SOURCE: Suydam, Mary. “‘Ever in Unrest’: Translating Hadewijch of Antwerp’s Mengeldichten.” Women’s Studies 28 (1999): 157-84.

[In the following essay, Suydam considers the problems inherent in translating medieval texts and contends that it is a mistake to assume that Hadewijch’s use of gendered pronouns was based on the gender of the noun referent.]

In recent years scholars addressing religious works written by women in the medieval period have become increasingly attuned to the interconnections between gender and power. This focus is partially attributable to the growth of feminist scholarship and partially to post-structuralist theories. Feminist scholarship has called attention to the complex problems involved in recovering, reconstructing, and interpreting works by female authors.¹ Post-structuralists have changed the ways we think about writing, texts, and reading.² Structuralists argued that the relationship between sign (a word such as “prayer”) and thing signified (object, idea or action, such as the act of praying) is completely arbitrary.³ That is, there is no intrinsic relationship between the collection of sounds that make up a word and the thing itself. Poststructuralists added that the “thing itself” (“prayer”) is not a fixed concept located “out there” somewhere in the “real world,” but is ever-changing and, in fact, never really defined. Some may understand praying as a silent, kneeling, action; others as a highly vocalized and physically demanding act. Whatever “praying” is, it is not present in conversation about it (in the sense that words stand for an absent “real” presence), and its meaning is never truly or essentially defined except by context, deferral, or exclusion.⁴ Thus, every reading and writing is a constructed interpretation. Feminist and poststructuralist ideas intersect when one begins to think about who (e.g., male academic scholars) constructs, interprets, and evaluates whose (e.g., medieval women's) reading and writing.⁵

Even more problematic, and yet strangely not well explored, is the act of translation from one language to another. As poststructuralists deny the one-to-one relationship of signifier to signified within any language, there can be no possibility of creating such a relationship across two languages. It has long been recognized that one cannot “match” exact meanings in two different languages, and thus there can be great differences in meaning in translations. If one realizes that one is constructing, rather than finding or relaying, meaning, then the translator (trans-scriber) can be regarded not only as a careful reader but as another author. Yet, while all scholars appreciate and depend upon “good” translations, the translator's authorship function is rarely acknowledged. Even the highly acclaimed translators of critical editions are viewed as textual paleontologists, painstakingly and with careful scholarship restoring and reconstructing the text as it once was “out there.”⁶

When the translators are scholarly men and women of the modern academy, and their subjects are medieval devotional texts (many of which have already been mediated or reconstructed several times by male writers), the field of interpretative choices is apt to be very broad indeed. In fact, the translator possesses the power of determining and highlighting the meaning of a text that others cannot read. One current model of “popular” translations, aimed at a wide audience of students, appears to erase the translator as author but actually elevates his or her power over the text. In the interest of conserving space the original text(s) are eliminated from view, and there are relatively few footnotes. Footnotes which address issues of meaning are especially rare, since we rely on the translator to have “solved” these questions. The newly translated text is presented as though it were the closest possible “match” to the original, yet the translator's choices cannot be questioned.⁷

Michel Foucault has written that power in societies is the power to exclude.⁸ Excluding the original texts guarantees the reader's complete dependence upon the translator. Even more exclusive is the concept of a “definitive translation,” which excludes not only the original texts but all other translation possibilities!⁹ In this case the translator claims to have clearly defined the meaning of another text and to have conveyed its essence once and for all. The poststructuralist denial of intrinsic meaning highlights the controlling, rather than the factual, nature of the traditional translation model.

This article explores challenges encountered when one translates into English, and thus creates a new text from, the Dutch poetry of Hadewijch of Antwerp, a thirteenth-century Beguine.¹⁰ These challenges are (1) the existence of different manuscripts with different contents; (2) the lack of an original or authoritative text; (3) scholars' lack of knowledge about the author; (4) Hadewijch's use of gendered and neutral pronouns; and (5) the changing subjective voices within each poem. An examination of these problems in translating Hadewijch's text from Dutch to English will demonstrate the importance and implications of feminist and poststructuralist scholarship, both for translation and for interpretation.

Hadewijch of Antwerp was one of the creators of Minnemystik, or Love mysticism.¹¹ A gifted and prolific writer, her Mengeldichten is a collection of Dutch poems in couplets. It has survived in five different manuscripts, each from the fourteenth century or later. Each manuscript contains a different number of poems.¹² Manuscript A, dated between 1375 and 1383, contains 17 poems. Manuscript B, also dated before 1383, contains 29 poems, with Poems 1-16 separated from Poems 17-29 by a short treatise. Manuscript C, from the second half of the fourteenth century, also contains those 29 poems. There are two other partial collections from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The first contains Poems 17-24, while the second includes Poems 1-16 and Poems 25-29 but excludes 17-24. At the very outset, then, the absence of an original text or even a text that can be confidently attributed to Hadewijch or to her community presents the translator with a major problem. Did Hadewijch write all 29 poems? It is a very different scholarly enterprise to solve a problem about authorship than to translate poetry.

At present the two well known translations, one in French and one in English, have addressed this issue differently. Jozef van Mierlo, Paul Mommaers, and N. de Paepe all concluded that Hadewijch was not the author of Poems 17-29 of the Mengeldichten.¹³ Dom Porion's 1954 French translation included all 29 poems, even though Porion also believed that only Poems 1-16 were actually written by Hadewijch.¹⁴ On the other hand, Mother Columba Hart's 1980 English translation included only Poems 1-16.¹⁵ Mother Hart's decision meant that no one could read Poems 17-29 unless they could read French or the medieval Dutch editions. Poems 17-29 were thus dropped from the pool of medieval poetry available to English speakers. More important, Hart's decision reified previous scholarship for English readers and so established the parameters of Hadewijch's Mengeldichten. Henceforth only Poems 1-16 have been considered “genuine” Hadewijch poems.¹⁶

Contrary to this generally accepted scholarship, I have argued elsewhere that Hadewijch did indeed write all 29 poems.¹⁷ However, it is important for the translator to realize that this new scholarship merely re-establishes parameters in a different direction, assuring the reader that the scholar/translator has now “solved” the problem differently. Instead, what is crucial is that the translator do as Porion did and look across the corpus of all 29 poems, whether one person wrote them or not. The manuscript tradition, such as it is, clearly indicates that most of the poems were considered to be a collection, different parts of which were included in different manuscripts. More significantly, the challenges involved in re-writing the Mengeldichten through translation are common to all 29 poems. In a poststructuralist model, the translator relinquishes some of the power to determine and exclude and, instead, shares information with the reader.

This mode of trans-mission restores the complexity of medieval textuality. I believe that publishers of translations need to consider more carefully the context in which medieval manuscripts were created. A medieval text is not like a modern book, with a single author and a single polished version. Hadewijch's Mengeldichten, with its five differing manuscripts, is quite typical of medieval works. It is unproductive to search for the “right” number of poems for this collection because this effort mistakenly assumes that there is one correct version from which others deviate.¹⁸

Postmodern theories of textuality that do not look upon texts as received “truth” are particularly relevant to medievalist textual scholarship. According to Vincent Leitch, structuralists focused upon the structural nature of language:

For Saussure, language is a largely unconscious system of hierarchical elements and forces defined always by their differences from and relations to each other within a system.¹⁹

However, Jacques Derrida observed that although structuralist theory severed sign and signifier, it continued to search for a stable center or origin which would establish transcendental meaning. For structuralists like Claude Levi-Strauss, there must be a transcendental signifier that establishes and centers chains of relationships in any language system. Such a center is necessary to arrest the free play of signifiers.²⁰ To return to our earlier example, there must be a stable system within which “prayer” operates in order that it may have consensual meaning. If by “prayer” we are thinking of meditation, and that is understood as a silent, individual act, then we can exclude more public and vocal definitions of “prayer.”

To the contrary, Derrida believed that interpretation itself is the act of establishing such centers and thereby creating structures:

There are thus two interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of sign, of play. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin which escapes play and the order of the sign … The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms [the] play [of signifiers].²¹

That is, our attempt to define “prayer” assumes that there is a stable center that will fix meaning once and for all. However, there really is no “essence” of prayer. Our interpretations create or assume such a transcendental meaning, but this meaning is not intrinsic and may shift according to context.

Derrida's observations about the way words work in language are particularly relevant to our assumptions about medieval manuscripts. Scholars tend to act as though there were one definitive manuscript that will center all the deviating ones and allow them to be compared to but not compete with the authoritative text. This text then serves as the one that the translator will interpret. If, however, there is not one text but many, none of which is authoritative, then it is scholars who are creating structure. In the case of Hadewijch's manuscripts, the act of privileging some poems but not others is an interpretation which attempts to find a stable origin (a fixed number of “genuine” poems) that readers can depend upon. By printing all 29 poems, the poststructuralist translator lets the reader share in the problem of constructing Hadewijch's Mengeldichten.

According to this postmodern perspective, it is also fruitless to insist upon a theory of single authorship for this medieval text. Like the gospel writer “Mark,” or the “pseudo-Dionysius,” “Hadewijch of Antwerp” is only a name. There are few references to her, her community, or her writings other than what is contained in the literary corpus that circulated under her name. Yet, even though we can't locate her, we cling to the notion that “Hadewijch” represents one real person and that therefore it is very important to discover which poems of the Mengeldichten are really hers. Foucault observed that since the eighteenth century authorship has been considered very important in the status of literary works:

Literary discourses came to be accepted only when endowed with an author-function. We now ask of each poetic or fictional text: from where does it come, who wrote it, when, under what circumstances, or beginning with what design? The meaning ascribed to it and the status or value accorded to it depend upon the manner in which we answer these questions. And if a text should be discovered to be in a state of anonymity … the game becomes one of rediscovering the author.²²

The current lack of status accorded to the second half of the Mengeldichten is entirely due to the perceived uncertainty surrounding its authorship. Conversely, the remainder of the literary corpus currently rests secure in its designation of authorship to a person known as Hadewijch.

Internal clues in Hadewijch's letters indicate that she was temporarily the head of a Beguine community.²³ Consequently, it is possible that many of the poems and visions in “Hadewijch's” writings were written (composed?) by members of this community and circulated under a single name.²⁴ If we understand “Hadewijch” as a useful designation for a body of work, we will be less consumed with the authenticity of thirteen poems from the collection known as the Mengeldichten. Since the poems are representative of the collection known as “Hadewijch,” it is crucial for the translator to include them.²⁵

The absence of a single authoritative manuscript is perhaps even more problematic for the translator than delineating boundaries of a collection or establishing authorship. In the case of Hadewijch's poetry, there are significant variations in both wording and versification even among poems which are included in all the manuscripts. For example, Poems 18 and 19 have lines which are either missing in some manuscripts or added to others, depending upon one's perspective.²⁶ Most popular, i.e. non-critical, translations attempt to harmonize the variant manuscripts and therefore do not attempt to note every missing word or slightly different phrasing. I believe, however, that modern English readers should at least be made aware of the fact that there really is no single text of the Mengeldichten. Significant differences like missing or added lines and word changes that have different meanings alert the reader to the construction that the translator has chosen.²⁷

Additionally, the translator has to decide how to present a medieval “text” in a “readable” form. Karma Lochrie has called attention to the fact that “the fundamental orality of mystical texts is subsumed under … [a] literary/exegetical model of textual production.”²⁸ Lochrie's description is a reminder that most medieval female authors did not write their own texts but dictated them to scribes. The written text has already been mediated, and subsequent copyings repeat this process.²⁹ Moreover, even this written manuscript was not usually presented in a form familiar to modern readers. Many medieval manuscripts, prose or poetry, have no punctuation. Hadewijch's Mengeldichten are written (transcribed) as poetry, except in Ms. D, where parts of them are written as prose with a dot marking each line. It is a difficult choice to leave such demanding poetry unpunctuated, but I believe the ambiguities and confusions that result from this decision are more contextually “true” to the poetry than an arbitrary (though well intentioned) decision by a translator committed to “clarity.” For example, in “Poem 1” lines 271-274 are written:

MY TRANSLATION

271 Absence plumbs the depths of love
272 Attainment makes her riches known
273 Non-attainment makes new strivings
274 Hope makes them fly into the heights of love

HART'S TRANSLATION

Deficiency examines the depths of Love;
Victory makes her wealth known.
Non-victory rouses keen efforts;
Hope makes the lover fly to Love's sublimity.(30)

The absence of punctuation such as semi-colons and periods forces the reader to ponder the relationships between “absence,” “attainment,” “non-attainment,” and “hope.” Hart's punctuation results in pairing and thus contrasting each set of ideas: deficiency/victory; non-victory/hope. Without punctuation the relationships between these nouns is much more ambiguous.

The relationships of pronouns to nouns is also much more problematic in the unpunctuated version. In the second line, does “her riches” refer to absence, attainment, or love? In the last line the referent of “them” is unclear, an ambiguity that is erased by Hart's translation. As we shall see, all these ambiguities are characteristic of the Mengeldichten in other areas as well.

The existence of differing texts, the unknown circumstances of the named author(s), and the physical layout of the manuscript(s), are all parts of the text(s) that need to be included in translation. If these aspects of textuality are erased, then both students and experienced scholars risk the trap of regarding medieval writings as analagous to modern literature. I believe that pedagogically and for our own research we cannot afford to mitigate many of the most critical aspects of medieval text(s).

Two linguistic challenges in translating Hadewijch's Mengeldichten into English, the use of gendered and neutral pronouns and the changing subjective voices within each poem, are intertwined with the features of textuality just described. Both are partially a consequence of the absence of punctuation. Both may also be a consequence of the mixture of orality and textual mediation contained in the written manuscripts. Like many other Beguine writers, Hadewijch personified nouns such as Minne (Love) and Redene (Reason). Many translators of women's texts diminish this personification by referring to all such nouns with the neutral “it” rather than the text's masculine or feminine pronouns. Don Levine's introduction to Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls states

Porete is very fond of indirect pronouns, and I have felt free to keep or not keep these as the sense warranted. Thus, while the original French text is littered with the word ‘elle’ (‘she’ or ‘it feminine’), referring to the Soul or Love, both of which are feminine in the text, I have always translated this as ‘it’ in accordance with current English usage.³¹

There's a real value judgment implicit here. I can't imagine that anyone would declare that a piece was “littered” with neutral pronouns.

It is true that English readers who are not used to gendered pronouns probably exaggerate their effect. But it is also true that “it” just does not convey the same thing as “she” or “he,” particularly when speaking of the Divine. It is telling that most translators of religious writing have no problem with translating masculine pronouns for God, but feel compelled to turn the feminine pronouns for the Divine into “it.”

Mother Columba Hart's English translation generally preserves the feminine pronouns when they refer to Minne as an aspect of God, but not in other instances. Consider the following example from “Poem 10,” lines 101-120:

HART'S TRANSLATION

101 This the soul bears as if it came from unfaith,
102 When it well knows it comes from fidelity.
103 Through desires of unquiet love
104 The Soul can win no respose,
105 And through desires of strong love
106 It loses repose and inner quiet.
107 So it drowns in sublime love,
108 And so it finds its unattainable desire nearby;
109 For anyone in misery cannot find contentment
110 Unless desire can be fulfilled;
111 For desire comes from such a lofty nature,
112 It cannot be at rest in any small thing.
113 Love flees, and desire follows hard after,
114 And never finds a resting place.
115 It cannot conquer sublimity;
116 What love herself is must remain out of its reach.
117 Could the soul know the nature
118 Wherein it is loved by God with love,
119 It would languish in longing
120 And flow away completely in delight.

DUTCH AND MY TRANSLATION

Dit dreghet si alst quame van ontrouwen
This she bears as if it came from unfaith
Datse wel weet dat comt van trouwen
Which she well knows that it comes from faith
Van begherten van onghedueregher minnen
From desires of unquiet love
En machse ghene raste ghewinnen
she can win no rest
Ende van begherten der sterkere minnen
and from desires of stronger love
Verliesse raste ende ghedueren van binnen
she loses rest and quiet from within
So si hogher in minnen versinct
so she sinks higher in love
So si na hare begherte onghereder vent
so she finds near her unattainable desire
Want men in ellenden niet ghenoch vinden en mach
for one in misery may not find satisfaction
Noch begherte veruult werden en mach
nor may desire be fulfilled
Want si comt vte so hogher natueren
For she comes from such a high nature
Sine mach in ghene clene dinc ghedueren
she cannot be at rest in any small thing
Minne vliet ende begherte volghet naer
Love flees and desire follows after
Ende vint emmer ongherede stat daer
and finds that she stays ever in unrest
Die hoecheit en machse niet vercrighen
She may not conquer that height
Dat minne selue es moet hare ontbliuen
What love herself is must be absent to her
Mochte die ziele die natuere bekinnen
Might the soul know the nature
Daer si van gode in ghemint es met minne
where she is loved by God with love
So soudse sere in verlanghene doyen
So she would languish in longing
Ende al in ghenoechten vloyen
and flow in all satisfaction(32)

Here the soul and love, both feminine nouns, are equally referred to as “she” in the Dutch text. This results in a confusion as to which noun is intended. For example, in line 111, “she cannot be at rest in any small thing,” who is she? The soul or love? Hart's translation opts for clarity. By replacing the feminine “she” with the neutral “it” whenever “soul” seems to be the referent, any ambiguity in meaning between “soul” and “love” as subject is erased. In order to accomplish this, however, Hart must re-write the text, often inserting the word “soul” into the text (as in lines 101 and 104) to further shape the meaning.

There is another possibility for the translator. Rather than regarding this pronoun confusion as an unfortunate accident resulting from the interplay of two feminine nouns, as a translator I hypothesize that Hadewijch consciously played with this aspect of her language. One of the principal themes of the Mengeldichten is that of the mutuality of the soul (human) and love (divine). The poem's pronoun ambiguity is one meaning of this text. The “her” in “What love herself is must be absent to her” (line 116) could refer to either Love or the human soul.

An additional argument for retaining the gendered pronouns for Soul and Love is that having two female figures as subjects of a religious text is empowering to women. In “Poem 10,” and in all of Hadewijch's works, both the Soul and Love are proud and confident characters who actively seek their own fulfillment in each other. When teaching courses on women and Christianity, I have become very aware of the power of gendered references for God and spirituality. I would like to see more Western religious texts “littered” with feminine nouns. Why re-write the ones we have? Thus, in my own re-writing of Hadewijch's poetry, I opt for a more ambiguous text that keeps feminine pronouns in spite of frequent subject-object confusion.

The absence of a heterosexual paradigm in this section of the poem constitutes a third reason for retaining the feminine pronouns. Minnemystik writing is often described as erotic poetry modelled on (heterosexual) troubador verse.³³ Here the soul and love, both feminine, long for satisfaction in each other. Translation of the soul as “it” obliterates this aspect of the poem. Again it is significant that translators have not had a problem retaining a heterosexual paradigm for love between the human and divine, but seem compelled to diminish the same-sex paradigms that also occur in these texts. Interestingly, the medieval male scribes who copied (and presumably valued) this poetry did not find this aspect of the Mengeldichten troubling enough to erase its ambiguity.

“Poem 3” contains an example of a similar ambiguity with masculine pronouns:

MY TRANSLATION

          95 That one who tries to find God by himself
          96 I think that God is absent to him
          97 For no one can satisfy him
          98 Who bears the image of the earthly man
          99 We feel something, we wish to touch
100 And lose reason and want to lean on this
101 And we think we are one with what we love
102 Thus we break up the game before we win
103 That one who bears the earthly man
104 Considers the debt to reason
105 Which is his rule and which teaches him
106 The works through which one turns to love

DUTCH

Die hem met hem seluen te gode doet
Je wane hem god ontbliuen moet
Want nieman hem ghenoech ghedoen en can
Die draghet die ymagie vanden erdschen man
Gheuoelen wij iet, wij werden gherenen
Ende verliesen redenne ende willenre op lenen
Ende wanen een sijn met dat wij minnen
Dus breken wij tspel eer[t] wijt ghewinnen
Die ane dreghet den erdschen man
Besie die scout der redennen an
Die sine reghele es, ende die hem leert
Die werke die men ter minnen keert(34)

In lines 95-106 the subject and object are God and a hypothetical male. Lines 97-98, “For no one can satisfy him who bears the image of the earthly man,” while obviously intended to refer to a human inability to satisfy God, also contains the meaning of God as Christ who bears the image of the earthly man. Again, note the same-sex paradigm for man's satisfaction of God, here masculine rather than feminine.

In addition to these gendered subject-object double meanings and ambiguities, Hadewijch's poetry also contains long sections without a single gendered pronoun. An example is Hadewijch's great praise of mystical union with Love in “Poem 12,” lines 86-93:

And they will greet with one single greeting
And that they will kiss with one single mouth
And fall into the depths of one single abyss
And with one seeing to see through all
That is and was and shall be
And that all will be wise with one wisdom
And with one will of a single thought
And with one kingdom all the same kingdoms
In one form, in one likeness
And in one feeling, in one power of all(35)

I think it significant that this whole section is gender-neutral, particularly because the chief metaphor of the poem is God's erotic desire and longing for the soul. Does mystical union transcend gender? Preserving the gendered pronouns where they occur sharpens the dramatic effect of important passages like this one, whereas “littering” the text with neutral pronouns would “neutralize” its power.

Thus, I believe it is a mistake to assume that Hadewijch's use of gendered or neutral pronouns is dictated simply by the gender of the noun referent. It seems to me that Hadewijch chose both her nouns and pronouns carefully. This may be true of other women's writing as well, particularly those that use personification as a literary tool. Even though it is confusing, I believe the translator should preserve the gender of the pronouns so that the reader can make her or his own judgements. In general, Hadewijch's writings demand that the reader struggle to understand them. I would like translations that allow the reader to be part of this process.

“Poem 16,” lines 13-16, highlights a second confusing characteristic of Hadewijch's poetry: the constantly changing voice of the subject and its pronouns:

HART'S TRANSLATION

13 And that Love does behave as I say
14 Is known by everyone who lives, wholly, for love,
15 This life is full of wonders
16 I have already told you about.

DUTCH AND MY TRANSLATION

Dat minne al dese seden heues
That love does have these ways
Hi saelt al kinnen die hare volleues
He shall know all who fulfills her completely
Daer vele wonders ane gheleghet
There lay many wonders
Dat ic v vormaels hebbe gheseghet
Which I have told you about(36)

In this instance Hadewijch uses the masculine pronoun “he” when referring to the ideal mystic (“he shall know all”) but then shifts the subject to herself (“I have told you about”).

Here “he” knows all, but so does Hadewijch! Hart's translation avoids this tension by omitting the masculine and adding “for Love” instead of “for her”: “Is known by everyone who lives wholly for Love.” Why did Hadewijch use “he” in this and many other instances, when it is clear that she is referring to herself?

One reason for the recurrence of singular masculine pronouns may be that Hadewijch's poetry was modelled on troubador verse, in which a knight often strives to attain a distant lady. By placing herself or other mystics in the role of knight and describing God as Minne, this analogy is maintained. But another possibility is that the use of different subjects, all linked with Hadewijch, is a deliberate tool to establish the poet's authority. For example, consider “Poem 3,” lines 1-10:

MY TRANSLATION

          1 May God be God to all those who love
          2 And know Love is due to Him alone
          3 And these begin with words, with works
          4 And with the law of Holy Church
          5 And (they) wander far in the counsels of Love
          6 After dark despair, high trust
          7 Oh how unheard are the ways of love
          8 Before love wins victories with love
          9 The one who wishes to win victories in love
10 Must adorn himself in all the ways

DUTCH

God Si hen allen god diene minnen
Ende hem allene Minnen werdich kinnen
Ende dies beghinnen met worden, met werken
Ende metter wet der heylegher kerken
Ende voert ane dolen in minnen raet
Na deemster onthopen hoghe toeuerlaet
Ay hoe onghehoert sijn minnen weghe
Eer minne met minnen wint seghe
Die seghe in minnen wilt ghewinnen
Hi moet hem chieren in allen sinnen(37)

The focus of the poem's first 8 lines are the impersonal plural “those who love” (God). Then the poem suddenly switches to the singular “the one who wishes to win victories in Love / must adorn himself in all the ways.” Why does Hadewijch change the subject, when both of the references concern the same hypothetical person (or persons): the seeker(s) after God? And these are only two of the abruptly shifting subjects in the poem. Should the translator preserve these changes or smooth them out?

I believe that, as is the case with Hadewijch's gendered pronouns, these plural-singular subject changes are an important part of Hadewijch's Mengeldichten. Of course, we can never know the author's intent, but I would like to suggest some effects of these shifts. One important consequence is the conveyance of an oral style. People telling stories are not as careful with verb and subject consistency as those who craft a written account. Stories from oral traditions are often inconsistent with subjects, as generations of Biblical interpreters have known. This does not imply that told stories are less well crafted than written ones, but that the craft lies elsewhere than in perfect subject consistency.

One reason that Hadewijch's poetry may not be as interested in perfect subject consistency is that Hadewijch's is the real voice behind all of these subjects. The closing lines of “Poem 3” are a personal, ringing cry to Love from the author herself:

MY TRANSLATION

143 I say, o noble love, do now
144 Your high will with me in all things
145 Be it death, be it life, all is the debt owed you

DUTCH

Jc segghe: ay, edele minne, nv doet
Jn al uwen hoghen wille met mi
Eest doet, eest leuen, v scout al si(38)

It is clear that Hadewijch owns all the voices, most prominently in both her singular role as knight/Beguine longing for Love and in the plural role of the Beguine community who have pledged themselves to Love. This multiplicity of subjects is a more powerful statement of Hadewijch's authority than either a single impersonal omniscient voice or even a singular personal voice. In effect, Hadewijch claims all voices as her own.

I also believe that changing subject voices from plural to singular, or from “he” to “I” as in the earlier example, keeps the reader off balance. After all, these shifts are not motivated by a dialogue form. Nor can one say that they even alternate in any discernible pattern. Rather, in “Poem 3,” singular and plural personae are interchangable. The individual seeker and the community of which “he” or “she” is a part are intertwined, as is the reader of the poem and Hadewijch herself. In fact, Hadewijch's poetry continually blurs subject-object boundaries, so much so that there are seldom two dichotomized boundaries such as subject/object. An example is the change from plural to singular subject(s) in lines 67-83:

HART'S TRANSLATION

67 In order that they may content Love,
68 They should rejoice over all of them alike.
69 When anyone thus gives himself in all things to Love,
70 What Love has not said to him,
71 God reveals to him in flight,
72 In a beautiful vision of good to come,
73 And speaks to him hidden words,
74 Which he learns to know but which were never audible
75 To an alien heart that denies something to Love
76 And never fixes its gaze on Love at any time.
77 For souls that are high-minded and sincere in Love
78 Read their judgements in Love's countenance,
79 And they are always vigilant in Love.
80 The wonder of unity is approaching them;
81 Yes, wonder for us who do not know love,
82 But justice for them who give all to love.
83 For the most beautiful life I know,

DUTCH AND MY TRANSLATION

Op dat si der minnen gheneoghen moghen
So that they may satisfy Love
Si souden hem eens ende alles belouen
They should promise him one and all
Die in allen hem dus der minnen gheuet
The one who thus gives himself to Love in all things
Dat minnen te hem niet tsegghen en heuet
That which Love has not said to him
Dien toent hem god in enen vliene
Then God shows to him in a flight
Jn sconen ghelate van goet ghescience
Seen in a beautiful face of good
Ende sprect hem toe verhoelne woerde
And speaks secret words to him
Die hi bekint ende die nie en becorde
Which he learns and which were not heard by anyone
Vremde herte die hare vore minne iet spaert
Of an alien heart which spares something for Love
Ende alle vren in minnen niene staert
And does not gaze in love at every hour
Want die fier ende ghewarich der minnen sijn
For those who are proud and true of Love
Si lesen hare vonnessen in minnen anschijn
They read their wills in the vision of Love
Ende sijn altoes in minnen wakende
And they are always watchful in Love
Hem es enich wonder nakende
For him the wonder of oneness is coming
Ja wonder vore ons die minne niet en kinnen
Yes, wonder for us who do not know love
Maer gherechtecheit vore hen die al gheuen der minnen
But justice for those who give all to love
Want dat scoenste leuen dat ic weet
For the most beautiful life that I know(39)

I suspect that the Mengeldichten's shifting subjects and objects are intended to work against dichtomized ways of relating to God. As Hadewijch stated in her Visions, “I could no longer distinguish him outside me nor him within me. Then it was to me as if we were one without difference.”⁴⁰

A final example from “Poem 23” (not usually considered to have been written by Hadewijch) illustrates how both gender ambiguity and changing subjects are featured there also. In lines 25-30 the “you” is God/Minne, while the feminine “she” refers to the Beguine/mystic:

MY TRANSLATION

25 Whenever You give to her
26 Out of Your wisdom
27 There she lives near (You)
28 Out of Your fullness
29 There she knows more
30 Than she understands

DUTCH

Als ghi hare gheuet
Daer si bi leuet
Wt uwer wijsheit
Daer se meer weet
Dan si versteet
Vte uwer volheyt(41)

Somewhat later on, in lines 49-50, this singular Beguine has become a plural community: “Free of any essence / They come together in You / in pure love.”⁴² In the following perplexing verse, lines 55-62, it is extremely difficult to figure out who the subjects and objects are and whether they are plural, singular, masculine or feminine:

MY LITERAL TRANSLATION

Those who practice the noble secret
In the vision
Of their (her?) unity of thought
That one (she? he?) who protects from death
In her (their?) naked wisdom
That eternal godhead

DUTCH

Die de verborghene fine
Oefenen inden aenschine
Haerre ghedachten enicheit
Die beslut vander doet
Jn hare wijsheit bloet
Die eweghe godheyt(43)

The irony of the poem's closing line, “the naked truth / is clear and revealed to all”⁴⁴ is completely lost if the translation harmonizes the difficulties without informing the reader of them.

The problems involved in translating this part of “Poem 23” highlight the fact that in it everyone—every pronoun possibility, singular or plural, masculine, feminine, and/or neutral—is directed toward Love. In this section of “Poem 23” Love is a personified feminine aspect of the Divine. Elsewhere in the Mengeldichten Hadewijch uses The Beloved or Christ as a personified masculine aspect of the Divine. I believe that it is a mistake to view the Mengeldichten and its Minnemystik as either grounded in homoerotic or heterosexual frameworks. Rather, the Mengeldichten plays with gendered frameworks, savors erotic double meanings, gender confusion, and ambiguity, and, ultimately, undercuts all such frameworks by its refusal to be limited to a specific referent. Changing voices and elusive pronouns—that is my understanding and thus my “rewriting” of Hadewijch's magnificent text(s).

In conclusion, the Mengeldichten presents us with an uncertain “author(s),” an uncertain collection, differing manuscripts, and difficult and ambiguous poetry. To use structuralist terms, there are no “stable centers of origin.” This examination of Hadewijch's poetry, along with current research on works by other medieval women writers such as Marguerite Porete and Beatrice of Nazareth, has important consequences for our constructed interpretations and understanding of medieval women's writings.⁴⁵ First, we need to be aware of the privilege paid to particular manuscripts and to writings that have clear authorship histories. Women's writings, which often survived in poorly copied manuscripts with uncertain traditions, have not always fared well according to this perspective. Translations which pay more attention to medieval textualities of all writers will restore the modes of transmission and orality within particular manuscripts.

Second, even though it looks strange in English, translations need to consider restoring gendered language. There is no other way for students and scholars to ponder the dimensions of gender for religion in medieval men's and women's writings. More work needs to be done on Ruusbroec's and Eckhart's use of gendered language to see if or how it differs from Beguine writings that use many of the same analogies.

Finally, perhaps all translations should begin: Caveat lector! Let the reader beware. There is no sure guide to translatio, to cross the linguistic barriers. By giving up on the authoritative voice of omniscience, the translator actually frees the reader to explore and construct the richness of “Hadewijch's” Mengeldichten. I believe that this feminist and poststructuralist approach to translation will ultimately challenge readers and provide scholars with more complex and interesting building blocks with which to construct our understanding of medieval religious cultures.

Notes

1. There are now many good studies of medieval women's religious literature which explicitly delineate feminist issues and problems. A few examples are Anne Clark, Elizabeth of Schönau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992); Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991); Elizabeth Petroff, ed., Medieval Women's Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), and Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Caroline Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) and Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991).

2. A good introduction to the history of twentieth-century interpretative criticism is Vincent B. Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). A guide to the implications of these theories for medievalists is Laurie Finke and Martin Schichtman, eds., Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987). References to particular poststructuralists are cited throughout.

3. The work of Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of semiotics, is the basis of all structuralist and poststructuralist theories of sign and signifier. For an introduction, see John Sturrock, ed., Structuralism and Since: From Levi-Strauss to Derrida (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 6-10.

4. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). For Jacques Derrida, the “represented” is always itself already a sign: “We think only in signs” (50). For Derrida, whatever comes before the sign is differance, the formation of formation. Practically speaking, this differance does not exist, because there is no “before”: “From the moment that the sign appears, that is to say from the very beginning, there is no chance of encountering anywhere the purity of ‘reality …’” (91).

5. In this essay my focus is on the significance of poststructuralist ideas for the art of translation. However, it should be understood that this poststructuralism is integrated throughout with feminist concerns about the significance of gender and the connection between authority, hierarchy, and patriarchy. Poststructuralists themselves do not always make such connections. Laurie Finke has explored the implications of poststructuralism for feminist scholarship about language, texts, the female “author,” and political resistance, in Feminist Theory, Women's Writing (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). In this regard see also Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (Cambridge: Blackwell Press, 1987). For poststructuralists, Michel Foucault has been particularly attuned to the ways in which power is appropriated and exercised in societies. See especially Foucault's “Truth and Power,” in Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 109-133.

6. Scholars rarely gain status in the academy by publishing translations unless they are already acknowledged authors in their own field. On a personal note, I have been told many times and by many different people that my dissertation should not be “only” a translation, and that publishing translations would not be a plus on the job market.

7. For example, in the translation of Hadewijch of Antwerp's works for the Paulist Press the copious notes often draw attention to allusions, inferences, or symbols that Hart believes are important to understanding Hadewijch's words. Only a handful of the words themselves are printed. Given the absence of the original text(s), this is unavoidable (Mother Columba Hart, trans., Hadewijch of Antwerp: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).

8. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 90-92; Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism, 144-163.

9. An example of this tendency is the well known translation of Julian of Norwich's Showings for the Paulist Press series. In the introduction the translators declare that “Although numerous beginnings have been made in critical texts … the task was only successfully completed this year when the present writers issued their edition.” (Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, trans., Julian of Norwich: Showings (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 17). The reader is thus encouraged to have full confidence in this particular version, although in fact this translation has not been universally regarded as definitive. See Alexandra Barratt, “How Many Children Had Julian of Norwich? Editions, translations and Versions of Her Revelations,” in Anne Clark Bartlett, Thomas Bestul, Janet Goebel, and William F. Pollard, eds., Vox Mystica: Essays for Valerie M. Lagorio (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), 27-39.

10. To be strictly accurate, Hadewijch's corpus was written in a Brabant dialect that is one of the ancestors of modern Dutch.

11. As a Beguine, Hadewijch probably lived in a self-sufficient community of religious women who took no vows of obedience, neither to a husband nor to the Church. Beguines first appeared in the late twelfth century and by 1216 had obtained papal approval for their way of life. Until their condemnation in 1310 they were a widespread religious movement in the Low Countries and Central Europe (Beguines in the Southern Low Countries continued to flourish long after 1310). The standard work on Beguines is still Ernest McDonnell, The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture: With Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene (New Brunswick: Octagon Books, 1954). More recently, Walter Simons' “The Beguine Movement in the Southern Low Countries: A Reassessment” has addressed the development of the Beguine movement in that area (Bulletin de l'institut historique belge de Rome 59, 63-105, 1989). Additionally, Carol Neel has traced the evolution of the Beguines to the earlier popularity of Augustinian Canons and Premonstratensians in the same geographical areas. See Judith M. Bennett, et al., “The Origins of the Beguines” in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 240-260.

12. The manuscript tradition is summarized in Saskia Murk-Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hadewijch's Mengeldichten (Goeppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1991), 9-13.

13. See Jozef van Mierlo, Hadewijch: Mengeldichten (Antwerp: Standaard Boekhandel, 1952), xxvii-xxxiii.

14. J. B. Porion, Hadewijch d'Anvers: Poèmes Traduit du Moyen Age (Paris: Édition Du Seuil, 1954). Porion also admitted that his translation was a “free paraphrase” rather than a literal attempt at translation.

15. Mother Columba Hart, Hadewijch: The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). For the printed critical Dutch edition of the Mengeldichten, based upon Manuscript C, see J. van Mierlo, Hadewijch: Mengeldichten. Additionally, Saskia Murk-Jansen has recently completed an English translation of all 29 poems, using Manuscript B.

16. At present, only Saskia Murk-Jansen and myself have argued for Hadewijch's authorship of the entire Mengeldichten. See Saskia Murk-Jansen, The Measure of Mystic Thought: A Study of Hadewijch's Mengeldichten; Mary Suydam, Hadewijch of Antwerp and the Mengeldichten (Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Services, 1993), and “The Politics of Authorship: Hadewijch of Antwerp and the Mengeldichten”, Mystics Quarterly (March 1996) 22: 1.

17. Mary Suydam, “The Politics of Authorship: Hadewijch of Antwerp and the Mengeldichten,” Mystics Quarterly (March 1996) 22: 1.

18. This point was forcefully elucidated by Katherine O'Brien O'Keefe's “Bodies, Texts, and the Writing of History: Some Reflections on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” presented at the Medieval Association of the Midwest Conference in October, 1993. O'Keefe observed that there are many Anglo-Saxon chronicles, not one version from which others deviate.

19. Vincent Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism, 9 (my italics).

20. Derrida considered this transcendental signifier to be Being as “presence”: “The formal essence of the signified is presence” (Of Grammatology, 18).

21. Vincent Leitch, Deconstructive Criticism, 36-7. See further Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, 18-26.

22. Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” in Josue Harari, ed., Textual Strategies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 149-50. Actually, this textual strategy dates from the Middle Ages. A ninth-century life of Virgil declares: “In the beginnings of books seven summaries, that is circumstances, are required: the life of the poet, the title of the work, the quality of the poem, the intention of the writer, the number of the books, the order of the books, the explanation.” (quoted in A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, second edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).

23. Many of the letters are treatises of advice to someone evidently younger than Hadewijch. Three individuals are addressed by name in “Letter 25.” See Jozef Van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Brieven, vol. 1, (Antwerp: Standaard Boekhandel, 1947), 215-16.

24. For example, many of the Nonnenbucher, or “nuns' books” of Southern Germany in this period, were compilations by many members of the community, sometimes over protracted periods of time. See Rosemary Hale, “Communitas and Social Intimacy: Depictions of Same Sex Friendship in Late Medieval German,” paper presented at the 1996 American Historical Association, Atlanta, Georgia. Similarly, in the medieval period it was quite common to attribute writings to an admired author, for example, Meister Eckhart.

25. M. Suydam, “Politics of Authorship: Hadewijch of Antwerp and the Mengeldichten,” delineates representative themes and vocabulary in both halves of the Mengeldichten. See also my 1993 doctoral dissertation, “Hadewijch of Antwerp and the Mengeldichten (University of California at Santa Barbara, 1993) for a fuller analysis of the commonalities between both halves of the Mengeldichten. Such commonalities, however, are no guarantee that a single person wrote the Mengeldichten. Foucault has linked this search for commonalities with the importance accorded to authorship. For the translator, the fact that the poems occur (mostly) together in a collection is more important than their commonalities.

26. Manuscript D does not contain lines 148-150 of “Poem 18” or lines 21-22 of “Poem 19.” J. van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, 99 and 112.

27. For example, “Poem 18,” lines 196 and 197, read Maer sien verliesen / Ende sien verkiesen (to lose sight and to choose sight”) in Ms. B, and Maer sijn verliesen / Ende sijn verkiesen (“his loss and his choice”) in Ms. C. Van Mierlo, who was using Ms. C as the preferred manuscript, decided that in this case the copy was erroneous (Van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, 101).

28. Karma Lochrie, Margerty Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 61.

29. I have explored the implications of this aspect of medieval textuality with regard to Hadewijch's Visioenen in “Restoring the Audience: Envisioning Hadewijch of Antwerp's Vision,” paper presented at the 1996 American Historical Association, Atlanta, Georgia.

30. Ghebreken besouct den gront van minnen
    Vercrighen doet hare rijcheit kinnen
    Onuercrighen doet nauwe poghen
    Hope doet vlieghen in minnen hoghen

    J. van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, 13; Mother Columba Hart, Hadewijch: the Complete Works, 318.

31. Quoted in Elizabeth Petroff, ed., Medieval Women's Visionary Literature (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986), 295.

32. Mother Columba Hart, Hadewijch: The Complete Works, 338; J. van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, 50.

33. For example, see Emilie Zum Brunn and Georgette Epiney-Burgard, Women Mystics in Medieval Europe (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 99-102.

34. J. van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, 24. In this poem, Hart left the pronouns as they are (Hart, Hadewijch, 324).

35. Ende groeten met eenre enegher groeten / Ende dat cussen met enen eneghen monde / Ende te vergrondenne die eneghe gronde / Ende met enen siene te doresiene al / Dat es, ende was, ende wesen sal / Ende dat al met eenre wijsheit vroeden / Ende met enen wille van eneghen moeden / Ende met enen rike al euen rike / Jn eenre vormen, in enen ghelike / Ende in een gheuoelen, in eenre ghewelt van al, J. van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, 58-59.

36. Hart, Hadewijch, 352; J. van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Mengeldichten, 78.

37. J. van Mierlo, ed., Mengeldichten, 21.

38. Ibid., 25.

39. van Mierlo, ed., Mengeldichten, 23; Hart, Hadewijch, 323.

40. J. van Mierlo, ed., Hadewijch: Visioenen (Leeuven: S.V.D. Vlaamsche Boekenhalle, 1924), v. 1, 78.

41. J. van Mierlo, ed., Mengeldichten, 124. The Dutch inverts some of the lines in order to rhyme.

42. Eneghe materie vri / Versamen di / Jn puere minne: Ibid., 125.

43. An interpretive attempt at translation: The eternal Godhead / In her naked wisdom / (s)he protects from death / those who practice the noble secret / in their vision / of the unity of her thought.

44. Want he es claer / Ende openbaer / Der bloter waerheyt: Ibid., 126.

45. For two studies which suggest that similar difficulties underlie the manuscripts and writing of medieval Beguines, see Laurie Finke, “Marguerite Porete,” and Ulrike Wiethaus, “Those who Suffer Torments: A Comparison of Bernard of Clairvaux and Beatrijs of Nazareth's Mystical Models as Gendered Self-Perception,” paper given at the 29 International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1994. There is also important research linking these challenges to works by certain male religious writers such as Meister Eckhart and Heinrich Seusse. For example, see Amy Hollywood, “Translating Genders,” paper presented at the 30th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo Michigan, 1995.