Hebrew Poetic Structures and Potential Effects in Relation to Quality Poetry Translations

Verbal art structured in “line”-units (i.e., verse-poetry) has a unique potential for effects that language in prose does not share (even prose verbal art). The translation of poetic texts as poetry raises challenges of not just how to communicate the message but also how to fashion poetic structures in the receptor language that create a similar potential for poetic effects. To complicate matters, even though verse-poetry is near-universal in the languages of the world, different versification systems require their audiences to use different cognitive strategies to mentally organize poetic structure in order to experience effects. This paper draws from the theory and method of Reuven Tsur’s cognitive poetics to elucidate the cognitive strategies required by the Biblical Hebrew versification system, in contrast to the strategies required by Western metrical and free verse poems. It presents a framework for Biblical Hebrew poetry that departs from the linear, visual, metrical, and parallelistic models that have dominated modern biblical poetry scholarship. Cognitively speaking, poetic structure (and its basic unit, the “line”) emerges in the experience (i.e., the mental organization) of the listener or reader. In free-rhythm Biblical Hebrew poetry, line-units emerge aurally in relation to each other (not in relation to an external template), through the part-whole mental organization of the line in relation to the line-grouping (a kind of processing used in everyday perception). Understanding the multi-line shapes or figures of Biblical Hebrew poetry—and their potential for effects—is a foundational step in producing poetic translations of quality.