Some 17th century Dutch printer is the author of the KV in its present form. Most probably it was Jan Rieuwertsz. who added the KV as a philosophical introduction to the Dutch translation of the TTP. The codex 75G15 in the Royal Library is a copy of this Rieuwertsz. edition, suppressed by Spinoza during its printing in 1671.

Text, notes, marginal notes and appendix show a slightly different vocabulary. Some 90 lemmata in the notes do not occur in the text (e.g.afdrijven, abstract, concurreren, schakelen, impulsus, modificatie etc). Having a rather scientific background -medical, juridical and sometimes philosophical- and giving answers to questions the text has given rise to, they seem to point at an other author than the translator. In the marginal notes (omitted in this edition) the vocabulary completely depends on the vocabulary in the text. The marginal notes often elucidate the structure of the text and sometimes render its content more homogenious (e.g. mening, opinie and waan in the text generally are referred to by waan in the margin; cf.geloof). Most probably the printer added them in preparing the edition. This is also the case with the printer's concept of the tile page:

Translation technique

A semantic analysis of the KV vocabulary at first sight learns, that it did not deviate much from the 17th century standard Dutch Bible translation (Statenbijbel, 1637). The way the translator uses it, is rather complicated. Often the establishment of the meaning of a word seems less important than the establishment of the concept it is used for. A substantial part of the concepts derive from Dutch translations by Allard Kók of the neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Burgersdijck (cf. oorzaak). Both Lodewijk Meyer and Spinoza's students may have been intermediaries for this more or less Cartesian scholastic vocabulary. The Spinozist concepts, to be deduced from the philopsophy communicated in the text, however, complicate its message. Given the similarity between the KV semantics and aspects of the semantic model of cognitive linguistics, an attempt will be undertaken in the inductive part of this investigation, to apply its method in the semantic analysis of the KV vocabulary.

If the author of the title page is the person who added the marginal note on f.170, as I think he is, his information should not be taken to litteral. Where on f.170 the text speaks of schrijven (write) the editor writes dicteren (dictate). On the title page, according to him, the Short treatise should have been written by Spinoza in Latin (in de Latijnse taal beschreven door B.D.S.) for his pupils and translated into Dutch for lovers of virtue and truth (in de Nederduytse spraak overgezet ten dienste van de Liefhebbers van Waarheid en Deugd). So the Latin text did not aim at the same group of readers as the Dutch text did. To find an answer to the question how reliable the translated text is as a source for Spinoza's philosophy, some remarks on 17th century translation technique seem appropriate.

Only if it can be made probable that the translation is a litteral rendering of Spinoza's Latin original the source oriented way Glazemaker used to do this, the translation has any value as a source for Spinoza's early philosophy. As a matter of fact, this is not the case. Analysis of the vocabulary learns that it is hardly ever reducible to the kind of Latin Spinoza wrote. On the contrary, for most of the lemmata in the KV vocabulary it was very easy to trace them in the Statenvertaling of the bible. See e.g. in the vocabulary wijn bijl, blixem, droog, lid, lof, naakt, stoppen, wellust etc. 17th Century translation technique, like 17th century poetics generally aimed at imitation and emulation of its model, which in the case of a translation means the source text. According to Blasius it was impossible

"de natuurlijkke maniere van seggen, en eigentlijkke aardigheid van de eene taal in de andere over te brengen; als hebbende iedere Taal, om des Dichters vindingen op het gevoeglijxt uit te drukken, sijne bysondere aangeboorene eigenschap, welke op het aldernaauwste, doenlijk is, na 't vereisch der Tooneelen en dicht-saakken te volgen genoeg is; mits de rechte sin ongeschonden blijve, en des eersten Dichters oogwit, soo wel in sijn grond-taal en eigentlijkke meening, als in des tweeden Dichters uitgedrukte vertaaling en krachtige nabootsing, getroffen worde."

The translation linguistics of Blasius was general in the 17th century and has not been bound to a certain direction. Even his antagonists apply it, sometimes even in a more extreme way, like Lodewijk Meyer did, improving Corneille by following the precepts of Nil´s dramaturgy. Blasius' main point of the sense (de rechte sin) can easily be linked with the universalism which underpins Cartesian linguistics. Contrary to the conceptual universalism of Humanism it did not believe that the sense of a text was taken over with the form adopted from the source text: each language had its own property. The term language property (sijne bysondere aangeboorene eigenschap) already occurs at Van Heule and is for Hemsterhuis the main point for the study of Greek. Like Verwer he uses the term analogia in this context. The conceptual universalism of Cartesianism therefore leads to a relativistic, target language oriented translation technique. This technique reanimated in a sense Stevin's Latin independant civilisation programm of Dutch Renaissance and was well in accordance with the 17th century literary practise of 'imitatio' and 'aemulatio' (krachtige nabootsing; cf. Warners ). One strives at 1) adapting the example in the source text to the circumstances of its reception and in this imitating adaptation 2) to improve and exceed others, including the model.

The reception circumstances of the KV have been studied earlier. From the version by the rewriter it became clear that it was a Deurhovian target group the text had been rewritten for. Not astonishing, given what is known about the role of the Deurhovian Monnikhoff in the transmission of the text. This means that the target group of the KV (the lovers of virtue and truth) consists of heterodox Calvinists, like Adriaen Koerbagh. In the finishing paragraph of the Philosophia Sacrae Scripturae Interpres Meyer refers to the KV:

"Quibus adde, quod non levis arrideat spes, Philosophiæ pomoeria his temporibus, quibus maximus ille ejus instaurator atque propagator Renatus Descartes orbi literario praeluxit, suoque præivit exemplo ab aliis, qui ipsius vestigiis insistere volent, longe lateque extendum ire; ac talia de Deo, Anima rationali, summa hominis felicitate, et id genus aliis de vitæ æternæ acquisitionem spectantibus, in lucem protractum, quæ utramque in Scripturis interpretandis paginam absolvent, ac viam sternent parabuntque planam, atque rectam, qua dissidiis, in amicitiam suaviret coeat ac confluat, cujus arctissimis dulcissimisque vinculis, in posterum unita atque unanimis his in ternis vigeat, floreat ac crescat, nec non in finum suum alienas adhuc a se gentes pertrahit et alliciat, ac tandem in coelis beata triumphet."

The phrase talia de Deo, Anima rationali, summa hominis felicitate generally is supposed to translate (or be a translation of) the title of the KV '[Korte Verhandeling] van God de Mensch en deszelvs Welstand'. This means that the program of Meyer's Sacrae Scripturae Interpres is executed in the KV as well as in the writings of Adriaen Koerbagh. Koerbagh interpretes a mainly religious vocabulary in a Spinozist and Hobbist way, using the rationalistic method of Meyer's Sacrae Scripturae Interpres. The author of the KV operates the same way by adding a Spinozist content to a mainly biblical vocabulary, as I hope to have made sufficiently clear in my analysis of the individual lemmata of the vocabulary. This means that the translation of the KV took place around 1666 when Koerbagh wrote Bloemhof and Ligt. The translation technique of free addaption of the content of Spinoza's philosophy to the cultural context of the Calvinist target group perfectly fits Meyer's program, but excludes the possibility, that the KV is a litteral translation of any early version of Spinoza's Ethics, the source oriented way Glazemaker used to do this.

What now is the value of the KV as a source text for Spinoza's philosophy? Probably not much more than Bredero's Moortje for the text of Terentius' Eunuchus. The translation renders the sense contained in the the source text (de rechte sin), just like Terentius' plot and characters are contained in Moortje. But their names and habits have been adapted to the Amsterdam circumstances of its reception in the beginning of the 17th century. Essentially the KV is not contrary to the philosophy of the Ethics, but it is totally unfit as a source for an early version of its text. Such an early version never existed or in any case not differently from what Akkerman has been able to reconstruct from 17th century Latin and translated versions of the Ethics. The KV is nothing else than an adapted translation of texts from the Ethics, available around 1666.

Some figures

The KV comprises about 50,000 items (75% of the extend the Ethics) that can be reduced to about 4,000 different forms, themselves reducible to about 1500 lemmata, of which about 8% only occur in the notes (about 10% of the KV text). Of these 4,000 forms about 2,000 only occur once; 1,000 two till four times and 1,000 five till over 2,000 times. Zipf's law, that the rank (b) of a lexical item and the number (a) of lexical items having this rank is constant (k) (ab²=k), applies to the text (k=2500). En, van, dat, is are the most frequent forms (over 1,000 times). Most of the forms occurring between 100 and 1,000 times, have a morphosyntactic function (dit, heeft, alle, zelfs, kan, uijt, zal, veel, kennen etc.). Semantically functional forms like zeggen, komen, bestaan, volgen, verenigen, denken, bewijzen, tonen, onderscheid, gebruik, behoren, noemen, maken etc. have similar frequencies (used software: Lexico2; Lexico Labs 1998; the CNR Lessico Intellettuale Europeo (ILIESI) gracefully allowed me to make use of its Banca dati di testi filosofici dell'età moderna). The present internet edition of the KV is based on a scan of the third Van Vloten edition (Opera quotquot reperta sunt, 1914) and the The Hague manuscript (75G15). It can be considered a diplomatic edition of the manuscript as far as the text is concerned; the latinizing interpunction has been modernized.

Literature

Hermans, Theo: 'Translating 'rhetorickelick' or 'ghetrouwelick': some contexts of Dutch renaissance approaches to translation', In: Standing clear: a Festschrift for Reinder P. Meyer; ed. by Jane Fenoulhet et Theo Hermans, London: the Centre for Low Countries Studies, University College, 1991.

Jongeneelen, Gerrit H.: "The rewriter of the Korte verhandeling". In: Filippo Mignini, Dio, l'uomo, la libertà. Studi sul "Breve Trattato" di Spinoza, L'Aquila: Japadra, 1990 (Methodos 18): 483-494.

Korpel, Lucretia Gertrude: Over het nut en de wijze der vertalingen: Nederlandse vertaalreflectie (1750-1820) in een Westeuropees kader, Amsterdam [etc.]: Rodopi, 1992.

Mignini, Filippo: Benedictus de Spinoza Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch en deszelvs welstand. Introduzione, edizione, traduzione e commento. L'Aquila: Japadre, 1986.

Nieuweboer, Adèle : ‘De populariteit van het vertaalde verhalend proza in 18e-eeuws Nederland en de rol van de boekhandel bij de praktijk van het vertalen’, Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 53-54 (1982) p. 119-141.

Schonveld Cornelis Willem: 't Word grooter plas: maar niet zo 't was: Nederlandse beschouwingen over vertalen 1670-1760, verz. en ingel. door C.W. Schoneveld, 's-Gravenhage: Stichting Bibliographia Neerlandica, 1992.

Warners, I.D.P.: 'Translatio, Imitatio, Aemulatio', De Nieuwe Taalgids, 49, pp.289-295, 50, pp. 82-88, 193-201.