 1968) 71‒82. ↩
- See Robert Alter’s discussion of the biblical and liturgical in modern Hebrew poetry and his argument that “…allusion is not an occasional or even frequent elective device but in many texts is the warp and woof of the poem.…” In Alter’s Hebrew and Modernity (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994) 10‒11. ↩
- I have borrowed the phrase “a new music” from Eliot Weinberger, who develops this notion beautifully in the following passage: “…the primary task of a translator is not merely to get the dictionary meanings right – which is the easiest part – but rather to invent a new music for the text in the translation language, one that is mandated by the original.” See Weinberger’s “Anonymous Sources: On Translators and Translation,” in In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, 24. Benjamin’s phrase “the echo of the original” is from “The Task of the Translator,” 77. ↩
- Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 74. ↩
- Of course, the mark on Jacob’s thigh is only one sign of the ways the night wrestling changes him. At night’s end, he is given a new name and Jacob is transformed – translated – into Israel. See Genesis 32:23‒32. ↩