Excerpt from The Wisdom Books, (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes) Also Lamentations and Song of Songs, in Modern Speech and Rhythmical Form
The generous reception accorded to The Psalms in Modern Speech and Rhythmical Form leads me to hope that the translation of other parts of the Old Testament, executed along similar lines, may be not unwelcome. This volume and its predecessor together comprise all the specifically poetical books of the Old Testament - that is, all the poetry that lies outside the prophetic literature and the sporadic poems or fragments of poems embedded in the historical books. In this volume, as in the other, I have endeavoured to let the writers speak to us in the language of to-day, and also with something of the music which haunts their words in their original form. Perhaps no translation of a poem can ever do it adequate justice; but even approximate justice is impossible where cadence and rhythm and all that make it a poem are deliberately ignored. For while thought is as essential to poetry as to prose, these things are of its essence too.
Two impressions rise upon the mind from this conspectus of Hebrew poetry. One is that of its astonishing range and variety. Here, if anywhere, we come upon the humanism of the Bible; and here, if anywhere, Hebrew literature challenges comparison with the literatures of other peoples. These books breathe the spirit of the great world. The pessimism of Ecclesiastes is the voice of the weary souls of a hundred lands.
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