The Song of Songs: A New Translation and Interpretation (review)

VoLume 10, No.1 FaLL 1991 131 (the worship of God in the ancient east is inconceivable without music). The role of the Levites, male and female singers, dancers, and instrumentalists is carefully delineated. Ample discussion of the puzzling Psalm headings is provided and a judicious attempt is made to reconcile such divergent texts as 2 Sam 6:5 with 1 ehron. 13:8. Without doubt the volume deserves unmitigated praise. Among its advantages mention must be made of the surprisingly comprehensive list of authors cited. Happily, such contemporary Israeli musicologists as Avenary, Bayer, and Gerson-Kiwi are included. A valiant attempt is also made to trace Hebrew musical terms to Greek, Accadian, and U garit sources. In addition to informative copious notes the reader also receives a most welcome list citing every biblical reference to music. A bibliography of 35 pages concludes this book of competence and excellence. Max Wohlberg Cantors Institute Jewish Theological Seminary The Song of Songs: A New Translation and Interpretation, by Marcia Falk. Illustrated by Barry Moser. New York and San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990. 216 pp. $18.95. The Song of Songs, the Bible's hauntingly beautiful collection of lovelyrics , has an oral quality in the original Hebrew and formal, poetic features that none of the recent English translations has been able to capture. The King James Version has brought the Song into English as a literary masterpiece , but it treats the biblical verse like prose. Responding to the need for "a modern English translation of the Song that incorporates insights of new scholarship and analysis, yet reads like genuine poetry," Marcia Falk offers a truly lyrical version of the Song that approximates the text's original spoken quality and moving power. Beginning with the realization that "there can be no tmLy literal translation of a literary text," that any attempt to carry a work "from one culturallinguistic context to another" involves losses and gains, Falk takes a position as translator that combines a Hebrew scholar's loyalty to the original language and a gifted poet's artistic leave-taking. Arguing that biblical poetry should be translated as poetry, Falk imitates in lines "of varying length, shaped by the demands of English poetic craft," the relatively short units (two, three, or four beats) that make up the average biblical verse. She employs a variety of verse forms-couplets with off-rhymes, iambic quatrains, accentual meter, free verse-to match the various tones and moods of the 132 SHOFAR Hebrew lyrics and mark thematic repetitions among the poems. She carefully attunes her lines to natural English rhythms, alliteration, and assonance. Falk's poetic images reflect a "method of interpretive visualization" that renders vividly accessible and moving even the most puzzling of the Song's metaphors. The volume itself is a work of art. Falk presents the Song of Songs as a collection of thirty-one lyric poems in Hebrew, each with a facing-page English translation.· Different type faces signal the identity of the speaker-roman type for a female voice, italic for a male, small capitals for an unidentified voice or group of voices. Barry Moser contributes stunning illustrations of the Song's images. The second part of the book consists of Falk's six-chapter "Translator's Study," in which she delineates the principles underlying her work; attempts a generic definition and structural analysis of the Song; calls attention to its contexts, themes, and motifs; and provides notes to the individual poems. Falk denies both the Song's allegorical and dramatic character on the grounds that it lacks an obvious plot and fails to provide a unified portrayal of characters. Falk's assessment of the Song's literal quality is no doubt correct , but her narrow, static definition of allegory and her linear conception of drama puts her in unnecessary conflict with the ancient, interpretive, religious tradition that she in so many other ways endeavors to continue. Falk's division of the Song into thirty-one lyrics is novel, but much less controversial. Taking the now commonly accepted view of the Song as a collection , Falk preserves the individual verses in the traditional order, using literary criteria, especially internal coherence, to divide them into...