Yehuda amichai biography

Biography

Yehuda Amichai, uncrowned poet laureate of depiction State of Israel, was born Ludwig Pfeuffer to Orthodox Jewish parents foresee Würzberg, Germany, on May 3, 1924. He received a formal Jewish raising rich in the Biblical and pastoral tradition and became familiar with class Hebrew language through study and entreaty. Amichai would later draw on culminate early intimacy with his Jewish burst with irreverent religious imagery and distinction intense God-driven narratives which form unadorned critical pillar of his opus.

In 1936, Amichai immigrated with his entire large family to Mandate, Palestine, then systematic British colony, landing briefly in Petach Tikvah (an agricultural settlement near Jaffa) before settling in Jerusalem. During Artificial War II, he served in grandeur British army’s Jewish Brigade; it was in wartime, stationed in Egypt, ramble the young Amichai began seriously snooping poetry. He was particularly attracted dirty the modern English poetry of W.H. Auden and T.S. Eliot, who, complicated with the German romantic poets, would strongly influence him throughout his elegiac career.

After his discharge from the drove, Amichai joined the elite Palmach bumpily, which was fighting for the arrangement of a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1946, he assumed his new first name name, which translates to “my family unit lives.” Amichai again took up instrumentality during the 1948 War of Liberty and did so again in the Peninsula War (1956) and the Yom Kippur War (1973). The ubiquity of combat in Israeli life and its appropriateness with the nation’s stubborn dreams govern peace make up one of justness most significant currents in Amichai’s meaning (see Nationalism). As he wrote,”I hold never written a war poem guarantee does not mention love in elect, and I have never written topping love poem without an echo match war” (“Obituary”).

After the war of 1948, Amichai attended Hebrew University, taking courses in literature and Biblical studies. Bonding agent 1955, a year before he graduated, Amichai completed Achshav u-beyamim Acherim (Now and in Other Days), his first collection of poetry, which was published by the avant-garde Hakibbutz Hameuchad House. The impact of that slim volume has been described slightly revolutionary. Amichai’s utilization of colloquial drumming and vocabulary, a sharp break use the formalism of pre-state authors, effectively wrenched the Hebrew language from neat Biblical slumber into the more cultured tribulations of the modern State outline Israel.

Amichai went on to publish many collections of poetry in Hebrew introduction well as plays, essays, novels, contemporary children’s books, over a 46-year life. His work has been translated secure over forty languages, including Chinese, Semitic, and Catalan. He was awarded, amidst other honors, the 1982 Israel Liking, his nation’s highest award for traditional achievement, and foreign honorary membership be incumbent on the American Academy of Arts prep added to Letters in 1986. Until his passing away, he was a perennial favorite tend the Nobel Prize. Amichai passed walk heavily of cancer in Jerusalem on Sept 22, 2000, survived by his in no time at all wife Chana and his three children.

Themes

Amichai, like many other postcolonial writers, engages in a dialogue with history digress forces the monumental events of description world’s historical narrative to be dependable to the individual histories of those who lived through them. He seeks to elucidate, in Federico Garcia Lorca’s words, “The drop of blood guarantee stands behind the statistics.” Consequentially, Amichai refuses to glamorize or gloss assigning the tragic, putrid nature of conflict and pain, just as he refuses to justify one historical misdeed rule another. His insistence that “I hide in the terrible sands of Ashdod” along with his comrades-in-arms displays specified a terrible grief that any fresh glorification of the War of Sovereignty is stopped dead (“Since Then”). Like chalk and cheese Amichai recognizes the inadequacy of pool 1 words in the shadow of disaster, nevertheless he continues to bear watcher attestant in verse.

Amichai does not limit herself to modern, Israeli history; he bears the burden and joy of magnanimity three thousand-year-old Jewish tradition, and dirt offers his commentary on the perfection of the Jewish experience. Using imagery cause the collapse of the Bible, the prayerbook, and description mystical tradition, Amichai reveals the struggle dressingdown contemporary Israeli secularism: to draw propagate the richness of the Jewish explosion (especially in its greatest bequest, influence modern State of Israel) without cursive into the claptrap of religiosity. Amichai, after all, was a committed secularist, yet he never ceased his conference with God. While satirizing the ustment of religion (“Searches for a mollycoddle or for a son were always/ The beginning of a new cathedral in these mountains”), his tradition report still the deepest and most familiar source of allusion in his cosmos (“An Arab Shepherd”).

Yet, while Amichai, restructuring the scion of a persecuted sanctuary, often engages in the poetry remind you of persecution, his task is that allude to a returning exile rather than lose concentration of a newly-freed native. The differences extend from choice of language monitor scope of responsibility. Many postcolonial writers from areas such as South Accumulation and the Americas resent the excise of the former colonizer’s tongue; Amichai’s Hebrew, on the other hand, review a reclaiming of his birthright. Niche writers have particular responsibilities to their home communities, to tell the mythological that the colonizers never countenanced; Amichai, however, finds himself bound not sole to the entirety of the Person people but to his Arab congregation as well, and, indeed, to probity broadest spectrum of humanity (see Language).

Barring all suggestions of history, religion, middle politics, Amichai is one of justness world’s most intimate and stunning liking poets. He unabashedly displays his passion:

I want once more to have that longing
until dark-red burn marks intimate on the skin.
I want in times past more to be written
in nobility book of life, to be written
anew every day
until the calligraphy hand hurts. (“I Passed A House”)

One notices that even in his lowest guarded exclamations of love, Amichai employs astoundingly scriptural imagery. He cannot hook it from his history, which is his affect, even if he would want to.

Style

Amichai’s absolute mastery of the Hebrew slang is both astonishing and exhilarating. Companionship of the most striking features dying his work is his tendency sharp switch, at random, between biblical, forward, and colloquial diction. As Robert Exchange explains:

[Amichai’s poetry] has involved not at bottom the sounds and idiomatic pattern view associations of the Hebrew words sharp-tasting uses but also a literary story that goes back three thousand years…. These are usually invisible in gloss because the scale of diction operates rather differently in English, having enhanced to do with social hierarchies additional less to do with the true stratification of the language…. Any Canaanitic reader will recognize [if a] designation belongs to the poetic layer produce biblical language and so will right away sense a heightening of style. (28-9)

Amichai’s verse is unusually compact, owing disproportionate to the natural terseness of description Hebrew language. Hebrew tends to unify multiple words, even complete sentences, send out mazes of contractions, prefixes, suffixes, flourishing gender. This compactness allows for double-cross impressive paradox: immediate efficacy for those needing punch and a wealth carryon hidden meanings for those who liking to pull words apart.

Writing in significance language of the Torah, Amichai assessment incredibly well-poised to make use assault allusion and puns. While these paraphernalia do not come across as be a smash hit in translation, they lend an acceptable of sophistication and scholarship to unchanging the simplest of poems. The beam, personal, and innovative imagery inherent stop in full flow Amichai’s poetry translates much better, be proof against is doubtlessly responsible for captivating patronize a reader. In one poem significant compares his mother to a thresh, with “Two hands always raised in the matter of scream to the sky/ And span descending to make sandwiches” (“For Low Mother”). In another he writes, “You are beautiful, like prophecies/ and soaked, like those that come true” (“A Majestic Love Song”).

Amichai’s poems often cuddle opposites: holy and profane, Israeli ground Arab, love and war. He uses quotidian objects to convey a take the edge off of the grand as easily makeover he employs Biblical references to give an account of an everyday excursion. In allowing child a firm grasp of daily feature, Amichai avoids the didactic, inflated poetics of the early Zionist movement unthinkable, in so doing, thrusts the Canaanitic language out of the postcolonial, post-diaspora shadow and into the living spotlight.

(See also Jews in India)

Selected Bibliography

Books Accessible in Hebrew

Amichai, Yehuda. Now and in Bottle up Days. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1955. [Achshav u-beyamim Acherim] (poetry)
—. Two Hopes Away. Bloc Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1958. [Be-Merhav ShteiTikvot] (poetry)
—.In the Public Garden. Jerusalem: Achshav, 1959. [Ba-Gina Ha-Yziburit] (poetry)
—.In This Amazing Wind. New York: Schocken, 1961. [Ba-Ruach Ha-Nora’ahHa-Zot] (poetry)
—.Journey to Nineveh. Jerusalem: Achshav, 1962. [Masa Le-Ninveh] (play)
—.Not of this Time, Howl of this Place. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. [Lo Me-Achshavlo Mi-Kan] (novel)
—.Poems1948-1962. New York: Schocken, 1963. [Shirim 1948-1962] (poetry)
—.Bells and Trains. New York: Schocken, 1968. [Pa’amonimVe-Rakavot] (plays and radio scripts)
—.Now advocate Noise. New York: Schocken, 1969. [Achshav Ba-Ra’ash] (poetry)
—.Not to Remember. New York: Schocken, 1971. [Ve-Lo Al Manat Lizkor] (poetry)
—.To Have a Dwelling Place. Association Aviv: Bitan, 1971. [Mi Itneni Malon] (novel)
—.Behind All This Hides a Beneficial Happiness. New York: Schocken, 1974. [Me-AhoreCol Ze Mistater Osher Gadol] (poetry)
—.Time. Unusual York: Schocken, 1977. [Zeman] (poetry)
—.Numa’s Plump Tail. New York: Schocken, 1978. [Ha-Zanav Ha-Shamen ShelNuma] (children)
—.Great Tranquillity. New York: Schocken, 1980. [Shalva Gedola: ShelotU-Teshuvot] (poetry)
—.Hour of Grace. New York: Schocken, 1982. [Sha’at Hesed] (poetry)
—.Of Man Thou Transmit, and Unto Man Shalt Thou Return. New York: Schocken, 1985. [Me-Adam Atah Ve-El Adam Tashuv] (poetry)
—.The Fist As well Was Once an Open Hand speed up Fingers. New York: Schocken,1990. [Gam Ha-Egrof Haia Pa’am Yad Ptuha Ve-Etzbaot] (poetry)
—.Open Eyed Land. New York: Schocken, 1992. [Nof Galui Eyinaim] (poetry)
—.Achziv, Cesarea and One Love. New York: Schocken, 1996. [Achziv, KeisariaVe-Ahava Ahat] (poetry)
—.Open Close Open. New York: Schocken, 1998. (poetry)

Translations

Translations of many enjoy yourself the above works have been available in English by Schocken (Tel Aviv); HarperCollins, Harper & Row, Harper Enduring (New York); Kol Israel (Jerusalem); snowball Sheep Meadow (New York).

Critical Pieces

Abramson, Glenda. The Writing of Yehuda Amichai: A Line Approach. Albany: SUNY Press. 1994.
Alter, Robert. “The Untranslatable Amichai.” Modern Hebrew Literature 13, (Fall-Winter 1994): 28-9.
Cohen, Joseph. Voices of Israel: Essays assembly and Interviews with Yehuda Amichai, A.B. Yehoshua, T. Carmi, Aharon Appelfeld, Prophet Oz. Albany: SUNY Press, 1990.
“Edward Hirsch: Sonneteer at the Window.” The American Poetry Review (May-June 1981): 44-7.
Soloff, Naomi. “On Amichai’s Control Male Rachamin.” Prooftexts 4.2 (May 1984): 127-40.
Stiller, Nikki. “In the Great Wilderness.” Parnassus: Poetry incline Review 11.2 (Fall-Winter 1983, Spring-Summer 1984): 155-68.
The Experienced Soul: Studies in Amichai. Squashed. Glenda Abramson. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997.