In Words

10 Ramadhan 1433

I'm pleased to have embarked on a Ramadhan reading of the Pickthall translation of the Holy Qur'an - entitled The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an, a title I like a lot. There are some explanatory notes, but these are quite sparing, allowing the reader to get pulled along - or rather swept away - by the cataract of revelation. I wouldn't recommend it to the neophyte, though. Without having encountered some reliable commentary earlier you'd drown in these unforgivingly forgiving waters.

I get a sense that Pickthall is giving us as literal a translation as he can, as best he can, out of his awed respect for the original. It's a sign of the strength of character of the man that he persists in what he knows to be impossible just to ensure the English reader gets at least an echo of the power and majesty of the original, despite the occasional clumsiness. We have much to be grateful for in that alone.

In fact, I wonder if that sense of clumsiness does capture something in the Arabic. I've heard it said that the power of the revelation is such that it seems at times to fracture the language that needs to convey it. We're listening here to language at the very edge of what can be uttered - a feeling I often get when listening to a top-flight reciter.