One of the most unintentionally funniest passages I had the privilege of reading last semester. From George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.
… Maggie bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness. A woman’s arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the timeworn marble of a headless trunk. Maggie’s was such an arm as that, and it had the warm tints of life.
I’m reading Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World for class right now, and because I’m a chant nerrrrrrd I decided to put together a chant reference for all the bits that I can find. General Catholic references I leave to the wonderful website hosted by someone at MSU. Carpentier himself was apparently a musicologist, which might explain his level of familiarity with the musical texts of the mass.
page 27
The chapter is entitled De profundis, which refers to Psalm 130, which begins De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine (‘From the depths, O Lord, have I cried out to you’). This is a part of the psalmody for the Office of the Dead (mentioned on page 28), which is prayed during the vigil for a deceased person.
Here is the chant setting for the De profundis for one of the Sundays in Lent.
A Miserere is a psalm that can be translated from Latin to ‘Have mercy on me.’ The actual number of the psalm can be argued due to the Latin indexing that the psalms can be arranged in. The Miserere is recited at many Christian rituals. It is the first psalm at Lauds in all the ferial (week-day), and holds many places throughout Catholic Offices. It can also be heard at the Office of the Dead in Rome. It is recited at various vigils, except those of Christmas, Epiphany, the Ascension, and Pentecost.
The Miserere is found in many other ceremonial functions such as the Burial of the Dead, and is especially prominent in the consecration of a church. At the Visitation of the Sick the priest may say the Miserere or any other of the first three penitential psalms. While carrying the Blessed Sacrament to the sick, the priest is to say the Miserere (“which is the best suited for obtaining divine mercy for the sick” – de Herdt, “Praxis”) and other psalms and prayers. This is why the Miserere was being chanted when the whites were becoming sick from Makandal’s poison in the first section of the book.
The psalm developed into a musical piece around the time of King Leo X in 1514. From here many different musical pieces of the Miserere spawned. Three of these pieces (Baini’s, Bai’s, and Allegri’s) are performed on Wednesday through Friday afternoons in the pope’s chapel during the Tenebrae. Mozart also made a tribute to the famous copy of Allegri’s Miserere.
The chanting of this psalm shows a strong Catholic presence in Saint-Domingue at this time. Reciting was a result of the poisons seeping into the white’s everyday lives, but it may have also been a sign of repentance. It was a way of asking God for forgiveness for their sins and to let the deaths stop.
page 129
Quasi palma exaltata sum in Cades, et quasi plantatio rosae in Jericho. Quasi olive speciosae in campis, et quasi platanus exaltata sum juxta aquam in plateis. Sicut cinnamonum et balsamum aromatizans oderum dedi: quasi myrrha electa dedi suavitatem odoris.
This is from Ecclesiasticus 24:18-20. From the Douay-Rheims translation: I was exalted like a palm tree in Cades, and like a rose plant in Jericho: As a fair olive tree in the plains, and as a plane tree by the water in the streets, was I exalted. I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon, and aromatical balm: I yielded a sweet odour like the best myrrh.
The feast that they are commemorating on the 15th of August is that of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The ‘Immaculate Conception’ image that Ti Noël sees may have looked like this:
With the appearance of Corneille Breille on page 131, we suddenly transition from the Mass of the Assumption—one of the most important liturgical commemorations in the Catholic year—to the Requiem Mass, also very important, but said only for the dead. (Today, the modern analogue to the Requiem is only ever called a ‘funeral mass’ or a ‘mass for the dead’.) The word ‘Alleluia’ is absent from the entire liturgy, and where usually an ‘Alleluia’ set to music is sung, a ‘Tract’ is sung instead. It has no alleluia, but is a prayer.
Absolve Domine, animas omnium fidelium defunctorum ab omni vinculo delictorum. Et gratia tua illis succurrente, mereantur evadere iudicium ultionis. Et lucis aeternae beatitudine perfrui.
A scratchy translation: Absolve, O Lord, the souls of all the faithful departed from the bondage of all their sins; and aided by Thy grace, may they merit to avoid the judgement of [something]. And may they abundantly partake of the blessings of eternal light.
This is the ‘Tract’ of the Requiem Mass. After the Tract, a Sequence is sung. Sequences only exist for special masses, and the Requiem is one of those. It is the most famous sequence of all—the Dies irae. (You hear it in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame too!!!)
I leave links to the full text here on Wikipedia, where there is a full translation. Below is a recording.
The line mentioned in the text, Coget omnes ante thronus, appears in Verse 3, although it is misspelled (thronus for the rightful thronum). You may be able already to figure out what it means, because Latin is a slide and a squiggle away from English. In context, it translates to “[The trumpet] will gather all before the throne”. Rex tremendae majestatis, the temporal marker for when Henri Christophe can’t bear the strain anymore, is the first line of verse 8.
I reread Catullus 76 today. It’s so sad. I remembered doing it in class in junior year, and it was so strange, because somehow the emotions come through despite the two thousand years or so between Catullus and me.
Then I translated it, because I love Catullus.
If there is any pleasure to a man in recalling prior
good deeds, when he thinks himself pious,
never to have violated the sacred faith, nor to have abused
the will of the gods for the deception of men,
then many things lie stored up for you in time to come, Catullus,
joys from this unpleasant love affair of yours.
For whatever it was possible for men to say well,
or do well–they were said and done by you,
all perished, though, entrusted to an ungrateful mind.
Wherefore do you now crucify yourself yet more?
Why do you not firm up your mind and bring yourself back from there,
and cease to be wretched, though the gods be unwilling?
It is difficult suddenly to put aside a long love affair;
that task is difficult, that which you ought to do any way you please.
This is your one deliverance, your complete victory;
you will do it, whether it be possible or not.
O gods, if you be merciful, or if you have ever brought
a final aid to anyone at the moment of death,
glance at me with kindness, and if I lived my life purely,
snatch this plague and pestilence from me,
which creeping like a torpor in the lowest part of my limbs
expels all pleasure from my breast.
I do not now seek that she should love me,
or, because that be impossible, that she should desire chastity:
I ask for myself to be well and for this foul sorrow to be set down from me.
the lexical form 