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?

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    If “I have become” and “I am” are both valid translations then “I am become” seems like fairly minor literary license.

    I think it sounds cooler. Powerful beings are not supposed to sound ordinary.