Customer Reviews

The Song of Songs

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Peter Jay's preface admits he took "the division of the poems and many points of interpretation" to his version of the "Song of Songs" from Robert Gordis's 1954 version; that though they take the form of dramatic lyrics "to be spoken by a man or a woman", he took them to be "impersonal poems, rather than direct addresses by the poet to his audience." This may account for the coolness in his rendering. David Goldstein's introduction recounts debates in the second century AD over whether the poems should be included in the Bible. These hinged on whether complete lack of reference to God and faith prevented their being an allegory: "The many warnings by rabbinic authorities against taking the book at its face value show that such a literal reading was not uncommon, and that the temptation so to regard the book was ever-present." The formality of tone in Jay's version makes that temptation unlikely:

I make you swear, daughters of Jerusalem
if you find my lover, tell him
how sick I am with love.
(And what's your lover
more than anyone else's,
darling?
Why so special
for you to make us promise?)
He has a sparkling appearance -
you'd pick him out of ten thousand.

The line breaks sometimes evoke the spoken breath and occasional colloquialisms like "darling" can suggest a speaking person. But the prevailing tone, as in phrases like "sparkling appearance", is formal as an archaeologist's rendering of buried tablets, evoking neither personal involvement nor the immediacy of sensual detail. This approach best suits those lyrics in which no personal story is implied and a preacher's eloquence rather than lover's sighs seem right: "for lust is as stubborn as death/as pitiless as the grave,/its glowing coals/burn with the fiercest flames."

The book is handsome and some of the lyrics lovely. Jay has made these poems live and speak the English of our day. But he has not translated the directness which tempted second century AD readers to mistake these poems for literal records of an earthly love.