something to eat, fresh water, tooth ache (probably), keeping a fire going, and escaping the attention of Viking raiders.

Following Heaney's appreciative comments about a predecessor, I've tracked down the earlier translation by Robin Flowers via Google. Flowers chooses rhymes more perfect than Heaney's sometimes slanting ones, making the earlier translation a bit more like a child's poem. I've sent both versions to a friend who specializes in Celtic art, hoping to interest her in creating an illustrated book with the look of childrens' books.

Reading, Writing, and Pet Ownership, circa A.D. 800 | Category: Religion, Poetry