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?
He was using some fancier and older form of English. I believe it is grammatically correct, we just don’t use those forms anymore. The first translation of the Gita is from 1785 and it is one of the most translated Asian texts. Famously, every translator places emphasis and projects their own personal worldview unto the text. Though Oppenheimer actually could read and had read the Bhagavad Gita in its original Sanskrit, so he was just giving it his own personal twist.
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.
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.
“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.
He used archaic form of English instead of contemporary, possibly for the sake of dramatic effect.
Imagine that it’s part of a longer monologue filled with "thou"s, "betwixt"s, "harken"s and you’re on the right track.
deleted by creator
Students of French will recognize the use of the verb “to be” along with verbs such as “come” or “become”. As others have mentioned, we changed this in English, but it remains so in other languages.
Because English is a terrible language.
Signed, an English speaker.
