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Yehuda Amichai |
| Yehuda Amichai | |
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| Born | 3 May 1924 Würzburg, Germany |
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| Died | 22 September 2000 Israel |
Yehuda Amichai (May 3, 1924 - September 22, 2000, Hebrew: יהודה עמיחי) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many to be the greatest modern Israeli poet, and was one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew.
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His biographical writings often dealt with the issues of day-to-day life, and were less overtly literary than many 19th century Hebrew poets such as Hayyim Nahman Bialik. His writings are characterized by gentle irony, and the pain of damaged love. It was a love for people, for the Torah and Eretz Yisrael, most of all it was a love for the city of Jerusalem.
Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, as Ludwig Pfeuffer, to a religious family, then immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936. He first worked as a teacher of physical education. He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the fighting arm of Jewish settlements in pre-state Palestine. He fought in the World War II (British Army Jewish Brigade) and the Israeli War of Independence as a young man. He also fought in several of Israel's other wars.[1] He became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region, working with Arab writers.
Following the war, Amichai attended Hebrew University, studying biblical texts and Hebrew literature. After that, he taught in secondary school. He married Hana Sokolov, who was his second wife. Amichai had two sons, Ron and David, and a daughter, Emmanuella.
Many of his songs and poems include quotes from the Torah.
He was "discovered" in 1965 by Ted Hughes, who was to collaborate with Amichai on the translation of his poetry, later published in two books: "Amen" in 1977 and "Time" in 1979.
He died from cancer in 2000, at 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."
The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself (2003), ISBN 0-8143-2485-1
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