Yehuda Amichai

Yehuda Amichai
File:Yehuda amichai.jpg
Born	3 May 1924 (1924-05-03)  Würzburg, Germany
Died	22 September 2000 (2000-09-23)  Israel

Yehuda Amichai (born Ludwig Pfeuffer; Hebrew: יהודה עמיחי; May 3, 1924 - September 22, 2000) was an Israeli poet.

Amichai is considered one of Israel's leading poets in modern times, and indeed is internationally celebrated by many as Israel's greatest modern poet,[3][4][5][6] and was one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. Israel's most widely read poet, he received the Israel Prize for Literature in 1982.[7]

Life

Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, to an Judaism Orthodox family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and German.[8][9] He immigrated with his family at the age of 12 to Petach Tikvah in Mandate Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936.[10] [11] He first worked as a teacher of physical education. 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 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.[12] 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 traced his beginnings as a writer 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 serious thoughts about becoming a writer.[13]

Following 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.[14] Later, he was poet in residence at numerous universities, including Berkeley, NYU, and Yale.[15]

Amichai the Shlonsky Prize (1961), the Brenner Prize (1969),the Bialik Prize (1976), Wurzburg`s Prize for Culture (Germany, 1981), the Israel Prize (1982), the Agnon Prize (1986), the Malraux Prize (France, 1994), the Literary Lion Award (New York, 1994), Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award (1995), the Norwegian Bjornson Poetry Award(1996), 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 on more than one occasion. Amichai`s archives are kept at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University.[16]

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 sons are Ron and David, and his daughter is Emmanuella.[17]

Death and legacy

He died from cancer in 2000, at age 76.

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 (his poems have been translated into more than 30 languages) 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."

Poetry

He was "discovered" in 1965 by Ted Hughes, who later translated several of Amichai's books.

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.

Many of his songs and poems include quotes from the Torah.

Critical acclaim

Amichai was "discovered" in 1965 by Ted Hughes, with whom he was to collaborate in the translation of his poetry. Amichai subsequently published two books of poetry: "Amen" in 1977 and "Time" in 1979. The first ever translation of Amichai's poetry Selected Poems (1968) was translated by Assia Wevill (nee Guttman), Hughes' lover and mother to his daughter Shura. Her translations drew wide critical acclaim. 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.' "

Amichai's poetry has been translated into 40 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, 2008.
• The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself. 2003, ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
• Robert Alter, "Only A Man" The New Republic, DECEMBER 31 2008
• Matt Nevisky," LettersI Wrote to you",The Jerusalem Report, December 8,2008
• Boaz Arpali ,"patuach patuach" Haaretz, January 16,2009

External links

• Academy of American Poets bio
• Yehuda Amichai's Poetry Introduction to Amichai's poetry, in audio. Many links.
• Yehuda Amichai 1924-2000 tribute at The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
• Yehuda Amichai
• Biography from the international literature festival berlin
• "Love, War and History: Israel's Yehuda Amichai," NPR
• Reading of Yehuda Amichai's "I, May I Rest in Peace" by Chana Bloch
• Selection of poems translated into English