abelard_final.qxd 3/16/07 9:20 AM Page 1 ABELARD To her lord, no, her father HELOISE To her husband, no, her brother & From his handmaid, no, his daughter His wife, no, his sister— ABELARD To Abelard from Heloise. & The most comprehensive compilation of the works of Abelard and Heloise ever presented in a single volume in English, The Letters and Other HELOISE Writings features an accurate and stylistically faithful new translation of THE LETTERS AND O both The Calamities of Peter Abelard and the remarkable letters it sparked between the ill-fated twelfth-century philosopher and his brilliant former student and lover—an exchange whose intellectual passion, formal virtuosity, and psychological drama distinguish it as one of the most extraordinary correspondences in European history. Thanks to this THER WRITINGS edition, Latin-less readers will be better placed than ever to see why this undisputed milestone in the intellectual life of medieval France is also a masterpiece of Western literature. In addition to the The Calamities and the letters—the first complete English translation of all seven in more than eighty years—this volume includes an Introduction, a map, and a chronology, Abelard’s Confession of Faith, letters between Heloise and Peter the Venerable, the Introduction to The Questions of Heloise, and selected songs and poems by Abelard, among them a previously untranslated “shaped” poem, “Open Wide Your Eyes.” Extracts of “lost” letters sometimes ascribed to Abelard and Heloise are THE LETTERS given in appendixes. “A welcome bundle of texts, in an English that seeks to recreate in its AND OTHER WRITINGS style the artful elegance of the originals.” —Jan Ziolkowski, Department of Classics, Harvard University William Levitan is Associate Professor of Classics, Grand Valley State University and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. HA CKETT ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-875-9 TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY 90000 WILLIAM LEVITAN 0875 CCover art: detail from Adam and Eve 9 FnL1 00 0000 780872 208759 by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1533. AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page i Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM i ABELARD AND HELOISE THE LETTERS AND OTHER WRITINGS AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page iii Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM iii ABELARD AND HELOISE THE LETTERS AND OTHER WRITINGS Translated with Introduction and Notes, by WILLIAM LEVITAN SELECTED SONGS AND POEMS Translated by Stanley Lombardo and by Barbara Thorburn Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge Abelard_copyright_011107 1/18/07 2:36 PM Page 1 Copyright © 2007 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved 12 11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5 6 For further information, please address: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Cover design by William Levitan and Abigail Coyle Composition by William Hartman Printed at Edwards Brothers, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Abelard, Peter 1079-1142 [Selections. English. 2007] The letters and other writings / Abelard and Heloise; translated, with introduction and notes, by William Levitan ; selected songs and poems translated by Stanley Lombardo and by Barbara Thorburn. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978-0-87220-876-6 -- ISBN 978-0-87220-875-9 (pbk.) 1. Abelard, Peter, 1079-1142--Correspondence. 2. Héloïse, 1101-1164-- Correspondence. 3. Abbesses, Christian--France--Correspondence. 4. Theologians--France--Correspondence. 5. Love-letters. 6. Hymns. 7. Poetry. I. Héloïse, 1101-1164. II. Levitan, William. III. Title. B765.A21L48 2007 189’.4--dc22 [B] 2006034700 e-ISBN: 978-1-60384-051-4 (e-book) AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page v Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM v FOR DEBRA Mellificas enim tu, sed non soli tibi. AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page vii Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Note on the Texts xxxiv Suggestions for Further Resources xxxvi Map of Northern France in the Time of Abelard and Heloise xxxix Chronology xl The Calamities of Peter Abelard 1 Letters of Abelard and Heloise 47 First Letter: Heloise to Abelard 49 Second Letter: Abelard to Heloise 63 Third Letter: Heloise to Abelard 71 Fourth Letter: Abelard to Heloise 85 Fifth Letter: Heloise to Abelard 105 Sixth Letter: Abelard to Heloise 127 Seventh Letter: Abelard to Heloise 170 The Questions of Heloise: Introductory Letter 257 Abelard’s Confession of Faith 260 vii AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page viii Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM viii CONTENTS Letters of Heloise and Peter the Venerable 263 Peter to Heloise 265 Heloise to Peter 272 Peter to Heloise 274 Selected Songs and Poems of Peter Abelard 277 Dull Is the Star 279 Hymn for Saturday Vespers: How Great the Sabbath 280 Hymn for the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 282 Hymn for the Night Office and Vespers 283 Lament of the Virgins of Israel for the Daughter of Jephtha 284 Lament of David for Saul and Jonathan 289 Open Wide Your Eyes: A Shaped Poem on the Incarnation of the Word 293 To Astralabe, My Son 294 Appendix A: From “The Letter to Philintus” 303 Appendix B: From The Letters of Two Lovers 315 Works Cited and Select Bibliography 329 Index of Passages Quoted, Cited, and Discussed 335 General Index 347 AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page ix Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like every student of Abelard and Heloise, I am indebted to a large number of critics and scholars, many of whose names appear in the select bibliography at the end of this volume. There is a smaller group, however, whose work I have found especially useful and continually stimulating throughout the course of this project: Michael Clanchy, Peter Dronke, David Luscombe, John Marenbon, the late Mary Martin McLaughlin, T. P. McLaughlin, and J. T. Muckle. In the absence of standard commentaries, I have freely con- sulted earlier translations for a community of opinion on many spe- cific points; even when our interpretations and approaches differ, I have learned a great deal as a reader and translator from, in particu- lar, the clarity of J. T. Muckle, the learned grace of Betty Radice, the wry idiosyncrasy of C. K. Scott Moncrieff (if the verb “perpend” has never been restored to common English usage, it was not for the lack of his example), and the vivacity of Jean de Meun. I count it as my privilege to have carried on this work in the com- pany of collaborators, students, and colleagues, so many of whom are also friends. I am especially grateful to Stanley Lombardo and Barbara Thorburn not only for their brilliant translations of Abelard’s poetry but also for their encouragement and perceptive criticism of my own translations of Abelard and Heloise’s prose. Roger Gilles, Sue Stauffacher, Adam Thorburn, and David Thorburn read large sections of the book in draft with empathy and careful discrimination. Bruce O’Brien discussed problems of translation with me and provided essential guidance on many historical points. Lloyd Gerson kindly lent his advice and suggestions on questions of medieval dialectic. Ben Lockerd and Micheline Lockerd were cru- cially helpful on matters of Church liturgy. They have my deepest thanks. I also thank many others whose interest, insight, and sup- port proved invaluable at various junctures throughout the work, in particular, Kathleen Blumreich, Patricia Clark, Coeli Fitzpatrick, Asli Gocer, Ginny Klingenberg, Herb Levitan, Jim Muehlemann, Kathy Muehlemann, Mark Pestana, Soula Proxenos, Jerilyn Perrine, and Lois Tyson. Audiences at Grand Valley State University, Michigan State Uni- versity, and the University of Kansas provided important sounding ix AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page x Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS boards for much of the material in the book. For their suggestions and stimulating discussion, I particularly thank the members of the MSU seminar on women and the problem of agency in the pre-mod- ern era, especially Katie Dubois, Julia Holderness, Emily Klocken- kemper, and Katharyn Lowerre. My friends at Middlebury College provided both a warm welcome and a congenial nest for the incuba- tion of the earliest parts of the book; Grand Valley State University provided support in the form of a sabbatical leave, during which the latter parts were completed. I am grateful, too, for the friendship and conversation of Stephen Donadio, editor of New England Review, where earlier versions of the Calamities and the First and Third Let- ters have appeared. From its first conception, this book has been for Debra Nails, who has also played a profound role in its development. Sometime col- laborator, assiduous reader, trenchant critic, and constant inspira- tion, she has left marks of her judgment and example on nearly every page. If the tones of authentic moral passion and devotion ring true at any point in these translations, it is because I heard them in her voice. For all of this, the dedication of a volume can be only the merest shadow of my thanks. WL AbelardHeloiseLet-00Bk Page xi Wednesday, January 10, 2007 9:40 PM INTRODUCTION The story of Abelard and Heloise is, in the first instance, a story of tragic love, one so firmly established in the canon of such stories that its contours are familiar even to those who may not recognize the names. The stormy, charismatic instructor; his brilliant, uncon- ventional student; the explosion of sexual passion and the radical act of violence that alters their lives forever; the decades of separa- tion and inconsolable longing—who does not know that story in some form? Yet like every story of actual individuals, theirs has more than one dimension. It is also a story of fierce intellectual pas- sion, of the commitment to reason and to the ideals of the philo- sophical life; a story of the conflicting logics of celebrity and solitude, of the tensions between the public and private person and between public and private ambitions.