THE THEOTOKARION OF ST. NEKTARIOS ... ODE 3

The acrostic of which is “Mother of God!  Virgin!  Hail, highly favored Mary!  The Lord is with you.

1.  Pure Mother of God, blessed mother,

Glorified exceedingly by the heavenly hosts.

 

2.  Scroll written by God, praise of the forefathers,

Boast of the apostles, joy of the ancestors of God.

 

3.  Glory of the saints, joy of the just,

Our strength, refuge, glory and good cheer.

 

4.  Merciful, very merciful, comforter of all who suffer,

Virgin, refuge of those who have recourse to you faithfully.

 

5.  Most pure Virgin,

Deliver us and protect us under your holy protection.

 

6.  Heal the wounds of crushed souls,

Hope of faithful Christians, joy of the distressed.

 

7.  Bride, Virgin, pure one, harbor of salvation,

To your strong safety have I fled.

 

8.  Joy of the world, Queen Mother, horn of Christians,

Ray of the spiritual sun, light of the mystic day.

 

9.  Holy dwelling of the Word, sanctifying the world,

Unfading rose which ever makes the faithful fragrant.

 

10.  I call on you, save me, pure one, have mercy on me,

Reconcile me to God and make me his friend.

 

11.  Spacious palace, temple of salvation,

Holy, unploughed land, flower of immortality.

 

12.  Deliver me, O Queen, from the multitude of my passions,

Give me strength and rescue me from my abominable enemies.

 

13.  Enable me to be well-pleasing to God, O Queen,

And to make war vigorously against the counsels of Belial.

 

14.  O Maiden, Bride of God, pure and blessed,

Mary, Mother of God, most celebrated.

 

15.  Strengthen my mind and heart, O Queen,

Give me new life, strength and consolaton.

 

16.  You are brighter than the splendors of the sun,

Mary, the divine habitation, loftier than the thrones.

 

17.  Hallow my soul, illumine my mind,

Make fast the fear of my God in my heart.   

 

18.  Incline my Creator to mercy by your intercessions, O Virgin,

Hallow my heart, O hallowed temple.

 

19.  You are the radiant dawn of the ineffable day,

Maiden, Mother of the spiritual, unsetting sun.

 

20.  Higher than the heavens, brighter than the rays of the sun,

Shoot of the root of Jesse, purer than light.

 

21.  I approach you as a supplicant:  deliver your pitiable slave,

Have mercy on and spare one wholly depraved.

 

22.  I entreat you, hear me before I perish,

Do not permit me to be an object of Satan’s malignant joy.

 

23.  Help me, deliver me from the enemy,

Deliver me quickly from the eternal fire.

 

24.  Act kindly and heal the passions of my soul,

Holy ornament of grace, support, my strength.

 

25.  Make my soul, mind and heart all light;

Supremely pure one, give me eternal life.

 

 

ENDNOTES FOR THE CIRCUMSPECT

Dedications.  I must first express my heart-felt gratitude to dear friends for graciously buying St. Nektarios’ Theotokarion in Greece.  Telling someone going abroad to spend time and energy to find books which they do not need and then load up their bags with unnecessary weight takes a lot of nerve, which I guess I have.  Please pray for the servants of God, the subdeacon Bilyan and his wife, Emily!  May St. Nekatrios pray for them, too!

Second, I owe a debt of gratitude to my eagle-eyed Aeteia for proofing my translation.  Any errors remaining are purely my own.

This ode is written in rhyming couplets (using modern pronunciation).  Each line is 15 syllables.

1.  “Mother of God” (θεοκυήτωρ).  Lampe adduces two instances, Logeion reports that it is unranked and LSJ does not even admit it. St. Nektarios must have found this word in St. Joseph the Hymnographer (so LBG).  Pape reports that θεοκυήτωρ (ὁ, ἡ) means die Gott empfangen hat, with which Stephanus concurs.  Bailly reports qui porte un dieu dans son sein, Pape Gottschwanger, Mountie pregnant with God.  LBG reports Gott im Leib tragende, Gottesgebärerin (i.e., Theotokos).  All in all, it seems best to take this word as a synonym for Mother of God. 

2.  “Scroll” (τόμος).  So Sophocles.

“Glorified exceedingly” (υπερδεδοξάσμενη).  A word distinguished by having been used, if not coined, by St. Ignatius of Antioch.  Lampe reports praise exceedingly, Stephanus glorificare valde, Montie praise highly, appreciate too much, Pape sehr preisen.  Since δοξάζω can also mean in later Greek celebrated, we might suppose synonymous with most celebrated.  As Kittel says about Eph. 1:11, “in many passages it is difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate any real distinction, the terms being used indiscriminately.” 

“Glory” (ἐγκαλλώπισμα).  Great Scott reports ornament, decoration; Pape reports splendor; DGE reports honor, glory. 

5.  “Most pure Virgin.”  The exact words of the first line are Ἄχραντε, παναμῶμητε, ἄφθορε, Παναγιά.  If we handle the adjectives privatively, we read “undefiled, all-spotless, uncorrupt, all-pure.”  If we render them positively, we read “Pure, wholly pure, pure, most pure.”  Striking example of synonymia.  Peacham defines synonymia as “a variation and change of words that be of like signification, [by which] we iterat[e] one thing diverse times.”  In our case, four different words for pure.  In fact, the last word in the line, Παναγιά, may as is usual be rendered as “all-holy,” but may with perfect propriety be rendered “wholly pure.”  As Peacham says, “This figure delighteth much both for the plenty of wordes and and varieitie of sentences, but most of all for that it signifieth the worthinesse of a word or sentence, deserving repetion in a changed habite.”  He adds that “this figure adorneth and garnisheth speech, as a rich and plentiful wardrop, wherein are many, and sundry changes of garments, to bewtifie one and the same person.”  However, he warns us that “it is not good to make too great a heape of words . . . , for by too great a multitude, long time is spent, litle matter [is] exprest, and although the eares of simple hearers be satisfied, yet their mindes are smally instucted.”  I have quoted Peacham at length because synonymia is not a device favored in our tight-lipped age.

How to translate?  Since English does not enjoy the 113 synonyms for pure enjoyed by the Greek language, Anglophone translators fall back on privative adjectives.  Such adjectives suffer from three serious drawbacks.  (1)  Cultic or ritual allusions which have been spiritualized enter English without the allusions and the softening effects of spiritualization.  The effect is at best harsh, at worst vulgar.  At least I still shudder when I read that the Mother of God is unstained.  (2)  Some words have been wholly occupied by collocations and do not lend themselves to praise of the Mother of God.  E.g., spotless in English belongs pretty exclusively to such phrases as a spotless room.  (3)  Some of these privative adjectives are not even living words but are drawn, like lexical cadavers, from the dictionary.  We might call them undead.  All-immaculate is just such a word illustrating “the tendency of late Greek to substitute compound for simple forms without substantial change of sense” (Nicoll, commenting on Eph. 1:2).  Some of these words, like all-immaculate, are notably calques.  My solution, as here, is repetitive, but offers two advantages:  they refer to positive qualities and they conform to synonymia.  The reader who prefers to employ privative adjectives may say “undefiled, all-spotless, uncorrupt, all-pure.” Those who want to retain synonmia may say “pure, wholly pure, pure, most pure.” 

15.  “Strengthen” (ἐπίρρωσον).  ἐπιρρώννυμι is the 5398th most frequent word in Perseus. 
παραμύθιον is unranked, but is manifestly found in the LXX (Wi 3:18).

16.  “Of the sun” (ἡλιακός).  Unranked.
“Splendors” (μαρμαρυγή) or “radiance.”  Unranked.

18.  “Incline . . . to mercy” (ἱλέωσαι).  Thanks are due to Sapiens for help with this verb.

20.  “Shoot” (ῥάδαμνος) is unranked.  Pape reports junger Zweig, Trieb, Schoss etc.  Montie reports shoot and cites Job 8:16.  Lampe reports that a few fathers (Chrys., Const. App., Greg. Naz.) use this word.

23.  Thayer reports that ἐπιλαβοῦ is a busy verb, meaning “to lay hold of another to rescue him from peril” or more briefly “to help.”

24.  “Act kindly” (ἀγαθύνον). Muraoka reports act kindly and confer benefits on; Montie reports do good, benefit.

“Ornament” (γνώρισμα) is the 5295th most frequent word.  Shows up 10 times in St. Basil’s letters in the Perseus corpus.  Generally,

sign, token.  Schrevelius reports ornament.  Stephanus reports decus, insigne, ornamentum.  Lampe reports characteristic, property, distinctive feature, sign, proof, document, profession, sign, symbol, signification, name.

25.  “Make” (ἀπείργασαι).