Visions and Revisions
Nov. 15th, 2019 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
citysparrowI see that I have started to neglect the blog again. Only one post so far in November, and it was just a picture, no words. But it’s not just the blog that’s suffering. I’ve also been neglecting other obligations and projects, including the Torah project, cataloging books for the church library, playing the concertina, planning for the trip to Paris, and my online French lessons.
The reason? I have been devoting every available moment (except for playing word games in the New York Times, of which more later) to working on the first volume of the Servetus translation. There is a lot to do, even after the translation is done. In addition to the yet-to-be-written introductory essays (Peter’s job) and designing and formatting the book (my job), this book requires two or more bibliographies and two kinds of notes. Peter and I have finished checking the footnotes that identify Servetus’s references to the Bible, the Quran, the church fathers, medieval and renaissance philosophers, etc. There still remain approximately 170 endnotes – longer discussions that don’t fit at the bottom of the page. These have now been renamed “Annotations” and supplied with footnotes of their own. On a good day we can blast through five or six of these at a sitting. Other times we can bog down for days on a single note. Other things in life are finding it hard to compete.
To some extent this is to be expected – publishing projects have a way of gathering momentum until at some point they sweep all else before them. But usually that happens only in the final run-up to publication, not when there are still months of work left to do. This is different. The sense of urgency around this project has a lot to do with the death of project team member Peter Zerner. “But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near…” Ironically, one of the tasks that I’ve been neglecting is completion of the Big Book, the file of information that I have been compiling for our loved ones / heirs / executors in the event of our death.
When I feel the pressure too acutely, I comfort myself with the words (admittedly, out of context) of T. S. Eliot:
And indeed there will be time…
Time for you and time for me
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions...
May it be so.
The reason? I have been devoting every available moment (except for playing word games in the New York Times, of which more later) to working on the first volume of the Servetus translation. There is a lot to do, even after the translation is done. In addition to the yet-to-be-written introductory essays (Peter’s job) and designing and formatting the book (my job), this book requires two or more bibliographies and two kinds of notes. Peter and I have finished checking the footnotes that identify Servetus’s references to the Bible, the Quran, the church fathers, medieval and renaissance philosophers, etc. There still remain approximately 170 endnotes – longer discussions that don’t fit at the bottom of the page. These have now been renamed “Annotations” and supplied with footnotes of their own. On a good day we can blast through five or six of these at a sitting. Other times we can bog down for days on a single note. Other things in life are finding it hard to compete.
To some extent this is to be expected – publishing projects have a way of gathering momentum until at some point they sweep all else before them. But usually that happens only in the final run-up to publication, not when there are still months of work left to do. This is different. The sense of urgency around this project has a lot to do with the death of project team member Peter Zerner. “But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near…” Ironically, one of the tasks that I’ve been neglecting is completion of the Big Book, the file of information that I have been compiling for our loved ones / heirs / executors in the event of our death.
When I feel the pressure too acutely, I comfort myself with the words (admittedly, out of context) of T. S. Eliot:
And indeed there will be time…
Time for you and time for me
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions...
May it be so.