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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 3 points 3 years ago

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.

  • source
  • parent