Miltonと『詩篇』(II) : ギリシャ語訳「詩篇」とその周辺

Learning that Milton set about translating Psalm 114 from "sudden impulse" inspired me to investigate the elements which urged him to do the composition. In the course of my investigation I came to be awared that the psalm\u27s translation had been patently related to the performance of his previous work, A Maske. Perhaps the success of that secular entertainment did not please his father who had dedicated him from birth for the ministry. Milton himself must have had sympathy with his father\u27s hopes for his future even if he was convinced of his own excellent ability as a poet; consequently, he wrote no more masques at all, and no verses for the next three years. During that time he devoted himself to preparing for his future ministry. Composition of the Greek translation reflects his serious state of mind and feeling during this transitional period. Perhaps he felt the subject of the psalm, the Exodus, similar to his own experience when he retired into the further country and was feeling apprehensive about William Laud\u27s dominancy over the Church. Thus it is conceivable that both Milton\u27s personal life and the social trends of his day influenced his Greek translation of Psalm 114. Milton apparently had an interest in this psalm from an early age. He paraphrased it when he was fifteen and then translated it into Greek hexameter when he was twenty-five. These two attempts at working on Psalm 114 reveal that he regarded the psalm as significant. In fact, the psalm\u27s subject, the delivery of the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt first into a wilderness, and then into a land of milk and honey under God\u27s mercy and protection, was a theme he was much concerned with throughout his life. In his previous work, A Maske, his view of life as a journey like the Exodus was expressed: the journey of the three children, especially of the Lady, to their father\u27s home, symbolizes man\u27s spiritual pilgrimage. They grew in "faith, patience and truth" through "Heaven\u27s timely trial" and were welcomed into their parents\u27 happy home. The virtuous Lady lost and forlorn in the dark was enslaved by Comus from whom she was liberated by the aids of "haemony" and of Sabrina. Those divine aids could only be worked out by the guidance of the Attendant Spirit descended from Heaven. From this we find that Milton emphasizes that God\u27s mercy or protection is necessary to complete the journey. Thus in A Maske he shows man\u27s inner progress as a pilgrimage from the wilderness of Earth to the serenity of Heaven, from enslaved folly to liberated beatitude, by God\u27s mercy. The theme of A Maske is similar to that of Psalm 114; both show that man\u27s salvation from sins is by God\u27s grace. This Christian truth was obviously deeply impressed on Milton\u27s mind, but the fact that he turned from writing secular entertainment to translating Psalm 114 indicates that the truth had taken on a new significance in his life, perhaps because of the crisis he was experiencing in his own spiritual life. Thus, he was led to begin translating the psalm once again