In this series, I am writing appreciations of some of the greatest poems ever written in the English language. Generally, I believe that poetry is what gets lost in translation, but my chosen poem on this occasion is an exception— in the sense that it is a translation into English of a poem from another language. It’s also the only religious poem in my list of greatest poems ever. Considering it is so short, I have room to quote it in full:
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul; he
leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art
with me; thy rod and they staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table
before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my
cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the
Lord forever.
I believe that poetry is an
extremely evanescent and elusive quality, one that lies as much ‘on the
surface’ of the language as ‘underneath’. There have, of course, been
innumerable other translations of this psalm. It is Psalm Twenty-Two in the Douay
Rheims version of the Bible, which is (as it were) the Catholic equivalent of
the King James Bible. The first line in the Douay Rheims version is: “The Lord
ruleth me; and I shall want nothing”. Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with
that. It’s stately and graceful, and for all I know it may be closer to the
original Hebrew. But it doesn’t have the same magic as ‘The Lord is my
shepherd; I shall not want”. I think this shows that poetry is just as much
about ‘how it sounds’ as what it means.
Of course, a purely
technical analysis of this poem (and I shall henceforth term it a poem) can
explain some of its power. We can see that almost every line is divided into
two roughly equal halves. Every line seems to rise to a gentle crescendo
half-way through, and to descend with equal gentleness in its second half. The
rhythm of this poem is like the breathing of a sleeping child.
There is another quality to
the poem that is equally child-like and that I can only describe as
‘crudeness’. Children like bright colours, sweet flavours, good heroes and
villainous villains. They are not big on subtlety, to use modern parlance.
There is something child-like about the imagery of the Bible, as a whole. It
translates spiritual rewards and spiritual dangers into the most frankly
material and even sensual terms. The unabashed eroticism of the Song of Songs
(though hardly child-like, of course) is the most famous and eyebrow-raising
example. But it’s a constant throughout Scripture, including the discourses of
Our Lord. “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed
together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.”
Psalm Twenty-Three is certainly no
exception to this rule. Its imagery is straightforwardly hedonistic; green pastures,
an overflowing cup, a feast on a table. There is nothing ‘spiritualised’ or
refined about it.
The image of reassurance and
protection in the poem is equally appropriate to childhood. It is not the
reassurance of a quiet conscience or an inner peace. It is the reassurance of a
physical protector. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”.
The appeal of all this
child-like imagery is not only its naivety and its artlessness, but its
humility. Pride is the greatest sin, and its also the most popular sin. It’s
certainly my favourite sin. I’m guessing it’s yours, too. It’s the most
insidious sin in the world, because it’s the sin that can best masquerade as
virtue. The more ‘virtuous’ we are, in fact, the more room pride has to
breathe.
But the ultimate truth about
pride is that it’s exhausting. Like any drug, it feels great at first,
but the toll it takes is immense. It hollows us out. It presses us down. In the
words of G.K. Chesterton: “Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up
laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy.”
So I believe that, even in
the proudest heart, there is something that gasps for humility, as a choking
man gasps for air—something that craves the sheer blessed relief of humility.
It is this craving that responds gratefully to Psalm Twenty-Three.
We might take the imaginary
case of a ‘self-made man’ who has spent his entire life cherishing his
independence, his resilience, and his resourcefulness. These are all good
qualities in themselves, of course, but let us also imagine this ‘self-made
man’, like so many of us, has let himself be eaten up with pride in his own
accomplishments.
I think it’s no great leap
to think of such a man listening to the words of Psalm Twenty-Three—“Thou preparest a table
before me in the face of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with oil; my cup
runneth over”—and feeling (even if unconsciously) what a burden his own
self-satisfaction and pride has become. I can imagine him placing himself in
the role of the narrator of the poem, and feeling relief in the idea of a
child-like dependency and gratitude. Because, of course, we are all charity
cases in the end, whatever our accomplishments. Our very skills and talents are
God-given. “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”
(1 Corinthians 4:7.)
One a purely
poetic level, much of the poem’s appeal comes from a mixture of
straightforwardness of subject matter with a certain stiffness in style. In the
Good News Bible translation, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he
leadeth me beside the still waters” becomes “He lets me rest in fields of green
grass and leads me to quiet pools of fresh water”. The Good News translation
has a simple beauty of its own, but it lacks the self-conscious poetry of the
King James version. Again, there is something child-like about this. If you
ever listen to children reading poetry aloud—or even reading prose aloud—they
usually do so in a choppy, solemn, sing-song manner. We tend to smile at this,
but I think their instincts are quite healthy. There is a magic to the written
word, and indeed to the spoken word. It’s a shame that we ever lose this sense
of the magic and solemnity of words, and we should do everything we can to hold
onto it.
Finally, I
ascribe much of this poem’s universal appeal, unsurprisingly, to its very
universality. There is nothing in Psalm Twenty-Three which could not apply to anybody,
anywhere, at any time. It is very hard to think of any literary work which is
more universal.
Literary
critics (and others) have written much on the idea of universality, and how it
relates to particularity. I have sometimes encountered the claim that a work of
art, to achieve universality, should be unabashedly particular. In other words,
a movie about a fisherman in Nantucket, which aims to be nothing other than a
movie about a fisherman in Nantucket, will achieve a universal resonance
without trying—whereas a movie that goes out of its way to be about an Average
Joe, that aims for the broadest appeal, will fall flat because there is really
no such thing as an Average Joe. Everybody is somebody. Everywhere is
somewhere. Vagueness kills art, and kills poetry.
It’s a
plausible-sounding theory, but I don’t agree with it. I think vagueness can be
a virtue in poetry. Psalm Twenty-Three takes the most hackneyed (or rather, the most
timeless) symbols and makes unforgettable use of them. The narrator is nobody
in particular and the landscape is nowhere in particular. In other words, the
narrator is all of us, and the landscape is life itself.
For all that
we cherish our individuality and our identities, the things that matter the
most are as common as the sky, the sun and the moon. I think that Psalm
Twenty-Three speaks to our human condition in its most fundamental terms. And
that is why its appeal is so enduring—and why I myself have been unable to
write about it, in this article, without being moved several times to tears.
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