[Milton-L] Paradise Lost -- Parallel Prose Edition

[Nancy Charlton]

I have to agree half-way with Jonathan that while the NIV may clarify certain archaisms, it is tin-eared. It clunks; it chirps; it limps. It's deaf rather than "dumm." The NLT is worse, but either of them is preferable to the egregious The Message. 

As to the Psalms, I'd like to cherry-pick one tiny example (well, two).

Psalms 73, one of the most intense soliloquies in English literature, verse 7:

KJV: Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish.

NIV: From their callous hearts comes iniquity*; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.
* Syriac (see also Septuagint); Hebrew Their eyes bulge with fat.

I see nothing in the Hebrew, of which I have far from perfet grasp, to justify "iniquity" or "evil conceits", to say nothing of "minds" rather than "hearts."  Rather than direct and literal statements, the KJV employs metonymic and synechdochic metaphors, which create vivid images. "Their eyes stand out for fatness"  is more likely to remind the reader of somebody in particular than is the generalized "callous hearts." "They have more than heart could wish" moves forward one of the larger themes of the psalm: "I was envious of the foolish" (v. 1), and is more consistent with the speaker's acknowledgment of and struggle against his own envy. He goes on with his list, and it makes the turnaround more powerful:

16  When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me;
17  Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.

The rest of the psalm, especially verses 24-26, would seem to be pat platitudes without the power of this realization and the speaker's candor about his own feelings.

The NIV loses much of the poetry in clarifying the language: the NLT goes overboard in finding a "modern" expression and is like trying to get your singing pitch from an out-of-tune piano.

But for Jonathan's purposes in bringing comfort to his father, this might not be the best choice of Psalms. The more obvious choices would include Psalm 23. No one would dare change much about the opening line "The Lord is my shepherd", but what happens to "I shall not want." The NIV insists upon "I shall not be in want." At least that's better than the NLT "I have everything I need." The unqualified "I shall not want" covers everything in both the older sense of "want" as "lack" as well as the sense of "desire," just coming into currency in EM times. It has a shade of the categorical, the absolute, that transcends one little person's situation.

Ambiguity that enlarges without confusing, concreteness and specificity while remaining universal: these are some earmarks of poetry that the KJV has and that other translations lack altogether or, worse, attain halfway--and that usually by borrowing the KJV verbatim.

Lastly, the NIV often lacks fidelity to the spirit of the Hebrew, with its repetitions and its balances. It trudges along in linear fashion, in lines without meter or rhythm, without pause or caesura. It simply does not sing! And is that not what Milton prayed his Heavenly Muse to do?

Dismissing the NIV as a Bible for dummies is as wrong-headed as bashing the KJV for its archaism. And neither critical stance has much to do with a stated human purpose like comforting one's father in extremis. 


Nancy Charlton

http://groups.google.com/group/paradiselostdaily



. . . Till old experience do attain

To something like prophetic strain.  (Il Penseroso)

--- On Thu, 11/20/08, jonnyangel <junkopardner at comcast.net> wrote:
From: jonnyangel <junkopardner at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Paradise Lost -- Parallel Prose Edition
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
Date: Thursday, November 20, 2008, 8:15 PM



On 11/20/08 10:04 PM, "Matthew Stallard" <stallard at ohio.edu>
wrote:

> The NIV is a respected, scholarly modern English translation of the Bible
> that took many years to produce. I don't understand your use of
"dummies"
> in this context. Is modern English "dumb" to you?

Modern English is not dumb to me. Where Modern English gets dumb is when it
gets in its time machine and travels back through centuries and tries to
make that language "modern" and "accessible".

The NIV may make the text more accessible to modern readers, but it strips
it of its poetic beauty in the process (especially with Psalms).

The question therefore is not whether modern English is dumb, but rather can
modern English make old English "accessible" to modern readers
without
stripping it of its power, beauty and poetry.


J


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