Saint Orientius: All France "smoked like a funeral pyre" after barbarian invasions

Within about a twelvemonth [of the Roman legions being called home to defend Rome] the barbarians had swept across France: they were in the vineyards of Bordeaux: they were encamped beneath the Pyrenees. All France, said St. Orientius, "smoked like a funeral pyre." This was in 406: four years later, Alaric was in Rome, and she was taken that had taken all the world.

  --Helen Waddell (1889-1965) in "Poetry in the Dark Ages," a lecture she gave on 28th October 1947.

Comments

[Berta B]

I didn't know how else to share this with you, Sedulia, but I thought of you when I read it in Penelope Rowland's "Paris Was Ours".
" ... Rendering a word into another language is a mysterious process, and just as the noun 'mystery' is religious in origin, so is the verb 'to translate'. Its first meaning is "to remove the body or relics of a saint or hero from one place of internment or repose to another." Its second meaning is "to carry or convey to heaven without death." that, of course, is what one aspires to do when one translates a work of literature: to convey a vital essence that has been buried in the crypt (encrypted) of an alien lexicon, to a place in the light where it can endure."
Isn't that lovely? I believe you do that in your work. Waiting for the next installment.

[Sedulia]

Thank you so much, Berta! That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever told me about my translations! I love the quotation too. I don't know that book. Is it a good one to read?