The Testament of Mary

by Colm Tóibín

Years ago, reading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I realized suddenly, viscerally what translation actually is—as opposed to my assumption that it was just matching up the words from one language to words in another. In the vernacular of the seventies, when it was published, this part novel, part memoir, part philosophical treatise totally blew my mind.

On the surface, it’s the story of a cross-country motorcycle trip Pirsig took with his eleven-year-old son in the hope of healing their fractured relationship. Bubbling beneath is Pirsig’s struggle to recover from undergoing electroconvulsive therapy for schizophrenia which had left him profoundly changed. Phaedrus, as he thinks of this new self, is obsessed with the philosophical question of what defines “Pure Truths”.

How this connects to what I want to say in this post—and what blew my mind about the book—was his conviction that the Greek word arête, which means excellence, was mistranslated in the writing that established the tenets of Christianity to mean, instead, virtue.

Whoa!

Replace the goal of virtue, which designates others to define right and wrong, good and evil for us, with the goal of excellence, which requires each of us to question our ideas and actions, as well as the ideas and actions of others—Christ’s message shifts dramatically.

Was this mistranslation a mistake or made on purpose? We’ll never know. But, for better or worse, it’s at the root of what Christianity became.

(See Elaine Pagels’ insightful and very readable The Gnostic Gospels if this intrigues you.)

First, who can say what’s true and what’s not? Point of view dictates that our memory of events can differ drastically from someone else’s.

How do we know we haven’t subconsciously altered our memories to reflect what we can bear? Or weaponized them as proof of what we’re determined to believe?

Plus what about all the stuff we’ve forgotten—and, if remembered, could change everything?

Then there’s the way memories can be manipulated, picking and choosing details then using, along with hearsay, to construct the “true” story that best serves a purpose—personal or political.

At which point (whether you care to acknowledge it or not), you leap into fiction.

Which brings me Colm Tóibín’s novel, The Testament of Mary.

The book that has most recently blown me away.

We meet Mary in Ephesus, where she’s lived in seclusion since the crucifixion of her son. She’s an old woman now, cared for and watched by two of his followers who have been waiting all this time for her to validate the story of her part in what happened on that day.

But she refuses. For what they want [is] “…my description of these hours to be simple, they want to know what words I heard, they want to know about my grief only if it comes as the word ‘grief,’ or the word ‘sorrow.’ Even though one of them witnessed what I witnessed, he does not want it registered as confusion, with strange memories of the sky darkening and brightening again, or of other voices shouting down the moans and cries and whimpers, and even the silence that came from the figure on the cross.

In this last season of her life, Mary drifts in and out of memory, remembering quiet Sabbaths when her son was a boy, the simple pleasures of her life then—and wonders how and why he changed. She reflects upon this, speaking to one of her watchers.

He gathered around him, I said, a group of misfits, who were only children like himself, or men without fathers, or men who could not look a woman in the eye. Men who were seen smiling to themselves, or who had grown old when they were still young. Not one of you was normal, I said, and I watched him push his plate of half-eaten food towards me as though he were a child in a tantrum. Yes, misfits, I said. My son gathered misfits, although he himself, despite everything, was not a misfit, he could have done anything, he could have been quiet even, he had that capacity also, the one that is the rarest, he could have spent time alone with ease, he could look at a woman as though she were his equal, and he was grateful, good-mannered, intelligent. And he used all of it, I said, so he could lead a group of men who trusted him from place to place.”

Toibin’s Mary is, simply, a mother. She’s worried that her son has gotten in with a bad crowd, appalled when he appears in Canan “wearing rich clothes and…moving as though the clothes belonged to him as of right.” Grief-stricken upon learning it has been decided he’ll be crucified and determined to travel to Jerusalem to be with him despite the terror of knowing that her own life is in danger.

What happens (and doesn’t happen) that day is the crux of the story Toibin tells of that historical event. The scene is horrific, blending many of the details that are familiar from the story that’s been told for centuries with details Toibin imagined.

The decision Mary must make—and will question for the rest of her life—is heart-rending.

In an author’s note, Tóibín wrote, “Mary the mother of Jesus, comes to us through many images; she does not come in words, unless the words are prayers written to her. She herself, as she is presented in the Gospels, is mostly silent, and once Jesus leaves her home, she is mostly absent in the New Testament.”

“…It is as though her insistent and mysterious power arose precisely from her shadowy presence; it is as though the devotion to her grew from this very absence and silence.”

“…The Gospels attempted to put a shape on what must have been a raw and chaotic experience. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John worked as a novelist might work, finding the right details for each section and then using an overall form which might affect the reader in ways both clear and mysterious.”

I love that: “The Gospels attempted to put a shape on what must have been a raw and chaotic experience. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John worked as a novelist might work, finding the right details for each section and then using an overall form which might affect the reader in ways both clear and mysterious.”

In the end, isn’t it what we all do when we tell the stories of our lives, what we know, what we can never know about what really happened and why?

I listened to this book twice, then read it. I’ve never done that before! But I was mesmerized by Tóibín’s Mary—given voice by Meryl Streep. I studied the text, searching for clues to how Toibin created that voice and in so doing brought her alive on the page.

Such food for thought at this time of year: the translation of what Mary saw and felt and did on that terrible day. And what ultimately came of it.