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Yehuda Amichai
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Yehuda Amichai (born Ludwig Pfeuffer) (May 3, 1924 - September 22, 2000, Hebrew: ????? ?????) was an Israeli poet. He is considered one of Israel's leading poets in modern times, and was one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.
hai was born in Würzburg, Germany to a religious family. He immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936, at the age of 12. He first worked as a teacher of physical education.
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Encyclopedia
Yehuda Amichai (born Ludwig Pfeuffer) (May 3, 1924 - September 22, 2000, Hebrew: ????? ?????) was an Israeli poet. He is considered one of Israel's leading poets in modern times, and was one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.
Biography
Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany to a religious family. He immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936, at the age of 12. He first worked as a teacher of physical education. He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the fighting arm of Jewish settlements in pre-state Palestine. He fought in the World War II (British Army Jewish Brigade) and the Israeli War of Independence as a young man. He also fought in several of Israel's other wars. He became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region, working with Arab writers.
Amichai studied Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. With his second wife, Hana Sokolov, he had two sons, Ron and David, and a daughter, Emmanuella.
He died from cancer in 2000, at 76.
Poetry
His poetry deals with issues of day-to-day life, and is not as overtly literary as Hebrew poets such as Hayyim Nahman Bialik. His work is characterized by gentle irony and the pain of damaged love in every sense. In her book about Amichai, Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet published by Brandeis University Press, Nili Scharf Gold states that Amichai's relationship with Ruth Z., who jilted him, running off to America and marrying someone else, is a key component in understanding his poetry. Based on his correspondence, preserved at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Gold says that Ruth Z. urged him to change his name to "Amichai," which she felt was a "name befitting a great poet." Israeli literary critic Ruth Almog writes that Amichai is "continuing to write the Jewish prayerbook, a prayerbook he learned by heart as a child. In his poetry...the liturgical poetics, songs and melodies of the siddur are playing."
Critical acclaim
Amichai was "discovered" in 1965 by Ted Hughes, who was to collaborate with Amichai on the translation of his poetry, later published in two books: "Amen" in 1977 and "Time" in 1979. Referring to him as "the great Israeli poet," Jonathan Wilson in The New York Times (December 10, 2000), wrote that he "is one of very few contemporary poets to have reached a broad cross-section without compromising his art. He was loved by his readers worldwide...perhaps only as the Russians loved their poets in the early part of the last century. It is not hard to see why. Amichai's poems are easy on the surface and yet profound: humorous, ironic and yet full of passion, secular but God-engaged, allusive but accessible, charged with metaphor and yet remarkably concrete. Most of all, they are, like the speaking persona in his Letter of Recommendation, full of love: Oh, touch me, touch me, you good woman! / This is not a scar you feel under my shirt. / It is a letter of recommendation, folded, / from my father: / 'He is still a good boy and full of love.' "
"He should have won the Nobel Prize in any of the last 20 years," wrote Wilson, "but he knew that as far as the Scandinavian judges were concerned, and whatever his personal politics, which were indubitably on the dovish side, he came from the wrong side of the stockade."
Amichai's poetry has been translated into 37 languages.
Works in English
A Life of Poetry, 1948-1994. Selected and translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Amen. Translated by the author and Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers: Recent Poems. Selected and translated by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991. Exile at Home. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers. Translated by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. Love Poems: A Bilingual Edition. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. Not of this Time, Not of this Place. Translated by Shlomo Katz. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. On New Year’s Day, Next to a House Being Built: A Poem. Knotting [England]: Sceptre Press, 1979. Open Closed Open: Poems. Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. New York: Harcourt, 2000. (Shortlisted for the 2001 International Griffin Poetry Prize) Poems of Jerusalem: A Bilingual Edition. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Selected Poems. Translated by Assia Gutmann. London: Cape Goliard Press, 1968. Selected Poems. Translated by Assia Gutmann and Harold Schimmel with the collaboration of Ted Hughes. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971. Selected Poems. Edited by Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort. London: Faber & Faber, 2000. Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai. Edited and translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Newly revised and expanded edition: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Songs of Jerusalem and Myself. Translated by Harold Schimmel. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Time. Translated by the author with Ted Hughes. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Travels. Translated by Ruth Nevo. Toronto: Exile Editions, 1986. Travels of a Latter-Day Benjamin of Tudela. Translated by Ruth Nevo. Missouri: Webster Review, 1977. The World Is a Room and Other Stories. Translated by Elinor Grumet. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984.
Bibliography
- Lapon-Kandeslshein, Essi.
To Commemorate the 70th Birthday of Yehuda Amichai: A Bibliography of His Work in Translation. Ramat Gan (Israel): Institute of the Translation of Hebrew Literature, 1994. Nili Scharf Gold. Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet. Brandeis University Press
External links
- Introduction to Amichai's poetry, in audio. Many links.
- tribute at The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
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