Talk:O Jesu Christe, wahres Licht

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by The Squirrel Conspiracy (talk) 17:59, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

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• ... that the hymn "O Jesu Christe, wahres Licht", written by Johann Heermann during the Thirty Years War, was translated by Catherine Winkworth to "O Christ, our true and only light"? Source: several

• Reviewed: Edward B. Bunn

Created by Gerda Arendt (talk). Self-nominated at 17:30, 12 July 2020 (UTC).

• New enough, long enough, neutrally written, no close paraphrasing seen in English online sources. Image is freely licensed. QPQ done. But I don't understand the hook. According to your article, the original title translates as "O Jesus Christ, true light". The English translation is almost identical. IMO this is not an appropriate hook. Yoninah (talk) 21:00, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

  ... but it saves us a translation in parenthesis as we have right now on the Main page, and I'm no friend of it. Also, it's not really identical, imho. - I can think about something else but not today. I was pressed for a nomination in time, as you probably saw. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:07, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

• OK, I'll wait. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 21:13, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

  Here I'm back, Yoninah, having expanded the article a bit. I am not able to word the cutest thing about this hymn. The author wrote it, praying for those separated and delusioned, meaning the Catholics who opposed him and Protestantism in the Counter-Reformation, repeating: praying for their enlightenment, not fighting them. And today, it's also in Catholic hymnals. As that is too difficult to word, how is this?

  ALT1: ... that lines from the hymn "O Jesu Christe, wahres Licht" by Johann Heermann were translated by Catherine Winkworth as "enlighten [whom] dark delusion haunts and blinds"?

  The complete phrase "Enlighten those whose inmost minds / Some dark delusion haunts and blinds." seems too long, but would show her artisty better. Open for other ideas. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:07, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

• Gerda, lately you have been submitting hooks that focus on the hymn's wording, and it's really not all that interesting. I have suggested other hooks in the past and been immediately voted down, so I'm not willing to make the effort here. You can skip the translation in parentheses—we've done that before—and maybe say it was associated with a melody from Nürnberg dating to 1676, or that it's included in both Protestant and Catholic hymnals, or that the tune was used in other musical settings. Yoninah (talk) 16:29, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

  What you suggest would be pretty similar to Template:Did you know nominations/Das Jahr steht auf der Höhe, where it's truly unusual: a 20th-century text to such an old melody, but for a 17th-century, it's rather the normal thing, not worth mentioning, sorry. That Heermann asked to pray for those under whom he suffered is unusual, only I can't word it in the few words permitted. That a hymn appears both Catholic and Protestant is by now also rather usual, - unusual is that the Catholics were regarded as opposition when it was written, and now have it in their hymnal. We could use Paulus, sure, only then we point at Paulus rather than this hymn, and that article is in a sad shape, and I have no time to fix it right now. - Sorry, this article is one of the few articles connected to my topic of the year, which makes me want to say something about enlightenment. Please understand. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:44, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

• I hadn't read through the above closely when I looked at the article to find a potential hook, since I agreed that the translation approach did not make for an interesting hook, and this has been stalled for over three weeks. I ended up with the following:

• ALT2: ... that two verses from the hymn "O Jesu Christe, wahres Licht", written by Johann Heermann during the Thirty Years War, were used in the Felix Mendelssohn oratorio Paulus?

The problem that would need to be solved here is that Paulus, at least in the original German version, uses verses 1 and 5 of the hymn, not verses 1 and 2 as asserted by the hymnary.org site. (I checked the Peters score on IMSLP.) So a source would need to be found that reflects the correct information. (Or perhaps the 1836 English translation translated verse 2 rather than verse 5 by mistake.) I've said "two verses" because I don't think the details—verses 1 and 5 of a total of 6—are necessary in a hook. Gerda Arendt, Yoninah, thoughts? BlueMoonset (talk) 21:51, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Thhank you for looking into this, and the find. For a quick fix, I think the article should also say "two stanzas", - we usually say verses for Bible verses, and stanzas for rhymed poetry as a hymn. Therefore:

ALT2a: ... that two stanzas from the hymn "O Jesu Christe, wahres Licht", written by Johann Heermann during the Thirty Years War, were used in Mendelssohn's Paulus oratorio? Will look for a better source, but not right now, tired. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:01, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

• ALT2a hook ref verified and cited inline. ALT2a good to go. Yoninah (talk) 00:13, 14 August 2020 (UTC)