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  • From: "B. M. Rocine" <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew poetry as "libretto"
  • Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 08:58:41 -0400

Hi Rolf,

Thank you for your kind words and considered comments. I really like the Gross quote; I think it is elegant, insightful, and just a bit humorous. You nicely qualified the relationship of Gross' concern to my use of the present translation in Isaiah.

"my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer"...

I think the existence of an oral tradition before, during, and/or after the writing of the Tanakh can be pretty reliably established with mostly circumstantial evidence like the existence of stock pairs as a foundation for constructing BH poetic parallelism. (But I certainly do not want to entangle the list in another unseemly authorship debate!) The studies of Lord and Parry on oral poetry seem to convincingly establish that stock pairs is the vital mechanism for creating oral poetry.

I do not claim that every Biblical poem has a performance behind it. I doubt Psa 1 does, because I think it was written as an introduction to the psalter. I doubt some acrostic poems, which must largely be seen to be appreciated, have performance backgrounds. Psa 119, on the other hand, with its turning over and over eight designations for the Word of God, may well use those eight together with the acrostic to enhance the performer's memory and reputation as well as the audience' contemplation and pleasure.

You speak of the uncomfortable zig-zagging through tenses that translators may create if they try to follow the Hebrew verb forms. The zig-zagging is sometimes the essence of the poetry. To smooth it out is to re-write rather than translate the poem. The zig-zagging sometimes manifests as zig-zagging through Hebrew verb forms, but it is truly only an effect of shifting performance deixis. I'll illustrate with an example.

The performance deixis of Deborah's Song in Judges 5 shifts as follows (the "bard" is the theoretical performer of the song when he is playing the role of himself):

Verse 2: bard > general audience (Israel)
3: bard > specific audience (rulers)
4: bard > YHWH
6: bard > Deborah (I am taking the ti ending (v. 7 shaqqamti) to be an old 2. f. s. suffix)
9: Deborah > Israel (IOW, the performer "plays" Deborah rather than himself)
12a: bard > Deborah
12b: bard > Baraq
13: Baraq (or Deborah) > Israel
14a: bard > Israel
14b: bard > Ephraim
16a: bard > Reuben
16b: bard > general audience
23a: Messenger of YHWH > special addressee
23b bard > general audience
23c: Messenger of YHWH > special addressee
25: bard > general audience
28c: Sisera's mother > special addressee
29: bard > general audience
30: Sisera's mother > herself
31a: bard > YHWH
31b: bard > general audience

Now that's a lot of zig-zagging!! ;-)

The shifting performance deixis segments the poem. The segments are largely unannounced by any speech introduction formulas. They happen on the fly. It is a bit hard to follow when we read the text. In reading, we have to track noun and pronoun references very attentively. On the other hand, it would make a spell-binding live performance by a virtuoso dramatic specialist.

This has a lot to do with the use of the verb forms. If we simply chart the verb forms in the whole poem as one continuous string, the string is incomprehensible. If, on the other hand, we segment the text with a recognition of the shifting performance deixis, the forms *within each section make sense within that section*.

Shalom,
Bryan Rocine

Rolf Furuli wrote:

I can not exclude
your "libretto"-view. But it of course very difficult to find clear evidence for it. My concerns, however, relates to the application of this view to Bible translation.

The German Hebraist Walter Gross once used the phrase: "Die Flucht ins Präsens" ("the flight to present"). This means, that when Bible translators have problems with the translation of verbs (e.g. different conjugations seem to have the same reference), they often end up with using present. Because present in English and other languages can refer to the past and future, the reader must find the temporal reference. My view of Bible translation is that the translators should refrain from exegesis as much as possible and instead whenever possible make a text that gives the reader the opportunity to do the interpretation. There may be situations where the temporal reference is ambiguous in the original text and where the translators will preserve this ambigousness. But in most instances it is the duty of the translator to make decisions regarding the temporal reference of the verbs and convey these to the readers. In other words, the reader should be able to in an easy way to find the temporal reference of a passage in an English Bible translation.

You choose present to a great extent, not because any "flight," but because you want to convey your views of the nature of poetic texts in Hebrew. Nonetheless, the use of present in your translation probably will have the same effect on the readers as Die Flucht ins Präsens, they simply do not understand the temporal reference. You agree that the setting of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is future, and in my view, verbs in such a setting should be rendered by English future, so the readers immediately see the temporal reference. To use present to such a great degree as you do is not as confusing for the reader as the the zig-zag renderings of modern translations with past, perfect, present, and future renderings. But still the text is much easier to understand for the reader when simple future is used.


1. Do you view the whole text as referring to the future, i.e. do you see
each action as an action where reference time comes after the deictic
center?


Interpretively, of course. That is, it is prophetic. But
linguistically, no. The vision is "right there," "right in front of
them," so to speak.

I think, in both the translation and interpretation of Hebrew poetry,
not enough value is given to the text as a libretto. I use the term
libretto loosely. What I mean is that the style of a lot of Hebrew
poetry reflects an oral or performance tradition, perhaps as the
writers' unconscious preservation of a text's oral origin or as a
conscious attempt to honor the oral tradition.

I suspect many of these texts, Isaiah 52:13-53:12, were first performed
and later written. It is often challenging to understand libretti in a
written-only medium. They are stripped of tone of voice, facial
expression, gesture, musical or dramatic accompaniment, and all the
context that the performance arena can bring to a performance. The
Slavic _guslar_ (bard) Halil Bajoric said of his story, "It has to be
said like that." What he means is that the delivery of the song is
inseperable from its message. The _guslar's_ story is never only the
words; it is also the performance.

When it comes to Hebrew poetry, I think we need to explore the idea of
re-constructing the performance. I think a text like the one we are
examining in Isaiah is begging us to reconstruct the performance by its
use of verb forms that are stringed together in a somewhat unusual way.

A skillful Hebrew _guslar_, as I believe the prophets and poets of the
Hebrews were, could deliver sections of our passage from Isaiah that use
a preponderance noun sentences and X-qatal clauses, such that he
describes a vision that is before him and his audience at the moment he
speaks but tells of things to come. "hinneh!" he says to his audience.
Do they see what he sees? He will help them.






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