Reviews

"The Song of Songs, often referred to as the Song of Solomon, is one of the greatest love poems of all time. In their lyrical new translation, Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch restore the sensuousness of the original language and strip away the veils of mistranslation that have obscured the power and meaning of the poem. Presented en face, this translation is scrupulously faithful to the Hebrew text."

--Ingram

The Blochs -- he a professor of Near Eastern history and she a poet -- have teamed up to render a strikingly beautiful translation of this oldest of Western erotic love poems. The Blochs' translation captures the frank sensuality and rich erotic lyricism that earlier translations have often missed. The poem is accompanied by a splendid introduction that traces the social, historical, and literary contexts of the poem. The afterword, by biblical scholar Robert Alter, praises the Blochs' translation by comparing it with older ones, while an exegetical and expository commentary offers readers a chance to see why the translators made certain choices in rendering their version. Evocative lyrics and lucid expositions make the Blochs' offering one of the best of recent versions. Highly recommended.

--Library Journal

"[A] masterpiece [has appeared in America], Chana and Ariel Bloch's beautiful translation of the Song of Songs, with the English and the Hebrew on facing pages, an informative introduction, wonderfully interesting notes, and a thought-provoking afterword by Robert Alter."

--Gabriel Josipovici, Times Literary Supplement International Books of the Year 1995

"Chana and Ariel Bloch's new translation of the Song of Songs is quite simply the best version in the English language. Its poetic voice, intimate, dignified, and informed by meticulous scholarship, carries us into the Eden of the original Hebrew text: a world in which the sexual awakening of two unmarried lovers is celebrated with a sensuality and a richness of music that is thrilling beyond words."

--Stephen Mitchell

"Ariel and Chana Bloch have succeeded in an extraordinarily difficult task. This is the best and most enjoyable translation of the Song of Songs that I know. Their notes, too, offer excellent insights to readers who know Hebrew and, for that matter, to those who do not."

--Elaine Pagels

"Chana and Ariel Bloch's translation, a rare conjunction of refined poetic resourcefulness and philological precision, brings us closer to the magical freshness of this anceint Hebrew love poetry than has any other English version."

--Robert Alter

"[This] translation is lucid and direct, and has a lyrical purity that is delightful. It seems to me a model of how such work may be done."

--W. S. Merwin

"[This translation] has a crisp energy that mirrors the poem's springtime mood, and a phrasing that captures the impulsiveness and the delight of the lovers in each other and in their mutual imaginative play. . . . Next to Genesis, no book in the Hebrew Bible has had a stronger influence on Western literature than the Song of Songs. This attractive and exuberant edition helps to explain much of its power, while leaving its mystery intact."

--Alicia Ostriker, The New York Review of Books

This beautifully crafted book is a collaboration between a scholar of both classical Arabic and Hebrew and a poet who has also previously translated several volumes of Hebrew poetry. The result is an authoritative translation that allows the poetry to sing in English as it does in Hebrew. The book begins with an accessible introduction that establishes the context and date of the poem as well as the history of its incorporation into the canon of Hebrew scripture and its translation and interpretation in Jewish and Christian traditions. The translation and the Hebrew text are printed on facing pages, followed by Robert Alter's afterword and an extensive commentary accessible to laypersons as well as scholars, to readers who know Hebrew as well as those who don't. Whether the Song of Songs qualifies as the world's first great love poem is a matter for debate -- Sappho's poetry predates its canonical form by several centuries -- but even where its priority is in question, this new translation leaves little room for doubt as to its greatness and its passion.

--Steve Schroeder, Booklist