Why is “Now I Am Become Death” phrased so awkwardly in English?
Why is “Now I Am Become Death” phrased so awkwardly in English?
Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds — J. Robert Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer famously quoted this from The Bhagavad Geeta in the context of the nuclear bomb. The way this sentence is structured feels weird to me. “Now I am Death” or “Now I have become Death” sound much more natural in English to me.
Was he trying to simulate some formulation in Sanskrit that is not available in the English language?
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Am/is become is an old English biblical phrasing and the material he was translating is religious so he probably used that style to invoke the religious nature of the text. He was very well read so this was certainly a specific stylistic choice on his part.
No one would bat an eye at similar phrases such as "I am made anew"
Because that's grammatically correct by today's standards. "Become" would typically be in the context of "have become" instead of "am become" these days.
Nobody would bat an eye if it was "have become" or "am becoming" either. I don't know when it changed but I think it's just a small change in how the word is used in modern vs old English.
"I Am" in particular carries the nuance of a proper noun in this context, I think, the same way we would use "I" when describing our own activity. I think an apt way to interpret it is such like:
'Now "I Am" become death, the destroyer of worlds'
Like, it's not the simple "I" as we refer to ourselves, but rather the Great "I Am" for the ultimate being. It's used in place of just "I" and the places where it is used make sense from our perspective if rewritten as such. Hopefully that is something more relatable for modern audiences.