The Manuscript
as
Creative Undercurrent:

Reflections on the Reissue of Glassgold’s “Englishings” of Poems by Boethius

Dana Delibovi

Imprisoned and awaiting execution, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480 – 524) wrote On the Consolation of Philosophy, a hybrid work of Latin prose and poetry. The original manuscript has not survived, but later manuscripts of the text have, including some important English translations.

These English manuscripts are a creative undercurrent to a volume reissued in the autumn of 2024, Boethius: Poems From On the Consolation of Philosophy, with the subtitle, “Translated Out of the Original Latin into Diverse Historical Englishings, Diligently Collaged” by Peter Glassgold.¹ Manuscripts — objects with a physical as well as a verbal aesthetic — indirectly lend pictorial, methodological, and ekphrastic inspiration to Glassgold’s work. Inspiration like this, I believe, may have implications for current appreciation of historical manuscripts.

Riffing on the English translators

In the introduction and afterword to his book, Glassgold mentions his debt to three important English translators of On the Consolation of Philosophy, “King Alfred, Chaucer, Elizabeth I,” whose “word-work” Glassgold explored to create “sound-collages” that chime with English in its many historical incarnations.² These agents are:

• King Alfred (848–899, ruled 871–899),
• Geoffrey Chaucer (died 1400), and
• Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603, ruled 1558–1603),

respectively using Old, Middle, and Early Modern English.

I recently interviewed Glassgold for the e-zine Cable Street, where he stated that, in any single line of the poetry, he “ranged through the whole known vocabulary of English, from Old to Modern. The making of [these] Boethius translations was not so much a process as an attitude ― improvisational, you might even say jazzy.”³

An example from a poem in Book I of Boethius’ work shows how Glassgold invents translations across the evolution of the spoken and written language, melding Old, Middle and Modern English.⁴

Now he lies of mindz light weakened
and nekke pressid by overheuy chaines,
his chere holding downcast for the weighte,
cumpeld, eala! to scan the dreary earth.

The avant-garde poet and literary scholar Charles Bernstein, writing in the book’s foreword, calls Glassgold’s approach “pataquerical” — spontaneous, playful, sometimes irascible, and imagined across multiple iterations of language. “The historical progression of English translations offers Glassgold stratified layers of linguistic sediment that he entangles in his palimpsestic composition.”⁵

Part of the “linguistic sediment” of Boethius in English are manuscripts — including manuscripts of Alfred the Great, Chaucer, and Elizabeth I that survive today in some form (Figures 1–3; see below). One of these is a profoundly fire-damaged manuscript of the “Alfredian” Old English Boethius (Figure 1). This work was either translated by King Alfred the Great or anonymous translators assisting with the king’s efforts to revive learning.⁶ Other manuscripts of note are a 1380 transcription by Adam Scrivener of the Middle English translation by Chaucer (Figure 2)⁷ and the translation into early Modern English by Queen Elizabeth I (Figure 3).⁸

Undercurrents—
Pictorial, Methodological, and Ekphrastic

I believe that such English manuscripts of Boethius represent three creative undercurrents to Glassgold’s work. Two are fairly obvious. One is speculative.

1. Pictorial Inspiration

The first and probably most obvious is pictorial inspiration from manuscripts. The cover of Glassgold’s book, created by Andrew Bourne, uses typography bearing a family resemblance to the handwriting of manuscripts. Bourne creates the illusion of cut-up strips of handwriting to covey the collaging of manuscript text (Figure 4). This thoughtful cover design made Literary Hub’s list of The 167 Best Book Covers of 2024.

Cover for Peter Glassgold’s book (World Poetry Books, 2024), detail. Designed by Andrew Bourne.

2. Methodological Inspiration

The second fairly obvious inspiration is methodological. As Glassgold describes his work process:

I was surrounded by books, De Consolatione and the various Consolations I’d gathered, set propped up on stands in chronological order from left to right, along with piles of dictionaries in, behind, and around them. I wrote slowly, by hand—as I always do my first drafts, though it felt especially appropriate in these circumstances.⁹

In creating his book, Glassgold worked with published, typeset versions of the translations of Alfred, Chaucer, Elizabeth, and other English translators. But writing his work by hand felt more appropriate than usual. This feeling might arise from the known existence of manuscripts — the emotional connection to handwritten physical objects.

The manuscript is not merely a vehicle for thought in the manner of mass-produced text, especially digital text. The manuscript has a material structure connected to the natural world through its parchments, papyri, chalks, and inks, as has been noted by Ittai Weinryb.¹⁰ To write physically, in longhand, is to engage in a mimesis of the manuscript process, infinitely satisfying and emotionally resonant. In addition, Glassgold’s project of “collaging” other translations to make his own channels the painstaking work of manuscript creation, which involves copying, cutting, patching, and erasure.

3. Ekphrasis

The third creative undercurrent is ekphrasis — writing that describes or works of the plastic arts. This undercurrent is speculative — a concept I am exploring, rather than asserting. I believe that Glassgold’s finished work can be considered ekphrastic, manuscripts in their substance as works of bookbinding, illustration, calligraphy, and, in the case of Elizabeth’s text of Boethius’s poetry, a flamboyant personal hand. I believe this to be true even though Glassgold used typeset source materials and the publisher set the book using modern technologies.

My thesis stems from the shared idea of Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), Jacques-Derrida (1930–2004), and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) that translation is the “afterlife” or “reincarnation” of prose or poetry.¹¹ Benjamin wrote that, in translations, “the life of the originals attains . . . its ever-renewed and most abundant flowering.” He thought the “afterlife” of literature was “a transformation and a renewal of something living” into a new, still living work.¹²

The life of the many original sources for (or witnesses to) Boethius’s work includes an array of aesthetic, visual and tactile objects — manuscripts. The life of Glassgold’s work must encompass and take ekphrastic inspiration from those visual and tactile works.

London, Public Record Office, Manuscript SP 12/289, fol. 43r. Image via https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/elizabeth-monarchy/elizabeths-translation-of-the-consolation-of-philosophy/

Ekphrasis in such a case shines through the work in tonality and energy. For example, Elizabeth’s muscular handwritten lines from the start of Poem XII, Book III, slant powerfully upward at an increasing angle as she moves down the page; Glassgold’s translations of the same lines pick up steam as they go. Elizabeth and Glassgold both end this section with a akin to Anglo-Saxon prosody: “the hilly house went to” and “wente to the hous of helle.”¹³  The  physical work of art, the manuscript, reiterates the boldness of the text, and subliminally transmits the spark of the manuscript.

Prose and Cons

I have developed a few arguments against my thesis. No doubt, readers of this post will develop many more. But regardless of these particular arguments’ merits, I believe there is merit in approaching manuscripts — in all their robust materiality — as integral to the continued life of older texts. Surely, the power of a physical work we can see, hold, and even smell must push its way into later print and digital incarnations. Appreciating this may hold a key to rescuing literature from the current flimsiness of mass-market paperbacks and e-books.

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Illustrations

Figure 1

King Alfred’s Boethius

London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho A. VI folio 32r, top.

The burned 10^th-century manuscript of the old English translation of Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy, attributed to Alfred the Great (849–899). The fire that burned the manuscript occurred in 1731.

Photo from British Library Collection Care website; Cotton Otho A. VI., folio 32r
Collection Care Fired Up for BBC Fourth Appearance; Accessed January 4, 2025.

Figure 2

Chaucer’s Boethius

Aberystwyth, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – The National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 393D, De consolatione Philosophiae, folio 2v, lower portion; c. 1380. Image via Public Domain Mark via https://viewer.library.wales/4398051#?xywh=-49%2C699%2C3466%2C2479&cv=18; Accessed February 17, 2025

A portion of folio 2v of the translation by Chaucer (c. 1340–1400) of On the Consolation of Philosophy into Middle English. The first segment shown is “The ferthe Metur” (fourth poem) of Book I.

Aberystwyth, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru – The National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 393D, De consolatione Philosophiae, folio 2v; c. 1380. Image from the online data base for The National Library of Wales.

In the first three lines, Chaucer writes: “Who so it be þat is clere of vertue sad and wel ordinat of lyuyng. þat haþ put vnderfote þe prowed[e] wierdes and lokiþ vpryȝt vpon eyþer fortune.”

Glassgold renders this as:

Who serene in settled life
haþ put proud fate underfote
and rihtwis eyeing eyþer fortune.

The folios also contain marks, such as line breaks, by later hands.

Image via Public Domain Mark via https://viewer.library.wales/4398051#?xywh=-49%2C699%2C3466%2C2479&cv=18; Accessed February 17, 2025.

Text clarification by type from Project Gutenberg: Gutenberg.org; Accessed January 4, 2025.

Figure 3

Queen Elizabeth I’s Boethius

London, Public Record Office, Manuscript SP 12/289, fol. 43r. Image via https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/elizabeth-monarchy/elizabeths-translation-of-the-consolation-of-philosophy/

A section of On the Consolation of Philosophy, Poem XII, Book III, translated and in the handwriting of Elizabeth I (1533–1603). It is believed that Elizabeth translated and hand-wrote the poems from the work, but dictated the prose to her secretary.

London, Public Record Office, MS SP 12/289 folio 48r. Image from the British National Archives, October and November 1593 (SP 12/289 folio 48), via https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/elizabeth-monarchy/elizabeths-translation-of-the-consolation-of-philosophy/; Accessed January 4, 2025.

Figure 4

Peter Glassgold’s Boethius

Cover for Peter Glassgold’s book (World Poetry Books, 2024), detail. Designed by Andrew Bourne.

Cover detail, showing motifs of handwriting and collage of text strips, for Peter Glassgold’s book. Designed by Andrew Bourne, 2024, World Poetry Books.

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Notes

1. Boethius, Boethius: Poems From On the Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Peter Glassgold (New York: World Poetry Books, 2024), 136, 138.
2. Boethius/Glassgold, 136, 138.
3. Dana Delibovi, “The Deep Humanity of Boethius: An Interview with Peter Glassgold, creator of collaged “Englishings” of the poems from Boethius’ On the Consolation of Philosophy,”Cable Street 2, no. 7 (2024).
4. Boethius/Glassgold, 9.
5. Boethius/Glassgold, xi.
6. As Mildred Budny has noted in a personal communication.
7. “Adam Scrivener” as been identified by L.R. Mooney as the scribe Adam Pinkhurst, although other scholars have dissented. See:
   Linne R Mooney, “Chaucer’s Scribe.” Speculum 81, no. 1 (2006): 97–138; and
   Jane Roberts, “On Giving Scribe B a Name and a Clutch of London Manuscripts From c. 1400.” Medium Ævum 80, no. 2 (2011): 247–70.
8. Benkert, Lysbeth. “Translation as Image-Making: Elizabeth I’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.” Early Modern Literary Studies 6.3 (January, 2001): 2.1–20, via http://purl.oclc.org/emls/06-3/benkboet.htm.
   Queen Elizabeth’s Englishings of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, A.D. 1593; Plutarch, De Curiositate, Horace, De Arte Poetica (part), A.D. 1598, edited from the unique MS, partly in the Queen’s Hand, in the Public Record Office, London, by Miss Caroline Pemberton. Early English Text Society, Original Series, 113 (London, 1899), via https://ia800504.us.archive.org/9/items/queenelizabethse00eliz/queenelizabethse00eliz.pdf.
   Also The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I: The Queen’s Translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae. Public Record Office Manuscript SP 12/289, ed. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., and Philip Edward Phillips. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Volume 366 (Tempe, Arizona, 2009).
9. Boethius/Glassgold, 138.
10. Ittai Weinryb, “Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages,” Gesta 52, no. 2 (2013): 128.
11. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2019), 11;
    Also “Walter Benjamin as Translator”.Jacques Derrida, “What Is a Relevant Translation?” trans. Lawrence Venuti, Critical Inquiry 27, Winter (2001), 199–200.
    Subhas Dasgupta, “Tagore’s Concept of Translation: A Critical Study,” Indian Literature 56, no. 3 (2012), 139–140.
12. Benjamin/Arendt, 14–15.
13. The National Archives, “Elizabeth’s Translation of The Consolation of Philosophy”; Boethius/Glassgold, 87.

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