Nathan Alterman

Natan Alterman (Hebrew: נתן אלתרמן) (August 14, 1910, Warsaw – March 28, 1970, Israel) was an Israeli poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.

Biography

Natan Alterman was born in Warsaw, Poland. He moved to Tel Aviv in 1925, where he continued his studies at the Herzliya Hebrew High School.

Literary career

Alterman's first published book of poetry was Kokhavim Bakhuts ("Stars Outside"), published in 1938. This volume, with its "neo-romantic themes, highly charged texture, and metrical virtuosity," as Israeli critic Benjamin Harshav puts it, established him as a major force in modern Hebrew literature.

His next major book was Simkhat Aniyim ("The Joy of the Poor") (1941), which many regard as his magnum opus. This is a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria consisting of 31 interconnected poems, all from the viewpoint of the ghost of a dead man obsessed with the living woman he loves - a reversal of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. The dead man wants to protect his living love from war and poverty, but more than anything he wants to drag her into his world. His plans are continually frustrated. The light from a humble candle is enough to drive him back. The story reads like a supernatural thriller, but the rhyme and the meters are regular and elegant.

In 1942, Alterman wrote an amusing poem in which Jewish children who have been murdered in the Holocaust give sarcastic thanks to God for choosing them. In 1943, he wrote the maqama "The Swedish Tongue", in which he praised Sweden's willing to welcome Jewish refugees from Denmark.^[1]

In 1943, he also wrote a poem that was critical of Pope Pius XII, a poem that is featured at the Yad Vashem museum. ^[2]

Alterman translated Shakespeare, Molière, Racine and Russian classics into Hebrew and Yiddish. He wrote the lyrics of the famous song Kalaniyot, sung by Shoshana Damari.

After the Six-Day War, Alterman criticized David Ben-Gurion for being too willing to give up the occupied territories in return for a peace agreement.

Awards

• In 1957, Alterman was awarded the Bialik Prize for literature. ^[3]
• In 1968, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for literature. ^[4]

Published work

• 1938: Stars Outside (poetry)
• 1941: Joy of the Poor (poetry)
• 1944: Plague Poems
• 1948 and 1954: The Seventh Column (two volumes)
• 1957: City of the Dove

References

Further reading

• The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (2003), ISBN 0-8143-2485-1

External links

• Israel - Poetry International Web
• N.Alterman - Israel and Zionism
• Poetry International Web Israel - Nathan Alterman
• Yossi Banai reading Nathan Alterman

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients
• List of Bialik Prize recipients