Yehuda Amichai

Nominated many times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yehuda Amichai (1924 - 2000) was often considered the national poet of Israel for his generation. Many critics consider his final work, a collection of poetry titled "Open Closed Open", to be Amichai's finest work. His poetry, which portrays life in modern Israel as life with war and insecurity while simultaneouslyaddressing the everyday human issues of any Western society, has been translated into 37 languages.

Born in Germany, Immigrated to Israel

On May 3, 1924, in Würzburg in the Bavarian region of Germany, Yehuda Amichai was born to Orthodox Jewish merchants whose ancestors had lived there since the Middle Ages. His original last name was Pfeuffer, but when the family immigrated to Palestine in 1936 to escape the Nazis, his parents changed their surname to Amichai (Hebrew for "my people lives"). They finally settled in Israel, having avoided the Holocaust that killed more than 6 million Jews.

From his early childhood, Amichai studied Hebrew and later attended religious schools that propounded the Orthodox faith. Once the family moved to Jerusalem, by which time he was fluent in Hebrew, he was enrolled at the Ma'aleh high school. As Amichai reached adolescence, he began to reject the Orthodoxy of his parents, to their great dismay. However, he later recalled that they forgave their wayward son because he spent three years during World War II in North Africa with the Jewish Brigade of the British Army and became a member of the Zionist underground in 1946 to fight with the Palmach (an elite commando section of the Israeli defense force) in the Negev during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

From Soldier to Teacher and Back Again

When the fighting ended, Amichai began attending Hebrew University in Jerusalem, concentrating on Biblical texts and Hebrew literature. However, he also read widely among the works of English poets T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and W. H. Auden, who would later strongly influence his writing. (In fact, Amichai would later become friends with Auden.) When he had completed his university degree in about 1955, he found work as a teacher of biblical and Hebrew writings in Jerusalem's secondary schools. Furthermore, the young man had begun to develop his writing abilities and had started writing poetry in 1949. In 1955, he published his first book of poetry, Akhshav u-ve-yamim aherim (Now and in Other Days), which was among the first to contain colloquial Israeli Hebrew and marked the emergence of an entirely new style in Hebrew poetry. The following year, Amichai fought again in the Arab-Israeli War of 1956.

Amichai's intense patriotism and commitment to the State of Israel are apparent even in his earliest work, which contained numerous biblical images and references to Jewish history. As more of his writings appeared, critics began to note his lyrical use of ordinary language and the deceptive simplicity of his work - an effect, perhaps, of the English poets' influence.

Established as Important Poet

With his publication in 1958 of his second collection of poetry, Bemerhak shtei tikvot (Two Hopes Apart), Amichai established himself as one of the leading poets of the generally disillusioned "Palmach generation," (writers who surfaced from Israel's war for Independence). The poems were revolutionary in their use of such workday images as tanks, fuel, and airplanes and the appearance of technological terms - all of which had been considered inappropriate for use in poetry. Amichai's use of them reflected his strong belief that modern poetry must not avoid dealing with and contemplating modern issues. In addition, literary critics noticed Amichai's propensity for word play, citing his innovative use of both classical and colloquial Hebrew. He often coined new phrases and slang for his work, adding to his fans' delight in reading the poet's new largely autobiographical collections. Amichai's passion for life and sense of the underlying profundity of day-to-day experiences, which are intrinsic to his work, also endeared him to many readers.

Amichai wrote a play titled Journey to Nineveh, in 1962 and several novels, including Not of This Time, Not of This Place, (1963), about the search for identity of a Jewish immigrant to Israel. His Jerusalem (1967) and Poems (1969) were both met with critical acclaim as well. Even as he became widely recognized as the country's leading poet and thus something of a celebrity in Jerusalem, Amichai continued to live a simple life and remained highly accessible. Although he generally stayed away from active politics and literary societies, he was often seen walking in the city or lecturing in classrooms.

Body of Work Grew Rapidly

Amichai was a prolific author. He wrote poems, plays, children's books, essays, radio shows, and short stories. Despite continuing his work as an educator (serving as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 and 1976) and serving in the army again in 1973, he published numerous works in quick succession: Mi Yitneni Malon (Hotel in the Wilderness, 1971 - his second novel); Poems of Jerusalem and of Myself (1973); Amen (1977); Time (1979); Love Poems (1981); The Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers (1983); The World Is a Room and Other Stories (1984); Poems of Jerusalem (1988); and Even a Fist Was Once an Open Palm with Fingers (1989). For initiating and encouraging what the award committee termed "the revolutionary change in poetry's language," Amichai received the Israel Prize, the country's highest honor, in 1982.

Amichai's works were especially popular in English, and his readings in the United States, France, and England drew large crowds. However, admirers of his original Hebrew works often claim that the poet's innovative and refreshing use of the language - one of the main charms of his work - is lost in translation. Likewise, the subtle layers of meaning that Amichai achieved using the complexity of the 3,000-year-old language (for instance, using an ancient word rather than its modern synonym to impart a biblical connotation to a phrase or scene) vanished when translated into a comparatively younger language. Some literary experts say this factor belies the legendary accessibility of Amichai's work.

In a 1994 article in Modern Hebrew Literature commemorating Amichai's 70th birthday, author Robert Alter illustrates this difficulty with a phrase from Amichai's love poem In the Middle of This Century. The poem mentions "the linsey-woolsey of our being together," which Alter concedes may sound funny to an English reader, but explains that the Hebrew term, sha'atnez, means the biblically taboo interweaving of linen and wool. Alter suggests that any informed Hebrew reader would immediately grasp that Amichai means to evoke an image of a forbidden union of too different entities in a Romeo and Juliet-like scenario.

Amichai continued to write and do readings throughout the 1990s. His 1998 work, Open Closed Open, written just before his death and published in English in 2000, was considered by many to be Amichai's crowning literary achievement. Comprising 25 sequential poems, he continues in his use of the rich Jewish spiritual tradition and Israel's current anxieties as overarching structures through which he offers thoughts on human nature at large: religious insecurity, the love of children, commitment to creating a better world, and other universal concerns.

Although nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times, Amichai never won the coveted award. He reportedly believed, along with his millions of devotees, that he deserved the prize but that, as an author of such politically charged work, would never receive it. Amichai also repeatedly rejected the notion that he was the national poet of Israel, saying that unlike such "mobilized" poets as Natan Alterman, he spoke for no one but himself. Amichai died of cancer in Jerusalem on September 22, 2000. He had married twice and was the father of three children.

Books

Abramson, Glenda, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Jewish Literature, Blackwell Reference, 1991.

Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2003.

Online

"Amichai," Academy of American Poets website,http://www.poets.org (December 16, 2003).

"Amichai, Yehuda," Encyclopedia Britannica Online website,http://www.britannica.com (December 16, 2003).

"Amichai, Yehuda," The Drunken Boat website,http://www.drunkenboat.com (December 31, 2003).

"Amichai, Yehuda," World Zionist Organization website,http://wzo.org.il (December 16, 2003).

"The Most Accessible Poet, Yehuda Amichai, 1924 - 2000," Jerusalem Report Magazine website,http://www.jrep.com (December 16, 2003).

"The Untranslatable Amichai," Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature website,http://www.ithl.org.il (December 16, 2003).

"Yehuda Amichai," Jewish Virtual Library website,http://usisrael.org (December 16, 2003).

"Yehuda Amichai (1924 - 2000)," Pegasos: A Literature-Related Resource Site website,http://www.kirjasto.sci.fr (December 16, 2003).

1924 - 2000

Hebrew poet, playwright, and novelist.

Yehuda Amichai, born in Würzburg, Germany, emigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936. He grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and was educated in religious schools, where he absorbed sacred texts, especially the prayer book. He served in the Jewish Brigade of the British army during World War II, in the Palmah in Israel's War of Independence, and later in the Israel Defense Force. Amichai studied Bible and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, then taught for decades, mostly in Jerusalem schools and colleges. He received the Israel Prize for poetry in 1982.

Amichai published his first poems in the late 1940s. His first book, Akhshav Uvayamim Ha-aherim (1955; Now and in other days), and his retrospective collection Shirim 1948 - 1962 mark a major turning point in Hebrew poetry. Amichai's lyrics introduced new sensibilities, a new worldview, and new values, as well as a lower diction and style along with a whimsical irreverence toward central beliefs and texts of Judaism. His poetry was a quintessential expression of the "Generation of the State" literary revolution of Israel in the 1960s.

The individual's happiness is, for Amichai, the yardstick for all things. National, social, and religious commands are inferior to intimate human relationships; love (not God) is the only, yet fragile, shelter in a world of war. "I want to die in my bed," Amichai says, rejecting heroism and glory in one poem; he portrays God as responsible for the shortage of mercy in the world in another. Amichai achieves his unique, hallmark diction by absorbing and reworking prosaic materials (such as colloquialisms and technical, military, or legal terms), then combining them with fragments of prayers or biblical phrases. He has rejuvenated classical Hebrew, and dismembered and rebuilt idioms. His playful inventiveness is manifest in his surprising figurative, conceitlike compositions.

Love, war, father, God, childhood, time, and land - Amichai's main themes - form a pseudoauto-biographical diary that, together with his blend of the modern and conventional, has contributed to his great popularity. His poetry is at once deeply personal and a universal expression of the human condition. The long lyrical epic "Travels of a Latter-Day Benjamin of Tudela" (1968) stands out for its account of specific events.

Landmark collections of the 1970s and 1980s are Time, Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers, and Of Man Thou Art, and Unto Man Shalt Thou Return. Amichai's late poetry is looser in form and less sure of its stand. The placard statements are replaced with understatement, even resignation. Metaphors are fewer but are carefully wrought, suggestive, and inter-textually loaded. Experience is more intimate, yet Amichai's awareness of the role of camouflage in his poetry grows.

Although Amichai is known mainly for his poetry, his works of fiction have a significant place in modern Hebrew literature. His novel Not of This Time, Not of This Place (1963), with its complex structure and its protagonist's double existence, is a precursor of postmodernist works. Amichai's works have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Bibliography

Abramson, Glenda. The Writing of Yehuda Amichai. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

Amichai, Yehuda. Not of This Time, Not of This Place, translated by Shlomo Katz. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.

Amichai, Yehuda. Open Closed Open. New York: Harcourt, 2000.

Amichai, Yehuda. The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Newly Revised and Expanded Edition, translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

— NILI GOLD

Yehuda Amichai
Born	3 May 1924(1924-05-03) Würzburg, Germany
Died	22 September 2000 (aged 76) Israel

Yehuda Amichai (born Ludwig Pfeuffer; Hebrew: יהודה עמיחי; May 3, 1924 – September 22, 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet.^[1] He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.^[2]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Poetry 3 Language 4 Critical acclaim 5 Literary influences 6 Awards and honours 7 Works in English 8 See also 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 External links

Biography

Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and German.^[3]

Amichai immigrated with his family at the age of 12 to Petah Tikva in Mandate Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936.^[4] He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the defence force of the Jewish community in pre-state Israel. As a young man he volunteered and fought in World War II as a member of the British Army Jewish Brigade, and in the Negev on the southern front in the Israeli War of Independence.^[4]

After the War of Independence, Amichai studied Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first book of poetry, "Now and in Other Days," in 1955.^[5] Later, he was poet in residence at numerous universities, including Berkeley, NYU, and Yale.^[6]

In 1956, Amichai served in the Sinai War, and in 1973 he served in the Yom Kippur War.^[7] He later became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region, working with Arab writers. He was married twice, first to Tamar Horn, with whom he had one son, and then to Chana Sokolov; they had one son and one daughter. His two sons were Ron and David, and his daughter was Emmanuella.^[8]

He died of cancer in 2000, at age 76.

Poetry

Amichai's poetry deals with issues of day-to-day life, and also with philosophical issues of the meaning of life and death. His work is characterized by gentle irony and original, often surprising imagery. Like many secular Israeli poets, he struggles with religious faith. His poems are full of references to God and the religious experience.^[9]

Language

In an interview published in the American Poetry Review, Amichai spoke about his command of Hebrew: "I grew up in a very religious household...So the prayers, the language of prayer itself became a kind of natural language for me...I don't try —like sometimes poets do —to 'enrich' poetry by getting more cultural material or more ethnic material into it. It comes very naturally."^[10]

Critical acclaim

Amichai poetry in English appeared in the first issue of "Modern Poetry in translation" edited by Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes, in 1965. In 1966 he was invited by Karlo Menoti to read poetry in the festival of Spoleto with Octavio Pass, Allan Ginsburg, Ezra Pound, W.H.Auden, Pablo Neruda and others. . In 1968 he was invited to read in The London Poetry Festival . His first translated book into English Selected Poems (1968) was translated by Assia Wevill (née Guttman), (Hughes' lover and mother to his daughter Shura).^[11] Referring to him as "the great Israeli poet," Jonathan Wilson wrote in The New York Times 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.' "^[12]

Amichai's friend and translator Ted Hughes wrote, in the Times Literary Supplement, "I've become more than ever convinced that Amichai is one of the biggest, most essential, most durable poeticvoices of this past century - one of the most intimate, alive and human, wise, humorous, true, loving, inwardly free and resourceful, at home in every human situation. One of the real treasures."

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer has said that he was directly inspired by seeing a reading by Amichai while Foer was a student at Princeton University, with the desire "to somehow move somebody" the way Amichai had moved him.^[13] Foer's wife, author Nicole Krauss, has written that parts of her 2005 novel The History of Love were inspired by Amichai's poems.

Amichai's poetry has been translated into 40 languages.^[6]

Literary influences

Amichai traced his beginnings as a poetry lover to when he was stationed with the British army in Egypt. There he happened to find an anthology of modern British poetry, and the works of Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden included in that book inspired his first thoughts about becoming a writer.

Awards and honours

• 1961 - Shlonsky Prize;
• 1969 - Brenner Prize;
• 1976 - Bialik Prize for literature (co-recipient with Yeshurun Keshet)^[14];
• 1981 - Wurzburg's Prize for Culture (Germany);
• 1982 - Israel Prize for Hebrew poetry.^[15][16] The prize citation read, in part: "Through his synthesis of the poetic with the everyday, Yehuda Amichai effected a revolutionary change in both the subject matter and the language of poetry."^[6];
• 1986 - the Agnon Prize;
• 1994 - the Malraux Prize (France);
• 1994 - the Literary Lion Award (New York);
• 1995 - Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award;
• 1996 - the Norwegian Bjornson Poetry Award.

Amichai he received an Honor Citation from Assiut University, Egypt, and numerous Honorary Doctorates. He became an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986), and a Distinguished Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991). His work is included in the "100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature" (2001), and in a great number of international anthologies. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times, but never won.^[6] Tufts University English professor Jonathan Wilson wrote, "He should have won the Nobel Prize in any of the last 20 years, 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."^[12]

Amichai left his archives to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University.^[6]

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.

See also

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

References

1. ^ Yehuda Amichai criticism, enotes.com
2. ^ Books and Writers: Yehuda Amichai
3. ^ Love, War and History: Israel's Yehuda Amichai, All Things Considered, April 22, 2007
4. ^ ^{a b} [1]
5. ^ Yehuda Amichai papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
6. ^ ^{a b c d e} Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) (.doc file)
7. ^ [2]
8. ^ Poet of Israel's Soul, My Jewish Learning
9. ^ Does David still play before you?: Israeli poetry and the Bible, David C. Jacobson
10. ^ Poetry Foundation: Yehuda Amichai
11. ^ Koren, Yehuda and Negev, Eilat A lover of Unreason: the Life and Tragic Death of Assia Wevill, Robson Books, London 2006
12. ^ ^{a b} The God of Small Things, Jonathan Wilson, The New York Times, December 10, 2000
13. ^ Creative writing program produces aspiring writers, The Daily Princetonian, December 6, 2004
14. ^ "List of Bialik Prize recipients 1933-2004 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv Municipality website". http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/Hebrew/_MultimediaServer/Documents/12516738.pdf. 
15. ^ "Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1982 (in Hebrew)". http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/Tashlag/Tashmab_Tashlag_Rikuz.htm?DictionaryKey=Tashmab. 
16. ^ A Touch of Grace - Yehuda Amichai

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.
• Boas Arpali, "The Flowers and the Urn" Amichai's Poetry - Structure, Meaning, Poetics) Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1986

Yehuda Amichai "A Selection of critical essays on his writing, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1988

• The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself. 2003, ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
• Robert Alter, "Only a Man" The New Republic, December 31, 2008
• Nili Scharf Gold. Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet. Brandeis

University Press, 2008.

• Matt Nevisky," Letters I Wrote to you", The Jerusalem Report, December 8, 2008
• Boaz Arpali ,"Patuach Patuach" Haaretz, January 16, 2009
• Christian Leo, "wischen Erinnern und Vergessen"-Jehuda Amichais Roman 'Nicht von jetzt' nicht von hier"im phiosophichen und literarischen Kontexext"

Konigshausen&Neumann Wurzburg 2004

• Dan Miron, "Yehuda Amichai-A Revolutionary With a Father" Haaretz,3,12,14,October

External links

• Academy of American Poets bio
• Yehuda Amichai's Poetry Introduction to Amichai's poetry, in audio.
• Yehuda Amichai
• Biography from the international literature festival berlin
• Reading of Yehuda Amichai's "I, May I Rest in Peace" by Chana Bloch
• Excerpts from the translation by Stephen Mitchell

v • d • e Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Laureates Robert Rozhdestvensky (1966) · Bulat Okudzhava (1967) · László Nagy (1968) · Mak Dizdar (1969) · Miodrag Pavlović (1970) · Wystan Hugh Auden (1971) · Pablo Neruda (1972) · Eugenio Montale (1973) · Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (1974) · Léopold Sédar Senghor (1975) · Eugène Guillevic (1976) · Artur Lundkvist (1977) · Rafael Alberti (1978) · Miroslav Krleža (1979) · Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1980) · Blaže Koneski (1981) · Nichita Stănescu (1982) · Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan 'Ajneya' (1983) · Andrey Voznesensky (1984) · Yiannis Ritsos (1985) · Allen Ginsberg (1986) · Tadeusz Różewicz (1987) · Desanka Maksimović (1988) · Thomas W. Shapcott (1989) · Justo Jorge Padrón (1990) · Joseph Brodsky (1991) · Ferenc Juhász (1992) · Gennadiy Aygi (1993) · Ted Hughes (1994) · Yehuda Amichai (1995) · Makoto Ooka (1996) · Adunis (1997) · Lu Yuan (1998) · Yves Bonnefoy (1999) · Edoardo Sanguineti (2000) · Seamus Heaney (2001) · Slavko Mihalić (2002) · Tomas Tranströmer (2003) · Vasco Graça Moura (2004) · William S. Merwin (2005) · Nancy Morejón (2006) · Mahmoud Darwish (2007) · Fatos Arapi (2008) · Tomaž Šalamun (2009)

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