Summer Night By Natan Alterman Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Silence whistles in wide open spaces. Glitter of a knife in cats' eyes glows. Night. So much night! And stillness in the sky. Stars in swaddling clothes.
Time at large, at large. The heart's clock struck two thousand. Dew like a rendezvous veiled the eyes' lashes. A streetlamp throws black slaves down hard, prostrate Across the platform as its gold whip flashes.
Summer wind gone wandering. Faint. Agitated. Tonguing the gardens' shoulders on her arc. Greenish evil. Roiled lights and suspicions. Treasure boiling under frothy dark.
And far up yonder with a famished roar, Its eyes a golden-plated glower, Wrathfully a city vaporizes, in stone billows
Of soaring cupola and tower.
Audio recording of me reading the original Hebrew:
The state shattered,river and mountain survive The city springfallen,weeds and trees take ground Touched by the times,tears splash at sight of blossoms Aggrieved at displacement,the heart jolts at birds' sound The beacons of war have brimmed three months with flame Letters from home are now worth a thousand in gold I scratch and pull so much at my whitening hair It'll soon be too thin for my hatpin to keep hold
The Original:
Literary Chinese verse-grammar is heavily elliptical and, from a Euroglot perspective, underspecified. In my literal gloss I have placed in parentheses the function-words and forms and morphemes which are not strictly derivable from the Chinese text (since often other relations are possible and plausible), yet which I resort to in order to give some kind of readable English.
Couplet 1:
國破山河在，kwek phè sran he dzèi
城春草木深。dzyeing tshywen tsháu muk syem
(The) state (is) broken/vanquished, (yet) mountains/hills (and) rivers endure/remain.
(The) city (is) spring(-bloom)(ed): grass/plants (and) trees (have) (grow)(n) dense/deep.
In traditional regulated verse (the Chinese verse-form to which this piece belongs), the opening couplet sets the time, place, and/or theme for the entire poem. In the first line the human 國 kwek "state" is contrasted with the natural 山河 sran-ghe "mountains and rivers." 在dzèi "to stay, to be there, to be alive" reads as "endure" or "is still there" in the sense of outlasting. Though 破 phè means "break, shatter, smash" there is more to it than that, it also means "demolish, destroy (e.g. by military action)" and that meaning is relevant here, because 國破 kwekphè in isolation could mean not only "the state is broken/collapsed" but also "the state is destroyed (i.e. by some foreign power)." Use of the verb 破 phè with 國 kwek as its object, in the context of specifically military action, can be found as early as Sun Tzu's Art of War:
凡用兵之法全國為上破國次之蹧軍為上破軍次之 So, when it comes to methods of employing the military, conquering a state's capital (=國 kwek) intact is best; destroying (=破 phè) it is worse. Conquering an enemy army intact is best; destroying it (=破 phè) is worse.
If Du Fu didn't have this all burbling about in his subconscious at least, I'd be surprised. For as he puts a living spin on a dead metaphor by using 國破 kwekphè to mean a nation literally broken to pieces by internal factors, he also employs phrasing often associated with external conflict and vanquishment. In Sun Tzu above, 國 kwek refers to a state metonymically via its city seat, a usage which could occasionally be employed as classical metonym in Medieval Chinese poetry and which is evoked here, as the war-shredded capital city of Chang'an is itself a realm overpowered by nature. Throughout this couplet and the next, we see nature almost metaphorized, as unwitting, uncaring victor, outlasting and tormenting humans. In the first line the broken/destroyed city or nation of humans is set against the unbroken enduring realm of nature. This carries into the second line, where the lush grasses and trees suggest a view of an environment abandoned by humans and therefore overrun, veritably conquered, by wild plants of spring.
Anyway, as with Biblical poetry, syntactic parallelism is a major formal component/constraint of Chinese verse as it had developed by this period. These two lines are syntactically parallel (although not required to by the form.) Both go [Noun+Descriptive Verb| Noun-pair +Verb] in Chinese and so 春 tshywen "spring" is actually a verb here "to come into spring" instead of a noun as it usually is- a license I've seen occasionally taken with words describing time and state in Chinese verse-grammar.
城 dzyeing means "city" here, and is the primary meaning in context. But the word can also mean "city wall", specifically the inner city wall. Medieval Chinese cities were often protected by two sets of walls: an inner defensive wall, the 城 dzyeing "enceinte, bailey" often made of stone or something equally rock-solid, and an outer wall (called the 郭 kwak "rampart, curtain wall") often, but not always, made of rammed earth. Kept between the 郭 kwak and the 城 dzyeing was a pomery with space containing enough farmland to keep the town supplied with food in the event of a siege. If the town expanded, concentric walls could be built as well. If the inner wall is overgrown, it means that all that farmland has been left to the elements, and therefore that it is either abandoned or at the very least horridly famine-prone. Furthermore, the word 郭 kwak "outer rampart" was quite close in pronunciation to 國 kwek "state/nation" (i.e. the word to whose verse-position 城 dzyeing "city" corresponds) so there may be some slight wordplay there with the "state broken" reminiscent of "ramparts broken" when the word is paired with 城 dzyeing.
Thick foliage in spring even context-free would have been ominous to Du Fu's audience I think. In China, trees and shrubs were normally pruned back greatly in spring. If they are growing thickly, it is because normal order has broken down. Nobody is there caring for them. Moreover, the verb 深 syem "to go/grow deep, get dense/thick" can connote infiltration, penetration, pervasion and to my mind has a menacing quality to it in this particular context of breached defenses.
This couplet also illustrates how the general and the specific, or the principle and the instance, can merge in Chinese poetic expressions thanks to underspecified syntax. The first line could read proverbially as "when nations fall, rivers and mountains endure" or "though a nation may fall, the rivers and mountains will survive." Indeed, the phrase 國破 is even today a feature in Chinese proverbs about what happens when nations fall.
Couplet 2:
感時花濺淚，kám dzyi hwa tsàn lwì
恨別鳥驚心。ghèn pat táu keing sem
The syntax here as in the next couplet is parallel (configured as two lines of Verb+Noun | Noun+Verb+Noun) this time by formal requirement. The couplet divides neatly into into four clauses where clause boundary comes between the first two and last three characters of each line. My translation is heavily interpretative.
The original phrasing is somewhat ambiguous, owing to elliptical verse-grammar, and there are many technically possible readings to go with them depending on how one relates the clauses. I have included three such readings below. The first and probably correct, or at least probably intended, reading has the poet as the subject of all four clauses:
(I) feel (so badly in such a) time, (that even) flower(s) (make me) shed tears
(I) hate/grieve separation/parting (so much, that a) bird (can) startle (my) heart.
A second reading has the poet as the subject of the first clause of each line, and the flowers and birds as subjects of the second:
A third reading has the birds and flowers as subjects of all the clauses:
Feeling the time, flowers shed tears,
Loath to leave, birds startle are shocked at heart
In the first reading, human suffering is contrasted with indifferent nature. Nature's perpetuity and lushness only serve to remind the poet of human misery and impermanence. Again: the contrast of humankind and nature, a pervasive theme in Medieval Chinese poetry in general and Du Fu in particular. This is the reading I prefer, because it makes sense in light of Du Fu's treatment in general of Nature as something terrifying and completely uncaring. The others are somewhat at odds, I think, with the literary tradition and aesthetic Du Fu was operating with. The second two readings reverse this and construe human suffering as a part of nature's own state, emphasizing the continuity and oneness of the two, in a very un-Du Fu manner. Yet even so perhaps they add to the poem.
濺 tsàn here is rendered as "to shed (tears)", though the chief sense of the word is "splash, spurt"
Couplet 3:
烽火連三月， phung hwé lan sam ngwat
家書抵萬金。 ka syuo téi màn kem
(The) beacon-fires continue(d) over three months/moons
(A) letter from home is worth ten thousand (in) gold/taels
The 烽火 are beacon fires set by sentries atop the wall to warn of the approach of an enemy. If the beacon fires are lit, there's a war on.
Couplet 4:
白頭搔更短， beik dou sau kèing twán
渾欲不勝簪。 ghwèn yuk pet syeng tshrem
(I have) scratch(ed) (my) white(-haired) head so (that it is so) thin
(It) soon (will) not be able to hold (my) hairpin/cap-pin (in)
The final couplet whirls away from the previous three, prosodically, thematically, semantically and syntactically. It is the only one that doesn't rely on semantic antithesis. It uses abstracts such as 更 kèing "even/so" and 欲 yuk "soon, about to" which are in large part absent from the rest of the poem, and it is also the first time the poet describes something so tangibly personal. 勝 syeng "able, hold" (here applied to the - failed- holding of hairpin with hair) has overtones of triumph, mastering something, subduing. Therefore in using this verb in the negative, Du Fu is connoting the opposite of triumph - vanquishment. scratching one's hair in China indicated sorrow or anguish more than confusion. The whitening and falling hair suggests the extent to which the poet is affected by the scene around him, by showing that it has actually ruined his health and is slowly wearing at his physical body. In so doing, it forges a connection between the poet, the state, and even non-human nature (the latter by opposition.) It's really quite confucian. What better way to reflect the falling apart and traumatization of the body politic than by showing it mirrored in the body poetic?
(The Medieval Chinese transcription system used is that of Prof. David Branner)
On Heathen Footsteps
Eisig Silberschlag
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Sun and wind and sea And your body burning on sand, Sun and wind and sea And your body's wordless demand, Sun and wind and sea And your body in power of it all, Sun and wind and sea— Ah, a life without God, without thrall.
Audio recording of me reading the original Hebrew:
Agrigentum Road
By Salvatore Quasimodo
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
There a wind remains that I recall afire within the manes of horses as they slanted their way across the planes, a chafing wind that eats at the sandstone, erodes the hearts of derelict caryatids cast down
Onto the grass. Soul of antiquity
Gone gray with age and rage, turn back and lean into that wind, breathe of the delicate moss clothing those giants tumbled out of heaven. How lonely what is left to you must be! And worse: to break your heart to hear once more
that sound resound and dwindle out to sea where Hesperus already streaks the dawn: a sad jew's-harp reverberating through the throat of that lone cartman as he slowly ascends his moon-cleansed hill again through dark murmurings of the Moorish olive trees.
Audio of me reading the original Italian:
The Original:
Strada di Agrigento
Là dura un vento che ricordo acceso
nelle criniere dei cavalli obliqui
in corsa lungo le pianure, vento
che macchia e rode l'arenaria e il cuore
dei telamoni lugubri, riversi
sopra l'erba. Anima antica, grigia
di rancori, torni a quel vento, annusi
il delicato muschio che riveste
i giganti sospinti giù dal cielo.
Come sola nello spazio che ti resta!
E più t'accori s'odi ancora il suono
che s'allontana verso il mare
dove Espero già striscia mattutino
il marranzano tristemente vibra
nella gola del carraio che risale
il colle nitido di luna, lento
tra il murmure d' ulivi saraceni.
Who rides so late on a night so wild?
A father, through darkness and wind, with his child.
He holds the youngster. His arm is tight
To keep him warm in the cold of the night.
"What's wrong? Son, why are you hiding your eyes?" "Look father; can't you see the Elvenking rise?
The Elvenking there, all gowned and crowned?"
"My son, it's only fog from the ground"
Dear little child, come away with me.
Our games together- what game's they'll be!
I've gorgeous gardens along the shore.
My mother will cloak you in gold galore.
"O father! My father: oh can you not hear
The promise the Elvenking breathes in my ear?"
"Son, easy. Take it easy there.
It's withered leaves in the windy air. "
So, sweet little boy, will you come my way?
My daughters will wait on you night and day.
My daughters will dance through the night in a ring.
You'll rest as they rock you and sleep as they sing.
"O Father! My father: oh can you not see
His daughters in darkness looking at me?"
"My son, my son. What I see is the way
The old gray wayside willow trees sway."
I love you! Your beauty is stirring my lust.
And if you're unwilling, I'll take as I must!
"O father! My father! He won't let me go!
Elvenking's holding me, hurting me so!"
The father shudders. He spurs his horse on.
His arm is clasping his moaning son.
Back home under strain and stress he sped,
And in his arms the boy was dead.
1The coinages Erlkönig and Erlenkönig in German, which actually mean "the king of the alder-trees" are in fact Herder's fortuitous mistranslations of the Danish word ellerkonge: elf king. Erlkönig therefore became associated with trees. In his folksong collection, Herder published his rendering of a Danish ballad in which a knight, riding through the forest is taken by a sprite who introduces herself as "the elf king's daughter." Goethe adopted Herder's hybridized form.
The Original:
Erlkönig
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.
Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?-
Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?
Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif?-
Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif.
"Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel ich mit dir,
Manch bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand,
Meine Mutter hat manch güldne Gewand."
Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,
Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht?-
Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;
In dürren Blätern säuselt der Wind.
"Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir gehn?
Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön;
Meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen Reihn,
Und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein."
Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort
Erlkönigs Töchter am düstern Ort?-
Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh es genau;
Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau.
"Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt."-
Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!-
Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind,
Er hält in Armen das ächzende Kind,
Erreicht den Hof mit Mühe und Not;
In seinen Armen das Kind war tot.
Yahweh's servants! Praise praise the name of Yahweh. Blessed be the name of Yahweh now and evermore From the source of dawn to the seat of sundown praised be Yahweh's name. High over all nations, Yahweh; and over the heavens His glory Who is there like Yahweh our God throned on high, Looking below on heavens and earth? Raiser of paupers from dust, from dungheaps lifting the needy, to seat him with princes, the princes of his people, and seating the barren woman at home a mother of sons in joy.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation:
(I must say, trying to follow the Talmudic prescriptions for the reading of Hallel psalms in the early synagogue made things a bit long-winded in this one with all the responsory Halaluyahs after every half-verse. I figured I'd alternate them with upward and downward motifs. That way, highlighting the structure of the verse-line, they at least have a job to do.)
The audio recording for this is a little different from my usual Tiberian Hebrew recordings. See the note below for more. Psalm 117
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Praise Yahweh, nations all Salute Him, peoples all For His kindness prevails upon us and Yahweh's truth is forever. Praise the Lord.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation:
A friend pointed out to me — in connection with the reading of this and other Hallel psalms — that the Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 38b and also Tractate Sofrim believed to be composed in Palestine) and, in a more oblique way, the Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbat 16) inform us as to the specifics of communal participation in the chanting of the hallel psalms in the early synagogue. Specifically, they state that it was done with the first helf-verse as a call-response, then with the rest as a responsory with הללויה. I am uncertain as to whether the song-final instance of הללויה in the actual text is to be treated as its own half-verse for these purposes (and thus get a responsory הללויה before and after it) or if the reader is to read the whole påsūq up to הללויה on his own uninterrupted, and then be answered by a final הללויה in response. I figure the former, more orthopractically fastidious reading would be likely to crop up anyhow no matter what so I went with that. The practice is I understand not common today, but the inference I take (given that not only the Talmuds attest this, but Rambam endorses it) is that people living in the Land of Israel during the Masoretic period — the actual user-base of the Tiberian reading tradition — would likely have chanted the hallel psalms in this fasion. So I figured, why not incorporate that into my Tiberian reading of this psalm? It's a simple matter of recording on multiple tracks and rhythmicizing the cantillation in a way proper to psalmodic delivery. On hearing the result, a certain person, who shall remain anonymous, remarked "wow, that sounds so Christian". Make of that what you will. To me, fact that I managed to produce something Christian-sounding simply by following directives from Rambam and the Sages of the Talmud, is absolutely hysterical. The Original:
"Happy the Man"
Psalm 1
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Happy the man who has not walked as the wicked counsel nor sat in scoffers' sessions nor stood the wrongers' way. But makes Yahweh's teaching his desire and murmurs His teaching night and day. He is to be as a tree planted by water streams that bears its fruit in season with never-withering leaf, and thrive in every thing he does. Not so the ungodly wicked, but like chaff wind whips away. So no the wicked shall not stand in judgment, nor wrongers with the righteous host. For Yahweh grasps the way of the righteous and the wicked's way is lost.
Audio recording of the original text chanted in Tiberian Hebrew:
(Note for people who haven't read Dune: this is just me screwing around)
Discovered unvocalized in a Qumran fragment. A vocalized version was found palimpsested in Aharon Ben Asher's recipe book.
Audio recording of the "original" text chanted in Tiberian Hebrew:
Prayer of the Sons of Gesserit
Translated by A.Z. Foreman A prayer of the Sons of Gesserit at a time of trouble. I must not fear. For fear is the mind's murderer. Fear is the little death that turns To end my life over and over. Without fear, I will die only once. The Original:
This may or may not be a very old text, but I think it is. As befits an old text, there are points of obscurity. Scholarly opinion is much divided as to what exactly it is: a taunt-song celebrating an Israelite victory over Sihon, an ancient Amorite victory-song celebrating Sihon's victory over Moab, an Israelite victory song celebrating the conquest of Moab, or a taunt-song referring to the defeat of Moab by some non-Israelite enemy. The great uncertainty is a function of the obscurity of several components of the last verse, where a text that ceased to be intelligible spawned multiple different attempts to make sense of it. As far as the redactor of the prose text is concerned, it celebrates an Amorite victory over Moab. Its purpose in the Book of Numbers does not seem mysterious. Heshbon was a great Amorite city, apparently famous in song for how its king wrested land from the Moabites. For the Israelites to be written into the story as a people that did to Sihon what he did to Moab magnifies their stature, and de-fangs the song of Sihon's accomplishments into mere prelude to his downfall. At some point before the close of the Masoretic period, this ceased to be understood, resulting in a revocalization of the key word ונירם as if it were a verb and messing up the rhythm.
If it is an adaptation into Judean Canaanite of a passage from what was once a well-known Amorite epic, it may be counted the first known instance of literary translation in Jewish history. Then again, I'm not quite sure the party that sutured this passage into the Book of Numbers even conceived of Amorite and Judean as entitely different languages from each other. It's tempting, but probably pointless, to ask how different might the "real" original have been. Perhaps enormously, and perhaps not very.
At verse 28 I emend בלעה for בעלי per the LXX and follow a version of Hanson's reconstruction in this and much else including the ending. At 17 the MT's parsing of the opening of the poetic passage is screwy. The Masoretic accents make perfectly good sense as is (something like "Come to Heshbon! Let the city of Sihon be built and stand firm.") But poetically it seems like it would work better to shift the ʔaṯnåḥ over to תבנה. (This would require making באו חשבון a level 2 conjunctive-disjunctive unit, and letting ותכונן stand as an unbound disjunctive.) So hypothetically, I think: בֹּ֥אוּ חֶשְׁבּ֖וֹן תִּבָּנֶ֑ה וְתִכּוֹנֵ֖ן עִ֥יר סִיחֽוֹן׃. This gives a neater syntactic balance, and the two clauses stand in chiastic relationship to each other. Perhaps the habit of joining תיבנה ותיכנה (as e.g. when mentioning Jerusalem among some Mizrahim, as a friend informs me) gave the Masoretes a sense — at a late date — that those two verbs had to stand as a single conjunctive-disjunctive phrase.
I have translated the text according to this hypothetical reconstruction of the original parsing, and with heavy emendation. But in my recording, I have allowed the Masoretic text to stand as is. This is because, when I do Tiberian readings to accompany my translations of Biblical verse, my principle is to let the MT stand in the audio reading without emendation of any kind— no matter how obviously garbled a given word or passage may be. The Tiberian reading is a descendant of, and liturgical heir to, the "proto-Masoretic" reading tradition cultivated in priestly circles of the Second Temple. Particular effort was expended to stabilize and preserve it in the Middle Ages (obviously, without success). Tiberian Hebrew being the most direct heir to the priestly reading of the temple, it seems proper for a reading in it to respect the Masoretic text with all its quirks and wrinkles.
I've translated the poetic passage into a slightly loose accentual alliterative meter of the kind known from early Germanic.
Audio recording of the original text read in Tiberian Hebrew:
The Song of Heshbon: The Amorites' Defeat of Moab
Numbers 21:26-30
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Heshbon is the city of Sihon, king of the Amorites. He had battled the first king of Moab and wrested all the land from him as far as the Arnon. So the tale-singers tell it:
Come to Heshbon be it built high Let the city of Sihon stand unshaken. A fire has burst forth from Heshbon, A flame from the town of towering Sihon. It consumed all of Ar in Moab, swallowed whole the heights of Arnon. Woe is you wallowing Moab. People of Chemosh your kind is done. He has turned his sons to sorry refugees surrendered his daughters as slaves to a king to the Amorite sire, to King Sihon. Their yoke is done from Heshbon to Dibon. Chemosh annulled from Nofah to Medba.
An ancient Gothic war-prayer that Fritigern had his men recite before doing battle with the Romans.
Well, it was either the Goths or the Bene Gesserit. Can't quite remember which.
Gothic Litany Against Fear
"Translated" by A.Z. Foreman
I shall not fear for fear is minddoom. Fear is the spirit-slayer and vile smalldeath that ceaselessly slays and knifes up the soul. Fear is everdeath that obliterates for a lifetime. But fearless I die simply of a sudden. Yea, fearless I perish in a prick of time. Come Tiw lead me on a day of Tiw while war is vaulting in the veins of men. My blood bless you: embolden my bonehouse against the cloud of swords across the earth. I shall not fear. See fully, my eyes.
Nī skal ik ōgan ist auk agis munaqisteins agis ist ahamaurþrja jah sa armadauþilō saei afslahiþ sinteinō ufuhsneiþiþ saiwalai ist ja agis ajukdauþus saei aldai fraqisteiþ akei unags diwa ik ainafalþaba anaks jai unags swalt ik in stika mēlis Hiri Teiw mik tiuh Teiwis dagis miþþanei wagjiþ weigs in wairēþrōm þuk blōtai mein blōþ mein bainhūs bibalþei ana mēkeis milhman ufar midjungard Ni skal ik ōgan. Augōna, gasaiƕats.
The dating of the Song of the Sea is a matter of some dispute. There is a widely held view that it is extremely old, on linguistic grounds. Indeed, the language of this song is more consistently archaic than any other coherent long passage of the Hebrew Bible. There is nonetheless a robust tradition of positing a relatively late (i.e. post-exilic) date for the Exodus 15. These all hinge on an ability to discount the archaisms as being intentional, the result of a late composer's (apparently uniquely successful) attempt to compose in an old style rather than an early composer using the language as it existed at the time.
The tendency for poetic language to tend toward, or preserve, archaic language more than prose does (e.g. Latin and Greek at every period, Old English, 18th Century English, French, Modern Welsh, Arabic, Modern Hebrew, Dutch, etc.) is so robustly attested cross-linguistically that it can be taken for granted as a commonplace of human linguistic behavior. Elaborations of this staggeringly banal fact have been used on the regular to try and argue a late date for all manner of apparently archaic compositions, and Exodus 15 is among their number, the most extensive case (and, for me, by far the most irritating) being the decades-long attempt of literary historians to argue for a late text of Beowulf.
Of course, there also exists the opposite tendency: arguing an early date for a text which on linguistic grounds cannot belong to that period. This involves claims that the text got partly modernized in transmission. There is general consensus on this matter regarding a lot of Old Irish poetry. Another Celtic case in point is the scholarship surrounding Y Gododdin, a Welsh poem which survives in a 13 century manuscript but is traditionally attributed to the 6th century Brythonic poet Aneirin. (Well, he is traditionally called a Welsh poet, but his stomping ground would actually lie in what is today Scotland.) The idea in this case is that the material was heavily modernized in transmission, leaving only portions of earlier language intact.
Literary attempts to project a late date onto a text in transparently early langauge always mean situating the text in an era which we know more about. This may be a large part of the appeal of such an approach. Thus for example Brenner's thesis that Ex. 15 was composed for the Passover feast during the Second Temple Period is father to his dismissal of all of the seeming archaisms as intentional stylistic options. But no other Biblical Hebrew poem really looks like this. We've no affirmative evidence that someone in the Second Temple period, trying to compose something new, would intentionally produce such a text with such a heavy and consistent freight of archaisms. All the archaic elements of Exodus 15 can be found individually in other — often late — poetic material but never with the same consistency and concentration in this fashion all together. If you knew nothing of the Song of the Sea, but knew the other poetic material of the Pentateuch as well as the more archaic of the psalms, you would never be able to use them as a model from which to derive the archaic style of Exodus 15 which just so happens to be supported by material in other Semitic languages. When late Biblical poets try to be archaic, they don't produce material that looks like this, and the most straightforward explanation is that they were either not able, or not inclined, to do so. Why should a late author of the Song of the Sea be so stylistically radical as to use archaic constructions in precisely the way that someone using an early form of Canaanite naturally would?
Anyway I think that the text really is an early poem, not a late poet's attempt to compose in an otherwise unattested archaic style. Here's a fun trick to try. If you run the sound-changes in reverse, you can get some sense of what it may have sounded like early on at some point in early Iron Age Judah. Given how speculative it is (relative chronology is one thing, but with absolute chronology?) I hesitate to call this a reconstruction of anything. The word would have to drop the prefix to describe it. It is definitely a construction. Of what, though, Dagon only knows.
As with all my translations of poetry from the Hebrew Bible, and poetry from early medieval Palestine, I am including audio recordings in Tiberian Hebrew. (Since I have gone and learned to read Hebrew in this fashion in order to produce an audio-companion for a book about this now-dead Hebrew liturgical dialect, and then lent my voice to a whole website about it, I figure I might as well get some use out of it.) I have included Exodus 14.30-31 in the text here, translated as as a small-font preface. The tail end of Ex. 14 forms the context in which Jewish readers since the Middle Ages have most commonly encountered Song, which is to say in prayer books, where it is grouped in with the Pesūqē deZimrā which may be said every day during the Šaḥarīt (Morning Prayer). Since I was including a Tiberian (i.e. medieval) reading, it seemed fitting to follow the siddurim and include Ex. 14:30-31 as a preface. Oh and here's an IPA transcription of the Tiberian Reading.
Here's a recording of me chanting the beginning (through 15:5) in Tiberian Hebrew, using the Temani Shira mode:
Here's a recording the whole text in a speaking voice
Song of the Sea
Exodus [14:30-15:1-18]
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
And on that day did Yahweh deliver Israel from the hand of Egypt, and Israel see Egypt dead on the seashore. Israel saw what great handiwork Yahweh had wrought down on Egypt, and the people feared Yahweh, and trusted in Yahweh and in His slave Moses. Then did Moses and the Israelites sing this song for Yahweh. They said:
Sing1 for Yahweh for his coup of splendor: Horse and horseman he hurled to the sea. Yahweh is my strength and stave2 he became my salvation. This god is mine whom I exalt, god of my father whom I extol: Yahweh the war man3.Yahweh is his name. Pharaoh's forces4 he flung to the sea His pick of captains pitched in the Reed Sea. The depths whelmed them over They were downed in the deep like stone Your right hand, Yahweh is majestic and right. Your right hand, Yahweh, shatters enemies. In ultimate splendor you felled those against You. Fired forth your fury to combust them like straw. At your nostrils' flare the waters heaped, The waves like mounds stood up. The deep congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said "I'll pursue, I'll subdue I will share out the spoils, my gullet will glut on them I will draw my sword, my hand despoil them." But you blew forth your breath and sea whelmed them over. They went like lead, down in the mighty water. Who is like you, Yahweh among the gods? Who is like you awesome among the holy? Awe-bringerhymn-hearer Wreaker of wonders! You stretched your right hand and earth gulped them under, You guided in your kindness that folk you redeemed, In your strength led their road To your holy abode. Peoples heard and as peoples quaked, The dwellers of Plesheth throttled with anguish. The chieftains of Edom panicked. The sires of Moab seized with shudders The kings of Canaan quailed and melted. Down upon them fell every horror; Your brawned arm loomed and they were like stone As your people crossed over, Lord Yahweh, As the people you made your creation crossed over. You brought them to plant them on the mount you bequeathed, The ground you deemed your dwelling, Yahweh The sanctum O Lord your hand founded. All hail Lord Yahweh King for all time.
1 - I have emended the opening with the verson from Ex. 15:21
2 - the character string יהויהי is probably best divided as יהו יהי.
3 - The Pšiṭṭā gives a translation implying יהוה גיבור במלחמה which is also found in the Samaritan Pentateuch. The LXX has Κύριος συντρίβων πολέμους "The Lord who shatters wars" which has been written about a great deal. There are three possibilities for the LXX. (a) it reflects — in translation — a radically pious intervention against the anthropomorphism of the MT version, (b) it reflects a slightly pious rendering of something like the Samaritan version (with the ב particle understood in the sense "against"), or (c) it reflects a variant which has left no trace elsewhere (and therefore the pious intervention lies not in the translation but its Vorlage). The real possibility of (c) should be kept in mind. Consider that while the Vulgate's "Dominus quasi vir pugnator, Omnipotens nomen eius" may reflect a Hebrew text according with the MT in the first half (though the "quasi" is either a bit of minor pious fudging or reflecting a Hebrew text with כאיש instead as in Isa 42:13), the following "Omnipotens nomen eius" seems utterly inexplicable as reflecting anything other than a Herbrew text containing שדי שמו, (which I think actually works nicer as poetry). More's the pity that we have no Qumran text for Exodus 15. In any case, evidently at some point a confusion crept into the tradition which yielded the Samaritan-type version for this line, whether or not it underlies the LXX. As איש מלחמה and גבור are commonly synonymous, conflation of two variants (יהוה איש מלחמה and יהוה גבור) seems like a plausible reason. גבור makes better sense metrically, but איש מלחמה seems to reflect the early anthropomorphism. Anyway, my translation doesn't care about literalism and so this is a bit moot on that score.
4 — metrically, if one were feeling speculative, one might wonder if מרכבת פרעה and פרעה וחיל are ancient variants which have been conflated. I went with the former. Of course, as always, my Tiberian Hebrew reading (meant to be a rendering of the text as it was known to the Tiberian Masoretes of the late first millennium) sticks to the Masoretic Text without any emendations.
The Original:
ויושע יהוה ביום ההוא את־ישראל מיד מצרים וירא ישראל את־מצרים מת על־שפת הים וירא ישראל את־היד הגדלה אשר עשה יהוה במצרים וייראו העם את־יהוה ויאמינו ביהוה ובמשה עבדו: אז ישיר־משה ובני־ישראל את־השירה הזאת ליהוה ויאמרו לאמר שירו ליהוה כי־גאה גאה
This translation originally appeared on Asymptote's blog as a Translation Tuesday feature Born in 1863, Jules Boissière (Juli Boïssièra) spent his early years as a journalist, hobnobbing with the likes of Amouretti and Murras, and writing anemic verse with great virtuosity in two languages. In 1886 he changed careers, and headed for Hanoi, part of the recently consolidated territory of French Indo-China. He served in the 11th Alpine Infantry Battalion, and saw combat in some of the last few battles to conquer the Tonkinese countryside, before beginning his tenure in the French administrative corps in Saigon and Huế where he learned the language today known as Vietnamese, acquired at least a basic knowledge of Classical Chinese, and cultivated the fondness for opium for which he was to become notorious. He served a long post in Bình Định before returning to France to marry Thérèse Roumanille (Terèsa Romanilha), daughter of Joseph Roumanille the reactionary patriarch of the Provençal Félibre movement. Boissière returned to Tonkin with his wife in 1892, taking stewardship of the Revue Indochinoise. After another leave of absence in 1895, he was promoted to Vice-Resident 1st Class and died a painful intestinal death two years later. Boissière wrote prolifically, but published little during his life. He is now best remembered for his collection of French Indo-Chinese short storiestitled Fumeurs d'Opium "Opium Smokers". He also produced a sizable amount of poetry, both in French and in Occitan, a lot of which — particularly that from his later years — is extremely good. It is likely that some of his poetry remains unpublished. A posthumous collection of his Occitan verse Li Gabian "The Seagulls" was published in 1899 by his wife, who extracted the poems from among his manuscripts. Reading it, I have come across quite a few interesting pieces, the more so because generally "colonial exotic" themes are rare in Occitan literature of this period, which preoccupied itself mostly with its own soil. Like the stories in Fumeurs d'Opium, some of the poems deal with Chinese and Indo-Chinese themes. Interwoven with long odes of nostalgic yearning for his native country and rhapsodies to his fellow félibres, one finds things like an imaginative sonnet depicting a Chinese Princess reading Li Bai, or some lusciously lilting lines about stargazing from a boat gliding down the Mekong. Some are of a piece with some of the best of his French "oriental" poems. And then there are three or four poems where he goes Next Level, as in the one translated here, which caught me completely by surprise. It is like nothing at all that he wrote in French that I've seen. I was not expecting this. Not even a little bit.
The Buddha
By Jules Boissière
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Our soldiers won then torched a domicile. The owner with his sons ran half a mile Under gunfire. On the ancestors' altar Not guarding the old creeds or their old shelter, The Buddha gave the wolfish men a smile.
How many hours has it been since! Where now Is that house? Where's the pudgy god whose brow And smile are sign of fate's indifferent law? When man beneath mute Heaven prays or cries I see again that Buddha's ruddy jaw, His moonlike face and his too tranquil eyes.
Audio of me reading this poem in Occitan
The Original:
Though Boissière was a native speaker of Lengadocian Occitan, he like the rest of his generation wrote in Provençal Occitan, specifically the variety of Rhodanian Provençal which had been raised to literary status by Mistral and others among the Félibrige movement. I give the poem in original Roumanille-Mistralian orthography, copied directly from Li Gabian, and in the more recent classicizing orthography. For all future Provençal texts in Roumanille-Mistralian orthography, I plan to include a parallel version in classical orthography.
Classical Orthography Lo Boddha Juli Boïssièra Brulavan un ostau, nòstei soudards vincèires; — Lo mèstre ambé sei fius peralin fugissiá Sota la fusilhada; e sus l'autar dei rèires, Luènh d'aparar l'ostau, l'autar e lei vièlhs crèires, Ais òme' alobatits lo Boddha sorrisiá Quant d'ora' an debanat desempèi! Monte es ara L'ostau? Monte es lo Dièu poput de quau la cara Sorrisenta retrais lo Sòrt indifferent? — E sota lo cèu mut, quand l'òme prèga e crida, Revese dau Boddha lei gauta' acolorida' E sa fàcia de luna, e sei vistóns serens.
Original Orthography Lou Bouddha Juli Bouissiero Brulavon un oustau nòsti soudard vincèire; Lou mèstre emé si fiéu peralin fugissié Souto la fusihado; e sus l’autar di rèire, Liuen d’apara l’oustau, l’autar e li vièi crèire, Is ome aloubati lou Bouddha sourrisié. Quant d’ouro an debana desempèi! Mounte es aro L’oustau? Mount es lou diéu poupu de quau la caro Sourrisènto retrais lou sort indiferènt? E souto lou cèu mut, quand l’ome prègo e crido, Revese dóu Bouddha li gauto acoulourido, E sa fàci de luno, e si vistoun seren.
Yahweh the Shepherd
Psalm 23
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Yahweh shepherds me I want for naught. He lets me lie down in grassy meadows, He guides me out by quiet waters. He brings my life back. He leads me straight on Justice's footpaths For his name's sake. Though I tread in the death-shadow vale I dread no harm: for you are with me. Your shepherd's crook, Your walking-staff... These things are my solace. You lay out a table to feed me in the face of my foes. You moisten my head with ointment. My cup overflows. Let naught but goodness and kindness flock with me All the days of my life And the House of Yahweh be my abode For many long days.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation:
The payṭan Shmu'el ben Hoshaˁna (known also as Hashlishi "the Third", the ultimate rank he attained at the Yeshiva) was one of the central figures of the Eretz Israel Yeshiva in Jerusalem in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, and a prolific author of Hebrew liturgical poetry. The Yotzer is a sequence of poems which adorn the benedictions associated with the morning reading of the Shemaˁ.
This brief piyyūṭ is an ahava, the fourth in such a sequence, introducing the second benediction before the Shemaˁ, dealing with God's love for Israel. (Whence Israel as the "beloved" of the final verse). Like many ahavot, it includes an alphabetic acrostic. In this case, though, the letters occur in reverse order, evoking the Resurrection's reversal of death at the end of days. It draws on the Bible heavily for its language, and the effect of its language (e.g. for the ending see Hosea 14:5).
My translation is fairly free and interpretative. For example, the Messiah is not directly mentioned in this poem by that title. Rather his coming is mentioned in oblique form "with (the) Nūn of (the verb) Yinnōn" which means more or less something like "when the Messiah's reign begins" or perhaps "when the Messiah is born" depending on which way you swing the mysticism. Yinnōn is an obscure verb occurring only once in the Hebrew Bible (Ps. 72:17). Some (see e.g. B. Sanhedrin 98b) took it to be the Messiah's name, and Yinnōn is frequently used as a byword for the Messiah in piyyūṭīm. The letter nūn wound up especially associated with the Messiah in this connection, in part on account of the fact that n-w-n was taken to be the verb's root.
The audio recording is chanted in a reconstruction of Tiberian Hebrew. Shmuel, being a member of the Palestinian Yeshiva (which had recently been moved to Jerusalem from Tiberias) would have been well positioned to know this pronunciation of Hebrew. (Although readers who could teach this pronunciation were to quickly become impossible to find outside of Palestine.) It is not hard to picture Shmuel using it in reading his own Yotzerot.
An Ahava on the Resurrection
Shmuel Ben Hoshaˁna
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
You turn man back to dust, but will turn back in kind with kindness that we hymn. You will bind back his bones, extend again his tendons, defend and fend for him. You will fit him with flesh, you will screen him with skin at the Messiah's dawn. Then will your beloved blossom like the lily, cast root like Lebanon.
Audio recording of me chanting the original in Tiberian Hebrew:
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