Comments | lipman_: Language of Truth

lipman_

Language of Truth

Feb 13, 2011 15:44

Mesheck Athanasius Johnson had always appreciated the expressionistic translation of the Bible by Buber and Rosenzweig, who had created new German words to emulate the structure of the Hebrew. Still, he understood they had shied away from the last step on the right way to render the Truth, that is acknowledging that all attempts at literal ( Read more... )

Comments 5

margavriel February 13 2011, 15:37:01 UTC

Any pun on "ale" there?

lipman_ February 14 2011, 14:56:57 UTC

No.

margavriel February 13 2011, 15:37:15 UTC

Oh, and "like!".

mallamb March 3 2011, 21:31:33 UTC

Afraid I need more help with all of this than you've given yet. My best guess is that it's a spoof from start to finish, but if not I'd really like to know about it.

lipman_ March 4 2011, 09:49:06 UTC

That was a bit esoteric indeed, I'm afraid. The word אלי, meaning "my God", appears here and there doubly, eg in Ps 22:2 (and thence, rebranded as the "Word of Abandonment", by Jesus on the cross). The massoretic accents have it as "elí éli". You might be familiar with the Bible translation Buber and Rosenzweig made in the 1920s and 30s. I find it's a great work of German Expressionism, and if you're fluent in Biblical Hebrew and know the Old Testament well, you can not only enjoy it, but even understand some. They coined new words, patterned after the Hebrew, tried to use one single German word for a given Hebrew word in all contexts and the like. (Right at the beginning, they strikingly translate tohu vabohu, ie 'formless and empty,' as 'Irrsal und Wirrsal.') Now what I ironically proposed was to be consistent, forgo the shallow semantic level and focus on recreating the rhythmic feel with English means, for example, in the case of the uncommonly stressed phrase above, by "more téa, Mórty ( ... )