Book review

Review of Philip Wilson. Translation and Mysticism: The Rose and the Wherefore

Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2024. xii + 192 pp.

Translation Studies (TS) has always looked outwards to other academic disciplines for ideas, methods, and conceptual frameworks. Indeed, Bassnett and Johnson (2019Bassnett, Susan, and David Johnston 2019 “The Outward Turn in Translation Studies.” The Translator 25 (3): 181–188. , 181) argue that this is the basis on which the discipline operates: “If TS functions in any meaningful way, it is as the enriched palimpsest of the ideas and methods of writers and philosophers, of theorists and practitioners — from a range of disciplines — across time and space.” But in turning to mystical texts, Philip Wilson is taking a direction that many TS scholars would regard with suspicion. Long before Wilson began calling for interaction between TS and mystical studies, Bellos (2010Bellos, David 2010 “Halting Walter.” Cambridge Literary Review 3: 194–206., 206) had, as Wilson himself observes (14, 78), already complained about the “mystical nonsense” (i.e., abstruse theorising) supposedly infecting TS. Wilson’s monograph, his most sustained contribution on this topic to date, adopts a more positive stance, arguing that research at the interface of mystical studies and TS is not only “inherently interesting” (3) but also that it illuminates rather than obfuscates the conceptualization and praxis of translation. What is Wilson aiming to achieve, to what extent is he successful, and how could his project be developed?

Although Wilson’s book focusses on translation, its intended audience of TS scholars, translators, theologians, philosophers, literary theorists, and scholars of mysticism underscores the project’s interdisciplinary scope: “Investigating mysticism will help us to understand translation better, and investigating translation will help us to understand mysticism better” (1). To this end, Wilson’s discussion is both theoretical and practical. His six core chapters each address theoretical issues linked to mystical texts (e.g., ineffability, the nature of language, equivalence, untranslatability, and performativity) and conclude with a case study. This reflects Wilson’s conviction that “any attempt to divorce theory and practice is ultimately artificial” (3). Many of Wilson’s examples are poems, and his analysis frequently probes how meaning is created by form and content, which are seen as interwoven and mutually supporting.

While Wilson (26) rejects the view that any text can be read as mystical, his appeal to James’s ([1902] 1985)James, William [1902] 1985 The Varieties of Religious Experience. London: Penguin. hallmarks of mystical phenomena (i.e., experiences that are ineffable, noetic, transient, and passive) enables him to move beyond those that are religiously grounded. As a result, Virginia Woolf, Simone Weil, and Walter Benjamin are discussed alongside Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, John of the Cross, and Julian of Norwich, as well as the Bible and the Zohar (a Jewish mystical text). Esoteric texts also fall within Wilson’s understanding of mysticism, covering phenomena such as alchemy, astrology, and magic. Wilson (4) explains that he does not significantly engage with other mystical texts (e.g., from Islam and Buddhism) only because of his unfamiliarity with them. This broad understanding of mysticism therefore dispels any doubt that Wilson’s book is a “disguised work of Christian theology” (3). He stresses throughout his own agnosticism and the methodologically agnostic approach he adopts for analysing mystical texts. For Wilson (70), this project takes up Steiner’s ([1975] 1998Steiner, George [1975] 1998 After Babel. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 60) call “to integrate ‘the tradition of language mysticism and philosophic grammar’ into the interdiscipline of translation studies.”

Wilson’s understanding of mystical texts in translation also extends beyond interlingual translations, encompassing intralingual, intersemiotic, and pseudo-translations to name but some of his other examples. Since the book is for Anglophone readers, texts in languages other than English are usually accompanied by Wilson’s own prose and/or verse translations. Imaginative use is made of the writings of the seventeenth-century German mystic Angelus Silesius, which provide the book’s evocative title and chapter epigraphs. On a more mundane note, the relative absence of typographical errors greatly facilitates reading, although a few (e.g., 19, 33, 138, 158) inevitably remain.

The book’s theoretical framework is based on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, whose application to translation Wilson (2016)Wilson, Philip 2016 Translation after Wittgenstein. Abingdon: Routledge. explored in a previous monograph. Accordingly, the meaning of mystical texts is examined through the prism of language use; more specifically, Wilson discusses their ‘language-games’ (the social context in which language is used) and ‘forms of life’ (the shared background or ‘given’ cultural practices, activities, and ways of living in which language-games are embedded). Wittgenstein’s distinction between ‘surface grammar’ (which Wilson glosses as “semantic form” [46]) and ‘depth grammar’ (explained as “pragmatic use” [46]) is also used to analyse mystical texts. Here I felt that more detailed discussion of Wittgenstein’s complex ideas would enhance this book. For example, the scale at which Wittgenstein understands a ‘form of life’ has been much debated. Whereas Wilson applies it at the level of an entire religion (e.g., he mentions Hildegard of Bingen’s “Catholic form of life” [135]), Kerr (1997Kerr, Fergus 1997 Theology after Wittgenstein. London: SPCK., 30) argues that a religion is too “vast and internally diverse” to be considered a ‘form of life’. If Wilson disagrees with Kerr, to whose work he refers several times, he should set out his reasons.

As to why Wilson thinks engaging with mystical texts is worthwhile, much seems to hinge on his conviction that “mystical writers challenge our viewpoints by forcing us to look at things differently” (44). They are transformative, changing “the way that the world is seen and the way that life is lived” (39). This could also be said of literature and other types of writing but, for Wilson, the relatively ineffable experiences that mystical texts represent makes all the difference. They do not express only their author’s creative genius but arise from “the initial translation that mystics make in their own mind of experience into words” (19). I nevertheless thought Wilson could have developed his point that mysticism is “at the very least, about seeing correctly and aligning things carefully” (95). How does this relate to translation? It is clearly not intended to indulge the idea of a single ‘correct’ version since Wilson rejects this understanding of translation as “misguided” (34). For Wilson, translations also “attempt to change how the world is conceived” (93) rather than simply transfer information. Just as mystics struggle to ‘translate’ their experience into words, so too translators and TS scholars need “every resource at our disposal to theorise a text of this sort, to translate it, or to theorise its translation” (175).

Turning to what Wilson achieves in this book, some points will strike TS scholars as already familiar. Given Wilson’s diverse target audience, this is perhaps inevitable but, for example, his argument (141–142) that the ‘problem’ of untranslatability could be reframed as indeterminacy of meaning, or his insistence (71, 80, 107) that translation is an interpretive act rather than the ideologically neutral process of transferring a linguistic invariant will now find few objectors among TS scholars. As has been pointed out by scholars of sacred text translation (e.g., Israel 2019Israel, Hephzibah 2019 “Translation and Religion: Crafting Regimes of Identity.” Religion 49 (3): 323–342. , 329), however, many religious studies scholars and theologians continue to display less sophisticated understandings of translation, making these parts of Wilson’s discussion more relevant for them.

In other places, Wilson offers fresh perspectives on familiar topics. For example, although TS scholars have long argued that translations can be seen as performances, such claims have often focussed on literary texts. Here translational performances have been explained as meeting readers’ desire for variety, thereby helping them enjoy literary works afresh (Cheetham 2016Cheetham, Dominic 2016 “Literary Translation and Conceptual Metaphors: From Movement to Performance.” Translation Studies 9 (3): 241–255. , 250). With mystical texts, however, translation as performance attempts to stage something of the mystical experience represented, thereby pointing beyond the source text. Some translations may even be more effective than the source text at staging mystical experiences. Wilson (148) refers to Edwin Kelly’s palimpsest translation of writings by Julian of Norwich — with its multiple crossings out and use of non-standard typography to represent Julian’s struggle to express her experiences verbally — as a powerful case in point.

Another important aspect of Wilson’s book is its discussion of translation as attention (108–117), which shifts the focus from translation as product to translation as process. For Wilson, translators’ attention is a multi-layered phenomenon: first, they must pay attention (i.e., concentrate to avoid making careless mistakes); second, they should cultivate an overall attitude corresponding to their task (e.g., constantly improving their knowledge of foreign languages); and third, translating should involve “a change in the form of life of the translator” (111), making them humbler and allowing the author’s voice to be heard in translation. This holistic understanding of attention challenges the dehumanization of AI-based translation technology, which risks turning translation into a mechanical act rather than a transformative process. Wilson could nevertheless have said more here. For example, only in its first sense — when Wilson says that translators should consider “working with somebody else, employing the professional services of a copy-editor and so on” (111) — is attention discussed in relation to the networks and communities to which translators belong. Surely translators also need networks and communities to shape their attention in the other ways Wilson mentions?

Towards the end of his book, Wilson (166–175) suggests areas for future research and its expected outcomes. For example, he argues, importantly, that engagement with mystical texts will help decolonize teaching programmes (by broadening students’ range of perspectives on the world) and better represent women (many mystical texts being female-authored). Taking up Wilson’s hope that his book will “stimulate readers to thoughts of their own” (6), an unresolved issue for me is the “absolute authority” (25, 174) claimed for mystical texts. This apparently “unique aspect” (3) of them is said to be “urgent for translation scholars to consider” (3). Wilson explains that this authority comes “from some Deity, or from the nature of the experience described, or from a transcendent reality into which the mystic has been initiated” (3). But how is authority unique to mystical texts and why is it so important for TS scholars? Does Wilson mean that other texts and statements claiming to possess absolute authority are less relevant for TS?

That more reflection is needed in this area is suggested by Wilson’s (44–45) discussion of transubstantiation. Referring to Hermans’s (2007)Hermans, Theo 2007 The Conference of the Tongues. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing. interpretation of transubstantiation (i.e., the Catholic Church’s teaching that the bread and wine consecrated during Mass turn into the Body and Blood of Christ while retaining their outward appearance of bread and wine) as a metaphor of how an independent text (which Hermans [2007Hermans, Theo 2007 The Conference of the Tongues. Manchester: St Jerome Publishing., 86] calls a “host text”) is converted into a translation, Wilson describes it as “an extremely important insight” (45). But by labelling transubstantiation a “mystical doctrine” that has provided a “mystical metaphor” (45) for translation, Wilson implies that this insight has come from mysticism rather than dogmatic theology. As confirmed by Pope Paul VI (1965Paul VI 1965 Mysterium Fidei. Encyclical letter. https://​www​.vatican​.va​/content​/paul​-vi​/en​/encyclicals​/documents​/hf​_p​-vi​_enc​_03091965​_mysterium​.html, 10) in Mysterium Fidei, however, transubstantiation is a Catholic dogma (i.e., a truth of the faith infallibly defined by the teaching authority of the Catholic Church as divinely revealed [ Catechism of the Catholic Church 2000Catechism of the Catholic Church 2000 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury Continuum., 88]). This roots transubstantiation in ecclesial authority, which is different to mystical authority but no less absolute in its claims. It is therefore unclear to me how the authority of mystical texts is something unique or especially important for TS scholars. Indeed, although Wilson notes that mystics are “striving to move beyond dogma” (29; original emphasis), he nevertheless agrees that at least one Catholic dogma (transubstantiation) can serve as a metaphor of translation. Perhaps Wilson is thinking of the Orthodox Church, where “personal experience and church dogma are inseparable” (Kirkpatrick 2017Kirkpatrick, Kate 2017 Sartre and Theology. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. , 176). But this does not help with the present example since Orthodox Christians do not accept the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation.

Overall, however, Wilson’s book offers many fresh perspectives, his insights lighting up new ways of “Staying in the Sun” (the delightful title of his Epilogue) for scholars and translators alike. I warmly recommend it.