Yehuda Amichai (; born Ludwig Pfeuffer 3 May 1924 – 22 September 2000) was an
Israeli poet and author, one of the first to write in
colloquial
Colloquialism (also called ''colloquial language'', ''colloquial speech'', ''everyday language'', or ''general parlance'') is the linguistic style used for casual and informal communication. It is the most common form of speech in conversation amo ...
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
in modern times.
Yehuda Amichai, the poet of everyday life, love, and death, is the most internationally renowned Israeli poet. His 17 books have been translated into more than 20 languages, including Chinese and Japanese. He was a people's poet who believed that his poetry should reflect ordinary life. As he once said, "I am also living among the dead." He changed his last name to "Amichai," meaning "My nation lives."
Amichai was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969
Brenner Prize
The Brenner Prize is an Israeli literary prize awarded annually by the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel and the Haft Family Foundation. It recognizes and honors Hebrew literature
Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern w ...
, 1976
Bialik Prize
The Bialik Prize is an annual literary award given by the municipality of Tel Aviv, Israel, for significant accomplishments in Hebrew literature. The prize is named in memory of Israel's national poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik. There are two separate p ...
, and 1982
Israel Prize
The Israel Prize (; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor.
History
Prior to the Israel Prize, the most significant award in the arts was the Dizengoff Prize and in Israel ...
. He also won international poetry prizes, and was nominated several times for the
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
.
Biography
Yehuda Amichai was born in
Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is, after Nuremberg and Fürth, the Franconia#Towns and cities, third-largest city in Franconia located in the north of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. It sp ...
, Germany, to an
Orthodox Jewish
Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully tra ...
family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and
German. His German name was Ludwig Pfeuffer.
Amichai immigrated with his family at the age of eleven to
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva (, ), also spelt Petah Tiqwa and known informally as Em HaMoshavot (), is a city in the Central District (Israel), Central District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv. It was founded in 1878, mainly by Haredi Judaism, Haredi Jews of the Old Y ...
in
Mandate Palestine in 1935, moving to
Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...
in 1936.
[Gallery of People, Biographies, Yehuda Amichai](_blank)
. Jewishagency.org (28 July 2008).[http://www.npr.org/transcripts/9699843 . Npr.org (22 April 2007).] He attended Ma'aleh, a religious high school in Jerusalem. He was a member of the
Palmach
The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Phalanges/Companies") was the elite combined strike forces and sayeret unit of the Haganah, the paramilitary organization of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of th ...
, the strike force of the
Haganah
Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...
, the defense force of the Jewish community in
Mandate Palestine. As a young man he volunteered and fought in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
as a soldier in the
British Army
The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
, and in the
Negev
The Negev ( ; ) or Naqab (), is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort town, resort city ...
on the southern front in the
1947–1949 Palestine war.
After discharge from the British Army in 1946, Amichai was a student at
David Yellin College of Education in Jerusalem, and became a teacher in Haifa. After the
1948 Arab–Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...
, Amichai studied the
Torah
The Torah ( , "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...
and
Hebrew literature
Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews, mostly among the Arab cit ...
at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...
. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first book of poetry, ''Now and in Other Days'', in 1955.
[Yehuda Amichai papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library](_blank)
. Library.yale.edu.
In 1956, Amichai served in the
Sinai War, and in 1973 he served in the
Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was fought from 6 to 25 October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states led by Egypt and S ...
. Amichai published his first novel,
Not of This Time, Not of This Place', in 1963. It is about a young Israeli who was born in Germany; after World War II, and the
1947–1949 Palestine war, he visits his hometown in Germany and recalls his childhood, trying to make sense of the world that created the
Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. His second novel, ''Mi Yitneni Malon'', about an Israeli poet living in New York, was published in 1971 while Amichai was a visiting professor at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
. He was a
poet in residence at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
in 1987.
For many years he taught literature in an Israeli seminar for teachers, and at the Hebrew University to students from abroad.
[Religious metaphor and its denial in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai](_blank)
. Findarticles.com.
Amichai was invited in 1994 by Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin (; , ; 1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the prime minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–1977, and from 1992 until Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, his ass ...
to read from his poems at the ceremony of the
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...
in
Oslo
Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...
. "God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children" was one of the poems he read. This poem is inscribed on a wall in the
Yitzhak Rabin Center in
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...
. There are streets named after him in cities in Israel, and also one in Würzburg.
Amichai was married twice. He was first married 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.
Amichai died of cancer in 2000, at age 76.
Poetry
Amichai's poetry deals with issues of day-to-day life, and with philosophical issues of the meaning of life and death. Amichai’s approach consistently prioritizes the living person over the dead symbol, and the human experience over the mythical. His work is characterized by gentle
irony
Irony, in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what, on the surface, appears to be the case with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has a ...
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. He was described as a philosopher-poet in search of a post-
theological
Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of an ...
humanism
Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and Agency (philosophy), agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The me ...
.
Amichai has been credited with a "rare ability for transforming the personal, even private, love situation, with all its joys and agonies, into everybody's experience, making his own time and place general."
[Yehuda Amichai]
. Poetry Foundation.
Some of his imagery was accused of being sacrilegious. In his poem "And this is Your Glory" (''Vehi Tehilatekha''), for example, God is sprawled under the globe like a mechanic under a car, futilely trying to repair it. In the poem "Gods Change, Prayers Stay the Same" (''Elim Mithalfim, ha-Tfillot Nisharot la-Ad''), God is a portrayed as a tour guide or magician.
Many of Amichai's poems were set to music in Israel and in other countries. Among them:
the poem ''Memorial Day for the War Dead'' was set to music for solo voices, chorus and orchestra in
Mohammed Fairouz's Third Symphony.
[Moore, Thomas (12 September 2010)]
Mohammed Fairouz: An Interview
, ''Opera Today''. Retrieved 19 April 2011
Other poems were set by the composers
Elizabeth Alexander ("Even a fist was once an open palm and fingers"),
David Froom,
Matthias Pintscher, Jan Dušek,
Benjamin Wallfisch, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb,
Maya Beiser
Maya Beiser (born 31 December 1963) is an American musician, cellist, performing artist and Record producer, producer who lives in New York City. Beiser was raised on a kibbutz in Israel by her France, French mother and Argentina, Argentine father ...
,
Elizabeth Swados,
Daniel Asia and others.
Language and poetic style
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.
Robert Alter
Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor emeritus of Hebrew language, Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has published two dozen books, including an aw ...
describes Amichai's poetry as a "play of sound". He "builds a strong momentum that moves in free association from word to word, the sounds virtually generating the words that follow in the
syntactic
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...
chain through
phonetic
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...
kinship".
Amichai's work was popular in English translation, but admirers of his poetry in the original Hebrew claim his innovative use of the language is lost in translation. Subtle layers of meaning achieved using an ancient word rather than its modern synonym to impart a biblical connotation cannot always be conveyed. In Amichai's love poem ''In the Middle of This Century'', for instance, the English translation reads: "the linsey-woolsey of our being together". The Hebrew term, ''
shaatnez'', refers to the biblical taboo on interweaving linen and wool, which a Hebrew reader would grasp as an image of forbidden union.
Literary work
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
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Un ...
,
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...
, and
W. H. Auden. That book inspired his first thoughts about becoming a writer.
Literary scholar Boaz Arpaly wrote about the influence of biography on Amichai's poetry: "Literary criticism made the determination long ago that despite the autobiographical character of Amichai's poetry, the individual depicted in it is the typical Israeli everyman, and even in a wider sense, the individual as an individual of the twentieth century (a poetics that interweaves the private with the typically generic) ... Amichai routinely conflates biographical details from different times into one poetic framework, and exploits drafts and poetic ideas that were recorded in different periods, for a poem that would be written years later."
[Boaz Arpaly, "Yehuda Amichai- The Making of Israel's National Poet," '' Shofar'', winter 2010 vol.28 No.2] "Almost every poem by Amichai is a statement about the general human condition and Amichai, in a certain sense, is always a philosophical poet."
He changed his name to Yehuda Amichai ("my people lives") around 1946. In her biography of Amichai,
[. Upne.com.] literary critic
Nili Scharf Gold writes that the idea for the name change, as well as the name "Amichai", came from his girlfriend, Ruth Herrmann, who later moved to the United States and married Eric Zielenziger.
[Feinstein, Elain]
Nili Scharf Gold: "Yehuda Amichai, The Making of Israel’s National Poet'
. ''Jewish Quarterly''. Contrary to Gold's claim, Amichai said in an interview that it was his idea to choose the name Amichai: "it was common at that time to change (foreign) names into Hebrew names ... 'Amichai' was a right name, because it was Socialist, Zionist and optimistic."
[Dan Omer: In This Burning Country, An Interview with Amichai, Proza 1978]
Gold wrote that a childhood trauma in Germany affected Amichai's later poetry. She claims in her book that Amichai had an argument with a childhood friend, Ruth Hanover, which led to her cycling home angrily. Ruth was caught in a traffic accident, as a result of which she had to have a leg amputated, and Gold claims that Amichai felt guilt and responsibility.
[ Ruth later was murdered in the ]Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
. Amichai occasionally referred to her in his poems as "Little Ruth".[Amichai Yehuda, Working Journal, 11.12. 1990, Beinecke Library, Yale University, Gen.Mss 572/]
In an interview Amichai said: "Little Ruth is my Anne Frank". "I found out that she (Little Ruth) was in the last transport in 1944. This knowledge goes with me all the time, not because of guilt." "If there is any guilty feeling it's like the guilt that soldiers feel when they survive the battle while their friends were killed."
Robert Alter
Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor emeritus of Hebrew language, Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has published two dozen books, including an aw ...
wrote about Gold's contention: "Again and again Gold asks why Amichai did not represent his German childhood in his poetry, except fragmentarily and obliquely. The inconvenient fact that his major novel, ''Not of This time, Not of This Place'', devotes elaborate attention to Würzburg (which is given the fictional name Weinburg) is not allowed to trouble Gold's thesis of suppression, because the book is fiction, not poetry, and hence is thought somehow to belong to a different category in regard to the writer's relation to his early years. But Gold's notion of Amichai's 'poetics of camouflage' rests on an entirely unexamined assumptionthat it is the task of the poet to represent his life directly and in full ..." However, contrary to Alter's claims, Gold argued that Amichai only wrote extensively about Würzburg in his novel because it was not his primary genre and therefore would be read by fewer people. Moreover, ''Not of This Time, Not of This Place'' does not hide the fact that it is based on Amichai's autobiography, including both his trip to his former hometown (and, explicitly, his search for closure about Little Ruth) and his affair with an American woman.
Amichai wrote many plays and radio plays, a book of short stories, and a second novel.
Boaz Arpaly wrote: "Amichai did not hide in his poetry the fact that he was an immigrant and a son of immigrants, but he chose to tell the story of his childhood in his hometown, in his novel ''Not of This Time, Not of This Place'', and like any other writer, he decided which material of his life will become material to his poetry..."
:Did Amichai want to become a national poet? ... his poetry embodied a silent but piercing revolution against the social and political institutions that enslave the life and happiness of the individual for their need – He should bother so much to build for himself the mythology of a national poet? All the things that Gold thinks he was hiding were not in any contrast to the unique "nationality" embodied in his poetry. I did not find in Gold's book an explanation to the concept 'national poet' but in the first place, this concept appears in her book she is pointing to my article (1997) that says: "of all the poets who began to at the time of Amichai, or in later years, since Alterman there was not a poet more popular than Amichai. In this he is unique. He is probably the only canonic poet read by so many, also by people that do not belong to the Literary Community. In this matter he has no rivals. From this aspect, at least, he may be considered a national poet, a title that does not suit him from any other point of view ..." Gold's use of that title is not clear and not responsible.
Critical acclaim
Amichai's poetry in English appeared in the first issue of ''Modern Poetry in Translation'', edited by Daniel Weissbort and Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He wa ...
in 1965. In 1966 he appeared at the Spoleto
Spoleto (, also , , ; ) is an ancient city in the Italian province of Perugia in east-central Umbria on a foothill of the Apennines. It is south of Trevi, north of Terni, southeast of Perugia; southeast of Florence; and north of Rome.
H ...
poetry festival with Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...
, W.H. Auden, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda ( ; ; born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; 12 July 190423 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old an ...
and others. In 1968, he appeared at the London Poetry Festival. His first book in English, ''Selected Poems'' (1968), was translated by Assia Guttman (Hughes' lover and mother to his daughter Shura). Referring to him as "the great Israeli poet", Jonathan Wilson wrote in ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' 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."
In the ''Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...
'', Ted Hughes wrote: "I've become more than ever convinced that Amichai is one of the biggest, most essential, most durable poetic voices 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."
In ''The American Poetry Review
''The American Poetry Review'' (''APR'') is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint. It was founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg and Stephen Parker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The magazine's editor is Elizab ...
'', May–June 2016, David Biespiel wrote: "He translates the hardness of existence into new tenderness; tenderness into spiritual wonder that is meant to quiet outrage; and outrage into a mixture of worry and love and warmth ... He is one of the great joyful lamenters of all time, endlessly documenting his anguish, throbbing pains, mistaken dreams, shortages of faith, abundances of ecstatic loves, and humiliations. And, like everyone else, he wants everything both ways. In particular, he wants to be a lover and a loner, a guy in the street and an intellectual, believer and infidel, while insisting that all manifestations of war against the human spirit be mercilessly squashed."
Anthony Hecht said in 2000 that ''Open Closed Open'' "is as deeply spiritual a poem as any I have read in modern times, not excluding Eliot's Four Quartets, or anything to be found in the works of professional religionists. It is an incomparable triumph. Be immediately assured that this does not mean devoid of humor, or without a rich sense of comedy.". And: "not only superb, but would, all by itself, have merited a Nobel Prize."
Author Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss (born August 18, 1974) is an American author best known for her four novels '' Man Walks into a Room'' (2002), '' The History of Love'' (2005), '' Great House'' (2010) and '' Forest Dark'' (2017), which have been translated into ...
has said that she was affected by Amichai from a young age.
Amichai's poetry has been translated into 40 languages.
Awards and honours
* 1957 – Shlonsky Prize
* 1969 – Brenner Prize
The Brenner Prize is an Israeli literary prize awarded annually by the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel and the Haft Family Foundation. It recognizes and honors Hebrew literature
Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern w ...
[
* 1976 – ]Bialik Prize
The Bialik Prize is an annual literary award given by the municipality of Tel Aviv, Israel, for significant accomplishments in Hebrew literature. The prize is named in memory of Israel's national poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik. There are two separate p ...
for literature (co-recipient with essayist Yeshurun Keshet)
* 1981 – Würzburg's Prize for Culture (Germany)[
* 1982 – ]Israel Prize
The Israel Prize (; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor.
History
Prior to the Israel Prize, the most significant award in the arts was the Dizengoff Prize and in Israel ...
for Hebrew poetry. The prize citation reads, 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."[Yehuda Amichai (1924–2000)](_blank)
(.doc file)
* 1986 – Agnon Prize[
* 1994 – Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France)][
* 1994 – Literary Lion Award (New York)][
* 1995 – ]Macedonia
Macedonia (, , , ), most commonly refers to:
* North Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe, known until 2019 as the Republic of Macedonia
* Macedonia (ancient kingdom), a kingdom in Greek antiquity
* Macedonia (Greece), a former administr ...
's Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival[
* 1996 – Norwegian Bjornson Poetry Award][
Amichai received an Honor Citation from ]Assiut University
Assiut University is a university located in Assiut, Egypt. It was established in October 1957 as the first university in Upper Egypt.
Statistics
*Faculty members: 2,442
*Assistant lecturers and demonstrators: 1,432
*Administrative staff: 11 ...
, Egypt, and numerous honorary doctorates. He became an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
(1986), and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
(1991). His work is included in the "100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature" (2001), and in international anthologies ''Poems for the Millennium'' by J. Rothenberg and P. Joris, and ''100 Great Poems of the 20th Century'' by Mark Strand. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times, but never won. Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university in Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, with additional facilities in Boston and Grafton, as well as Talloires, France. Tufts also has several Doctor of Physical Therapy p ...
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."[The God of Small Things](_blank)
, Jonathan Wilson, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', 10 December 2000
Amichai Archive
Amichai sold his archive for over $200,000 to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts and ...
of Yale University. The archive contains 1,500 letters received from the early 1960s to the early 1990s from dozens of Israeli writers, poets, intellectuals and politicians. Overseas correspondence includes letters from Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He wa ...
, Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...
, Erica Jong
Erica Jong (née Mann; born March 26, 1942) is an American novelist, satirist, and poet known particularly for her 1973 novel ''Fear of Flying''. The book became famously controversial for its attitudes towards female sexuality and figured pro ...
, Paul Celan
Paul Celan (; ; born Paul Antschel; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a German-speaking Romanian poet, Holocaust survivor, and literary translation, literary translator. He adopted his pen name (an anagram of the Romanian spelling Ancel ...
, and many others. The archive also includes dozens of unpublished poems, stories and plays; 50 notebooks and notepads with 1,500 pages of notes, poems, thoughts and drafts from the 1950s onward; and the poet's diaries, which he kept for 40 years. According to Moshe Mossek, former head of the Israel State Archive
Israel State Archives (ISA; ''Arkhiyon Medinat Yisra'el'') is the national archive of Israel, located in Jerusalem. The archive houses some 400 million documents, maps, stamps, audio tapes, video clips, photographs and special publications.
Hi ...
, these materials offer priceless data about Amichai's life and work.
Works in other languages
English
* ''The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai''. Yehuda Amichai; Edited by Robert Alter. New York: FSG, 2015.
* ''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.
* ''Killing Him: A Radio Play''. Translated by Adam Seelig and Hadar Makov-Hasson. Chicago: Poetry Magazine, July–August 2008.
* ''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 ngland 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
The Griffin Poetry Prize is a Canadian poetry award. It was founded in 2000 by businessman and philanthropist Scott Griffin.
Before 2022, two separate awards went to one Canadian and one international poet who writes in the English language. I ...
)
* ''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.
* ''Jerusalem 1967–1990'', London, poem by Yehuda Amichai, collaboration with artist Maty Grunberg, portfolio of 56 woodcuts, limited edition.
* ''The Amichai Windows''. Limited edition artist book of 18 Amichai poems letterpressed with photo collages. Translation by artist Rick Black. Turtle Light Press, 2017.
Nepali
Many of Amichai's poems have been translated into Nepali by Suman Pokhrel
Suman Pokhrel (; born 21 September 1967) is a Nepali people, Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist. Universities in Nepal and India have included his poetry in their syllabi.
Pokhrel is the only writer to have received the SAA ...
, and some are collected in an anthology titled ''Manpareka Kehi Kavita''. His poems included in this anthology are, "''My Father''" as "''MERA BAA''," "''Forgetting Something''" as "''BIRSANU''," "''Do not Accept''" as "''SWEEKAR NAGARA''," and "''A Jewish Cemetery in Germany''" as "''JARMANIKO YAHUDI CHIHANGHRI''" .
Burmese
A total of 37 poems of Yehuda Amichai have been translated into Burmese and published in Yangon, Myanmar in March 2018. Burmese poet and translator , Myo Tayzar Maung, translated and the book has been published by the Eras Publishing House.
Russian
* ''Elohim Merahem Al Yaldei Ha'Gan''. Selected and translated by Alexander Volovik. Bilingual edition. Shoken, 1991.
* ''Сейчас и другие дни''. Selected and translated by Alexander Barash. Кабинетный учёный, 2021.
See also
* List of Israel Prize recipients
This is an incomplete list of recipients of the Israel Prize from the inception of the Prize in 1953 - 2025.
List
For each year, the recipients are, in most instances, listed in the order in which they appear on the official Israel Prize website ...
* Hebrew Literature
Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews, mostly among the Arab cit ...
References
Further reading
* Robert Alter
Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor emeritus of Hebrew language, Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has published two dozen books, including an aw ...
: Only a Man
'">br>Only a Man
' The New Republic, 31 Dec 200
*Robert Alter:Israel's Master Poet, The New York Times Magazine,8 June 1986
*Rick Black
Through Amichai's Window
Tikkun magazine, November 2015
* Adam Seelig: ''Introduction to "Killing Him," a radio play by Yehuda Amichai'', Poetry Magazine, July–August 200
* Boas Arpali: ''"The Flowers and the Urn" Amichai's Poetry – Structure, Meaning, Poetics'', Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1986
*Edward Hirsch: A Language Torn From Sleep, The New York Times Book Review, 3 August 1986
* Boaz Arpali: ''Patuach, Patuach'', Haaretz 16 Jan 200
* Benjamin Balint
"Israel's Laureate: The Sacred and Secular Vision of Yehuda Amichai
" in the Weekly Standard, 18 January 2016.
* Miriam Neiger, ''"Half a saint": Eschatology, Vision and Salvation in the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai'', M.A. Thesis (in Hebrew), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. It is the second-ol ...
, The Department of Hebrew Literature.
* Nili Scharf Gold: ''Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet'', Brandeis University Press, 2008.
* Nili Scharf Gold:"Amichai's Now and in Other Days and Open Closed Open: A Poetic Dialogue," in Festschrift in Honor of Arnold Band, eds. William Cutter and David C. Jacobson, (Providence: Brown University Judaic Studies), 465-477, 2002.
* Nili Scharf Gold: Not like a cypress: transformations of images and structures in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Schocken 1994.
* Nili Scharf Gold:"A Burning Bush or a Fire of Thorns: Toward a Revisionary Reading of Amichai's Poetry," in Prooftexts, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) Vol. 14, 49-69, 1994.
* Boaz Arpaly
"The making of Israel National Poet
" '' Shofar'', winter 2010, Vol. 28 N0 2 pp-213
* Essi Lapon-Kandeslshein: ''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
* Mel Gussow :Yehuda Amichai, Poet who turned Israel experience into verse, The New York Times',23 September 2000
*Sephen Kessler: Theology for Atheists Yehuda Amichai's Poetry of Paradox' Express Books, September 2000
*Charles M. Sennot :Poet Walks Jerusalem's Little Corners of Hope, The Boston Globe 9.5.2000
*Robyn Sara:'Look to Amichai for Poetry that Endures, The Gazette', Montreal, 28 October 2000
* Anthony Hecht: Sentenced To Reality, the New York Review of Books, 2 November 2000
*Irreverent Israeli Poet with a Comic Eye For Detail, The Irish Times, 7 October 2000
* Christian Leo: "''Wischen Erinnern und Vergessen''" – Jehuda Amichais Roman 'Nicht von jetzt' nicht von hier" im philosophichen und literarischen Kontexext" Konigshausen&Neumann Wurzburg 2004
* Dan Miron: ''Yehuda Amichai-A Revolutionary With a Father'', Haaretz, 3, 12, 14, October 2005
* Matt Nesvisky:
Letters I wrote to you
', The Jerusalem Report
''The Jerusalem Report'' is a fortnightly print and online news magazine that covers political, military, economic, religious and cultural issues in Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish world.
Founded as an independent weekly publication in 1 ...
, 8 December 2008
* Yehudit Tzvik:''Yehuda Amichai: A Selection of critical essays on his writing,'' Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1988
* Lawrence Joseph (Spring 1992).
Yehuda Amichai, The Art of Poetry No. 44
" Paris Review.
* ''The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself
''The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself'' is an anthology of modern Hebrew poetry, presented in the original language, with a transliteration into Roman script, a literal translation into English, and commentaries and explanations.
Two editions of this b ...
'', 2003,
* Chana Kronfeld:
The Wisdom of Camouflage
Prooftexts 10, 1990 pp. 469–491
* Adam Kirsch:Opening Up the Great Human Emotions:A New Collection of Poetry from an Israeli Master of Metaphor:Forwards,5 May 2000
* Jonathan Wilson: The God of Small Things, New York Times Book Review,12.10.2000
Joshua Cohen; "The Poet Who Invented Himself," Forward.com 4 Sep 2008
* C.K.Williams: "We Cannot be foold, We can be fooled" The New Republic, 3 July 2000
* Hana Amichai
"Little Ruth, my Personal Anne Frank"
Haaretz, 22,10,2010
* Hana Amichai: "The leap between the yet and the not any more" Amichai and Paul Celan, Haaretz,6 April 2012 (Hebrew)
* John Felstiner, "Paul Celan and Yehuda Amichai: An Exchange between Two Great Poets," Midstream 53, no. 1 (Jan.–Feb. 2007)
* john Felstiner
Writing Zion
Paul Celan and Yehuda Amichai: An Exchange between Two Great Poets, The New Republic, 5 June 2006
* Chana Kronfeld- "The Wisdom of Camouflage" Prooftexts 10, 1990 pp. 469–491
* Chana Kronfeld : "Reading Amichai Reading," Judaism 45, no. 3 (1996): 311–2
* Na'ama Rokem:" German–Hebrew Encounters in the Poetry and Correspondence of Yehuda Amichai and Paul Celan," Prooftext Volume 30, Number 1, Winter 2010 E- Print
* Vered Shemtov, Between Perspectives of Space:
A Reading in Yehuda Amichai's "Jewish Travel" and "Israeli Travel"
, Jewish Social Studies 11.3 (2005) 141-161
* Naama Lansky : "A Poem of Protest " ; "Israel Hyom," 8 April 2011 pp ישראל היום," מוסף "ישראל שישבת," 41–38,"(in Hebrew)
Robert Alter, Amichai: The Poet at play
Jewish Review of Books, Vol 2 Nu 2 Summer 2011
*Chana Kronfeld : "The Full Severity of Compassion" Stanford University Press 2016
*Robert Alter;editor:" The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai" Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York 2016
*Elizabeth Lund : "The best poetry books for December" The Washington Post, 8 December 2015
*Rosie Scharp :"The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai " The New York Times, 24 January 2016
*MITCH GINSBURG :" Doors to Yehuda Amichai Unforgettable Poetry" The Times of Israel, 21 January 2016
*Shoshana Olidort ":Review: 'The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai," Chicago Tribune, 10 December 2015
*James Wood:" Like a Prayer: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai " The New Yorker, 4 January 2016 issue
*Stephen Greenblatt ;"The Jewish Poet of Love" The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...
, 14 January 2016 ISSUE
Ziva Shamir
"Conceit as a Cardinal Style-Marker in Yehuda Amichai's Poetry"
The Experienced Soul: Studies in Amichai (ed. Glenda Abramson), Westview Press, "Harper Collins Publishers", Oxford 1997
External links
Poetry Foundation bio
Academy of American Poets bio
The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
*
''The Amichai Windows''
a blog about an artist book of Yehuda Amichai poems, the man and his work.
Digital Guide to The Amichai Windows
hosted by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Includes an introduction by Robert Alter and an essay by artist Rick Black.
luljeta lleshanaku on Amichai
Yehuda Amichai's poetry in English translation
at ''Poems Found in Translation''
Introduction to Amichai's poetry, in audio.
*
-luljeta-lleshanaku, 3Mmagazin
Reading of Yehuda Amichai's "I, May I Rest in Peace" by Chana Bloch
by Stephen Mitchell
at ''The Daily Telegraph''
* Yehuda Amichai Papers. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
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