The Spectacular Difference: Selected Poems of Zelda

by Marcia Falk (Translator)

Overview

Filled with vivid, often dreamlike pictures from the natural world, the poems of Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky, known to her Hebrew readers simply as Zelda, are unlike anything else in Hebrew literature. Zelda was the daughter and granddaughter of prominent Hasidic rabbis from the Habad dynasty. Born in Russia in 1914, she immigrated to Palestine in 1926, studied in religious girls' schools, and became a schoolteacher. She began writing her imagistic, mystical-religious poetry early in life. When her first book was published, in 1967, it was an overwhelming critical and popular success, appealing to the diverse (and predominantly secular) Israeli public. Five more volumes followed, winning the poet numerous literary awards, including the prestigious Bialik and Brenner prizes. Although she lived her entire life within the strictures of ultra-Orthodoxy, Zelda's many admirers came from all corners of Israeli society. As the popularity of her poetry grew, visitors flocked to her doorstep; her photograph appeared often in the newspapers; the words of her poems were set to music and sung. Reserved and daunted by publicity, she was an unlikely candidate for Israeli folk hero; nevertheless, she became a national phenomenon. She died in Jerusalem in 1984, and a posthumous volume of her collected verse was published in Hebrew in 1985. The Spectacular Difference is the first full-length book of her poems to appear in English translation. A close friend and frequent guest in Zelda's home, Marcia Falk was authorized by the poet to be her translator and worked on these translations over the course of three decades. Selected from all six of Zelda's books, the poems are accompanied by the translator's essay introducing the poet and illuminating the highly personal and often startling images in her lyrics. Notes at the back of the book offer a comprehensive guide to Zelda's many references to Jewish sources.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780878202225
Publisher:	Hebrew Union College Press
Publication date:	06/03/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Marcia Falk is the author of The Book of Blessings, a widely-acclaimed translation of The Song of Songs, a volume of translations of Malka Heifetz Tussman's Yiddish With Teeth in the Earth, and two books of her own poetry, This Year in Jerusalem and It is July in Virginia, which won the Claytor Award of the Poetry Society of America. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford and was a professor of Hebrew and English literature and creative writing for two decades. She now lectures widely on feminist Judaism, Jewish women's literature, and other subjects.

Table of Contents

	Introduction
I.	On Translating Zelda	1
II.	Nature and Spirituality in Zelda's Poetry	12
I.	From Leisure (1967)
	The Old House	27
	The Seamstress	31
	With My Grandfather	33
	Light a Candle	35
	I Am a Dead Bird	37
	The Crippled Beggar 1	39
	The Crippled Beggar 2	43
	The Bad Neighbor	47
	Facing the Sea	55
	Moon Is Teaching Bible	57
	In the Dry Riverbed	59
	All This Misery--When Will I Die?	61
	My Peace	63
	Strange Plant	65
	Each Rose	67
	I Stood in Jerusalem	69
	Then My Soul Cried Out	71
	I Banished from My Heart	73
	Leisure	75
	From the Songs of Childhood	77
II.	From The Invisible Carmel (1971)
	The Invisible Carmel	81
	[In his eyes, birds of paradise]	83
	New Fruit in the Season of Childhood	85
	The Sun Lit a Wet Branch	101
	For the Light Is My Joy	103
	Be Not Far	107
	You Call Out Silence to Me	109
	When You Were Here	111
	[I lie in my house]	113
	Savage Dialogue	115
III.	From Be Not Far (1974)
	Black Rose	119
	When I Said the Blessing over the Candles	121
	When the King Was Alive	123
	Cast Me Not Away	125
	The Fine Sand, the Terrible Sand	129
	Let Your Voice Be Heard, O Morning Blessings	133
	Enchanted Bird	137
	A Woman Who Has Reached a Very Old Age	139
	Each of Us Has a Name	141
	All Night I Wept	145
	Place of Fire	147
IV.	From Surely A Mountain, Surely Fire (1977)
	[I do not like all trees equally]	153
	Yom Kippur Eve	157
	[When boulders crumble]	159
	[The shadow of the white mountain]	161
	Mephiboshet	165
	Distant Shame	167
	Ancient Pines	171
	[I awoke--the house was lit]	173
	[Everything went awry]	175
	[In the morning, I thought]	177
V.	From The Spectacular Difference (1981)
	In My Dream	181
	The Friendship of the White Jasmine	183
	Jasmine Branch	185
	[From the legends buried]	187
	The Fine Light of My Peace	189
	The Orange Butterfly	191
	[The first rain--]	193
	[Her hair, burnished copper]	195
	Children in the School for the Blind	197
	Who Can Resist the Beauty of the Light	199
	Sun-Startled Pines	201
	Tree of Life	203
	[There was something startling]	205
	Ancient Song	207
	Uncombed Hair	209
	Island	213
	In the Moon's Domain	215
	In the Hallway	217
	The Whales	219
	Heavy Silence	221
VI.	From Beyond All Distance (1984)
	On That Night of Stars	225
	Pause	227
	[I shall not float unreined]	231
	When Yearnings	233
	Two Elements	235
	About Facts	237
	In the Hospital	239
1.	When a horse is sold in the marketplace	239
2.	Beyond the wall, a sick old woman	241
3.	You are mistaken	243
4.	My soul peered through the lattices	245
5.	When the woman	247
	Notes to the Poems	249
	Acknowledgments	267

Editorial Reviews

"Marcia Falk has made the beauty of Zelda's poetry shine."
—Amos Oz, Israeli novelist

From the Publisher