Mary Phil Korsak doesn’t look like a revolutionary, yet her translation of Genesis, the first of the five books of the Torah – which non-Jews call the Pentateuch – offers a new and destabilising view of the substructure of Christianity. And her current project – translating the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – could rock the boat even more.
Born in 1935, Korsak grew up in the countryside around Sheffield, England, studied at the Sorbonne and Oxford, then moved to Brussels’ ULB, where she conducted research into medieval French literature, interspersed with hitching around Europe. "That’s what I really loved, not knowing where I would be in the evening," she says. In Brussels, she met her future husband Léonid Korsak, a civil engineer.
In 1961, Korsak began teaching at Brussels’ recently established Institut Supérieur de l’Etat de Traducteurs et d’Interprètes. She stayed for sixteen years, during which time she helped create the curriculum of what many call one of Europe’s leading schools for translating and interpreting. All this while raising six children.
She gave up teaching in the late Seventies, switching her attention to biblical studies. "I felt a need to have my own enlightened views of life and I thought maybe theology could help. You see, I had been exposed to so many conflicting influences."
Korsak learned about the "historical-critical" method of biblical analysis, in which layers of revision and addition are peeled away to get at the very limited amount of material that is directly attributed to Jesus in the gospels. "It’s literary analysis and I suppose that’s why I liked it", she says. To do it properly, she needed to read the earliest Greek texts – so she took evening classes in Greek. It was like climbing a big mountain and I enjoyed it." Her teacher kept pushing her to learn Hebrew. "And so I thought, well, OK, here we go."
Through the work of French-speaking Israeli scholar André Chouraqui, Korsak became interested in a translation method pioneered in the Twenties by Austrian-born, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. The approach is contextual: examine every occurrence of a word in the given text and, where possible, look at related texts. Then try to find a single word in the language into which you are translating, that will work for all instances: "This involves endless research", says Korsak.. And avoid imposing literary style on the translation. Style arbiters usually abhor repetition, relying on the plentiful synonyms of the English language. But how do you translate less tangible, poetic qualities while staying true to dictionary definitions?
Chouraqui suggested she begin by translating Genesis. It took her nine years. The result was At the start… Genesis made new, first published in the Louvain Cahiers series, then taken up by Doubleday. "Start," Korsak responds," suggests an initial impulse that sets all things in motion. It covers a space as well as a time dimension." In keeping with Hebrew tradition, the first word in the text provides the title of the book.
Korsak jettisons many beloved words and phrases from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. "Hebrew is a concrete language," she explains, "and there isn’t a lot of vocabulary." Her version of Genesis is loaded with repetition; For example, other scholars embellish by translating the Hebrew verb amar as "say", "reply", "respond", "reflect" ,"speak up" , "persist", "answer" and "came the reply". This may win prizes for creativity, but the word means simply "say".
At the start… is a strange read. Stripped of flowery language and well-known associations, its narrative is raw, primitive-sounding, powerful and rhythmic:
Elohim said
Let light be
Light was
Elohim saw the light How good!
Elohim separated the light from the darkness
Elohim called to the light "Day"
To the darkness he called "Light"
It was evening,
One day
The reader is compelled to look at the text with fresh eyes. "If people can find out what a fascinating book Genesis is, great!" Korsak says.
Her work has other ramifications. Take her word "groundling" for Hebrew adam. The Hebrew word for man is ish; And it does not appear until after "Elohim took one of its (the groundling's) sides and closed up the flesh in its place, thus making woman ("Forget 'rib', says Korsak, "it's a rewrite.").
So instead of woman being an offshoot of man, adam can be seen as a two-in-one entity that is turned into a man and a woman.. Adam, capitalised as a proper name in English, does not appear until after the expulsion from Eden.
These examples suggest that Genesis is less chauvinist than 2,000 years of Christianity would have us believe.
Now Korsak has embarked on translating the four gospels. She is working on Mark and is already uncovering surprises: "I like him; He's great. His Greek is not polished. I'm trying to retain some of that roughness."
Korsak finds a lively vocabulary, including the verbs "speak", "shriek" and "shout". "Why do they (the Revised Standard Version) cut down the number of Greek verbs and give preference to an English translation like 'cry out'? I've got Jesus "shouting out". Somehow they don't like him to shout. If I have Jesus shouting out on the cross, it's more striking than the overworked "crying out".
According to Mark, she claims, Jesus was impatient. He gets angry with people; there's some bloke who comes along and wants to be cured and the actual Greek verb is "fuming". – Jesus fumes at him! I don't think you'll find this in any translation.
Then there is God. The Greek term is a common noun: the god. "God," says Korsak, "is not a personal name. And this seems to me to be very important. I'll probably get shot for it but these are the things I find exciting."
Her aim is not to be a bomb-throwing iconoclast: "If there was something I would like to be, it's a poet. For me, what is important in my work is to capture the poetry of the original, the rhythms, the repetitions and the density of the text."
(Interview with Daniel Brandt published by Brussels' newsweekly The Bulletin
8 January 1998).
