Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet

Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet

by Nili Scharf Gold
Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet

Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet

by Nili Scharf Gold

eBook

$26.99  $35.99 Save 25% Current price is $26.99, Original price is $35.99. You Save 25%.

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

Yehuda Amichai is one of the twentieth century’s (and Israel’s) leading poets. In this remarkable book, Nili Scharf Gold offers a profound reinterpretation of Amichai’s early works and reconstructs his poetic biography. Her close reading of his oeuvre, untapped notebooks, and a cache of unpublished letters to a woman identified as Ruth Z. that Gold discovered convincingly demonstrates how the poet’s German past infused his work, despite his attempts to conceal it as he adopted an Israeli identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781584658122
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Publication date: 03/15/2009
Series: The Tauber Institute Series for the Study of European Jewry
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 468
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

NILI SCHARF GOLD is a professor of modern Hebrew literature at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Not Like a Cypress (Hebrew) and Haifa: City of Steps.

Table of Contents

Preface • Introduction: Camouflage as the Key to the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai • Childhood in Wuerzburg: A Dubious Paradise • The Murky Mirror of Wuerzburg in Amichai’s Work • Hiding between the Languages: The German Mother Tongue in Amichai’s Universe • Growing Up in Palestine • “And the Migration of My Parents Has Not Subsided in Me” • The Love Story • The Literary Legacy of the Love Story: “Binyamina, 1947” and “We Loved Here” • The Lovers in the Public Garden • The Haifa Letters: The Making of an Israeli • The Making of a National Poet • Conclusion: Retrieving the Abandoned Landmarks • Appendix A: Texts of Poems Discussed in Their Entirety • Appendix B: Map of Wuerzburg and Legend • Notes • Select Bibliography • Index

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Fredman

“With the help of a treasure trove of retrieved love letters, Nili Scharf Gold has changed the landscape for understanding the poetry of Yehuda Amichai. Gold demonstrates in exquisite detail the extent to which "Israel's National Poet" camouflaged the German childhood that continued to haunt him.”

Robert A. Caro

“Gold sheds new light not only on the life and work of this great poet but on the very nature of poetry itself.”—

Yigal Schwartz

“An impassioned and insightful reading that seamlessly merges the story of one individual—a budding poet—with the story of a people during a decisive chapter in their national history. This book is a must for scholars of literature.”

Arnold Band

“Her book will be indispensable for all future studies of Amichai's poetry.”

Yael S. Feldman

“Nili Gold’s exciting book offers a surprisingly fresh look into the creative laboratory of Israel’s beloved poetic spokesman, Yehuda Amichi. Combining meticulous research of untapped sources with superb intuition, Gold’s detective work uncovers the landscape of German childhood and mother tongue, both well hidden in plain sight—between and behind the Hebrew verses of Israel’s ‘national’ poet. Using her startling findings to great effect, the author charts a unique roadmap of the life and verse of Amichai, raising, along the way, questions about other ‘Minoan’ layers similarly hiding in the literary corpus of every immigrant culture.”

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews