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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[–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)
  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    For the lazy:

    The use of "is become" here relates to verbs of motion/transition; verbs of motion would take be while other verbs would take have. There is no such grammatical distinction in English perfect forms anymore.

    English began with this distinction, as did sibling languages like German.

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  • [+] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Is “ik heb ... geworden” even correct Dutch? It feels so awkward for me to read

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  • [+] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    It's not awkward? Because that's subjective, for me it's awkward to read.

    Or is it not correct? Because yay then, I guess.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    See also the Christmas carol "Joy to the world, the Lord is come."

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