Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Great Regulars: Interestingly, "Psalm 52" denounces those

who are great and prominent, but false: a phenomenon that [Mary Sidney Herbert,] the Countess of Pembroke was well placed to observe.

Her version is less compact than the other great translation of her time, and more performative. The King James prose version has the force of simplicity and compression, a clinching denunciation. Mary Herbert makes the psalm into more of a song: an inspired rant, extravagant yet disciplined.

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: The Inventive Translations of Mary Sidney Herbert

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