The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation [Paperback]

David R. Slavitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 23, 2001

Distinguished poet and translator David R. Slavitt here provides a translation of and meditation upon the Book of Lamentations, the biblical account of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 587 B.C.,on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av—Tish'a b'Av. (Six centuries later the Romans destroyed the second Temple on the same day.) Most of the Jewish population was deported to Babylon, and the ensuing period came to be known as the Babylonian Captivity. According to tradition, the Book of Lamentations was written in response to this political, social, and religious crisis. The five poems composing the book express Israel's sorrow, brokenness, and bewilderment before God.

Tish'a b'Av is the day on which observant Jews fast and pray. And mourn. As Slavitt observes in his meditation:" It is forbidden on Tish'a b'Av even to study the Torah, except for the Book of Job and the Book of Lamentations. This is the day on which we grieve for every terrible thing that happens in this world. It is the worst day of the year."Slavitt's meditation provides a context for reading the scriptural text. Cast in the same style as the Hebrew poetry, his meditation recounts how sorrow and catastrophe have characterized so much of the history of the Jewish people, from their enslavement in Egypt to the Holocaust of Nazi Germany.

Few translations of this remarkable book of the Bible attempt to reproduce in English, as Slavitt does here, the Hebrew acrostics. In the original, each verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet in sequential order; Slavitt elegantly reproduces this effect using the first 22 letters of the English alphabet. More than a structural or mnemonic device, Slavitt argues, the acrostics are "a serious assertion that the language itself is speaking, that the speech is inspired, and that there is, beyond all the disaster and pain the book recounts, an intricacy and an orderly coherence."

Editorial Reviews

Review

He has produced a version of Lamentations that manages to be not only faithful to the structure of the original, respectful of the ashes-and-tears-drenched imagery of the Hebrew, while sacrificing none of the power of the biblical test... a masterpiece.

(George Robinson JBooks.com )

In the process of recounting the Jewish experience, this co-editor of the Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama in Translation, and poet, novelist, critic, and journalist, demonstrates his competence in this undertaking. As another reviewer has said, 'This is a powerful and moving convergence of a translator and his source'.

(Bible Editions and Versions )

In his extended meditation preceding his translation of the book, David Slavitt connects the Lamentations to other periods of violence and destruction, such as the Nazi Holocaust. As happens with many writings of great strength, Lamentations has taken on new meaning as it has moved through time and across geographies... This is a book that not only allows but demands rereading.

(Jerry Harp Pleiades )

David Slavitt's tact and sensitivity in translation are by now widely recognized. This is a powerful and moving convergence of a translator and his source, a book worth the attention of anyone who cares what living poets are up to, and unusually rewarding to those who may seek, as balm for their own private griefs, the history of greater griefs than theirs.

(Henry Taylor, American University )

Much more than a simple translation of the biblical book, David Slavitt's Book of Lamentations is an extended meditation on the tragic aspect of Jewish history, culminating in a translation of the original Lamentations..

(Raymond P. Scheindlin, The Jewish Theological Seminary )

About the Author

David R. Slavitt, poet, novelist, critic, and journalist, has published more than seventy books. He is coeditor of the Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama in Translation series and the Penn Greek Drama Series. His translations include the Metamorphoses of Ovid, The Fables of Avianus, and Seneca: The Tragedies, vols. 1 and 2 (all available from Johns Hopkins), and Sixty-one Psalms of David, The Book of the Twelve Prophets, and The Poem of Queen Esther of João Pinto Delgado.

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (May 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801866170
• ISBN-13: 978-0801866173
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,737,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A meditation on catastrophe and history, August 20, 2001

By 

Lucy Bregman (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation (Paperback)

Slavitt's book is both a translation of the Biblical text and an extended meditation on Tish'a b'Av, the Jewish day commemorating a long series of losses and destructions. For those outside as well as within Jewish tradition, and interested in mourning and bereavement, this is fascinating material. It is beautifully written, and although it does not work as "consolation" literature, it places personal sorrows in a wider context. In the debate - within and outside Judaism - over whether the Holocaust was unique and if so, how, this book represents the negative stance. Jews had many many occasions of religious and historical catastrophe to cope with. This is a different point of view than, say, "Strange Fire: Reading the Bible After the Holocaust" edited by Linafelt, but both books are really worth delving into.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Book, May 15, 2008

By 

Kurt (Bethesda, MD, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation (Paperback)

The book is divided into two parts: a meditation on the history of the Jews, and a new translation of the Book of Lamentations.

Regarding the first half: I found it a well-written and fascinating essay. Slavitt covers a good deal of historical ground in about 60 pages, but does so with great lucidity, grace, and wit (much of it appropriately sardonic).

It would be damning with faint praise to call this essay a primer on Jewish history, but it functioned as such for this reader, a gentile familiar with some but not all of the travails described on these pages. But if it is a primer (at least for readers like myself), it is also something more: it is, as advertised, a genuine meditation, that is to say, a real work of literature in which the author uses the events of history as a starting point for a deeper and more thoughtful analysis of that troubled relationship which exists between God and the Jews.

Slavitt is a very good writer, and I found something worth underlining - some sentence or phrase that really struck me - on almost every page.

For example, his observation on page 11 about the Temple and its eventual destruction:

"It is as if the Temple were merely a preparation for the reality we now behold, that remnant, the Wailing Wall, a monument not only to God's glory but also to the brokenness of the world."

The second half of the book is a new translation of the Book of Lamentations. I am an amateur in the field of biblical translation, and can only comment as such on the quality of Slavitt's work here: but I found this to be a fine, rich, and redolent text.

Consider, for instance, this passage from the beginning verses of Lamentations 3:

"Afflicted am I and beset, a man whom God in his wrath has abased. Abused by his rod and broken, I am driven into the darkness. Against me, he turned his hand, and again and again.

Bones broken, wasted, I am besieged and battered. Bitterness is my portion and tribulation. Banished, I dwell in the darkest darkness like those who are long dead.

Chained so I cannot escape and walled in, I am a captive. Crying for help, I call out, but he will not hear my prayer. Crooked are all my paths, which he has blocked with boulders."

A final comment: I found this to be a first-rate example of contemporary book production, from the simple but beautiful cover art to the superb typesetting. In short, a book in which the quality of the writing is matched by the quality of design.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Moving Meditation, and A Startling Translation, May 13, 2007

By 

Kyle Minor "reader" (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation (Paperback)

This is a strange and powerful book. In an opening meditation, Slavitt links his personal experience of grief to the Book of Lamentations, broadens the scope of his narrative to encompass Jewish history and identity, and ties it all, pleasingly and complicatedly, to the new translation of the Book of Lamentations that is Part II. This translation brings to English some of the formal elements (notably the Hebrew equivalent of the abecedarium) that have been lost in earlier Hebrew-to-English renderings, and in so doing restores the hypnotic song of lament that means more deeply than those literal translations of words can approximate.