The AnaChronist 1998 [antikvár]

CK ZA K.il.l.A'i Kermodc, as Jan Kott points out in his "The Bottom Tra/islalion,"^ quotes the King James version (1611). Tyndale (1534) and the Gemm Bible (1557) render the last verse in the following way: "the Spirite searcheth all thinges, ye the botome of Goddes secrc(tes."' It is, indeed, more than likely that, as Kott also argues. Bottom got his name "from Paul's letter in old versions of Scripture," and that "the spirit which reaches to 'the botome' of all mysteries haunts Bottom.Thus, to take Professor Kott's observation a little further, Bottom, with his long, pricking ears of an ass and in his earthly, well-meaning clumsiness and foolishness, would himself be, from "top to bottom," the 'Bottom-translation' of God's secrets. How far Shakespeare actually ventured into what we may at first hearing call downright blasphemy is difficult to tell. Was he, for example, also aware of tlie possible pun on ass ('a well-known quadruped of the horse kind, distinguished from the horse by its smaller size, long ears, tuft at end of tail, and black stripe across the shoulders'),''' and arse ('the posteriors of an animal', 'the bottom, the lower or hinder end')?'' From the point of view of rhetoric, exchanging arse for ass ("translating" one into the other) would just be a form of the well-lsjiown epenthesis ("the addition of a syllable or letter in the middle of a word")." The Oxford English Dictionaiy mentions ass in the meaning of 'bottom' as a "vulgar and dialectal spelling and pronunciation" of the notorious word, arse, yet the confusion - though wide-spread now in contemporary informal American English -- does not seem to occur before 1860.'^ However, it is hard to conceive that the play^vright who so readily quibbled on son and sun (as in Hamlet, I,2;64,67) and on ' Jan Kott, The hoUom TmnsklioN. Marlowe and Shakespeare and the Carnwal_Traâtion. Translated by Diuiiel Miedzyrecka and lillian Vallee. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987). Cf. Kott, p.37. The 1560-edition of the Geneva Bible already has: "for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deepe things of God." (See The Geneva liible, A facsimile of tlie 1560 edition. Witli an Introduction by I Joyd E. Beriy. (Madison, Milwaukee ;uid I^ondon: Tlie University of Wisconsin Press); The King Ja/nes version, [without date]. Tlie I loly Bible Containing the Old and New Testament. Translated out of the origtii;J tongues and witli the former translations diligently compared mid revised by lUs Majesty's special command. lx)ndoii: Eyre imd Spottiswoode limited [originally in 161 i); The.ljndale Bible, Ed. David Daniel! [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990]). Kott, p. 37. Cf also Brooks, p. cxvii. Note 3, and p.99. ''¦ Ttje Oxford English Dictionaiy (Tlie Compact Edition. Complete text reproduced micrographically. New York, etc.: Oxford University Press, 1971) '' The Oxford English Dictionaiy. « Cf Sister Minam Joseph, Useof/heArtsofLaniiua^e. ((.ondon ;uid New York' Metliuen 1947, 1962), p. 293. '' The Oxford English Dictionary.