As we were walking toward the hall where he was giving
a reading, the poet Yehudah Amichai (1924—2000) suddenly turned to me and said:
“I always feel so awkward before
readings, the students expect the writer of all those love poems, to be a great
lover and here I am a short middle-aged man.”
At that time I was the program director at the Hillel House
of the University of Iowa, and Yehudah Amichai was our guest lecturer.
As soon as we entered the room it was clear that Amichai was
wrong; the audience, most of whom were students at the Writers' Workshop, had
long known his poetry and admired him. Moreover, since Amichai's poems worked so well in English, they
regarded him as one of their own –a great American poet.
Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and
internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was well aware of his
stature, but still was not afraid to reveal a more vulnerable side. I suspect
that the apprehension that Amichai felt
before his reading contributed to his very personal and warm performance during
the reading.
I remember that when one of the students asked him about his
work habits, he answered that he did not write every day, and that most of his
poems came to him when he was taking walks. The students seemed quite surprised
at that answer, as they must have expected him to say that he wrote every day
at his study.
At a reading in Princeton, the writer Jonathan Safran Foer
told the audience that in his senior year at Princeton in 1999 he heard Yehuda
Amichai give one of his final readings in the Stewart theater. While listening
to Amichai, Foer realized that he wanted "to somehow move somebody"
just as Amichai had moved him. "I wouldn't be up here if it weren't for
Amichai."
I too have an Amichai
moment which I cherish; once, several years prior to that reading in the
Hillel House, he had been to Iowa City for a reading. At its end I was asked to
drive him to his hotel. Once there I realized that it was still early and
invited Amichai to our home, he accepted gladly. My husband Tzvi was there with
our young daughters, and when we got home Amichai asked first to see my two
sleeping girls. I was really touched.
This anecdote reminds me of another, somewhat similar story. When Yitzhak Rabin visited the White
House, president Jimmy Carter asked him if he wanted to see the sleeping
Amy. Rabin, perhaps out of shyness,
declined and missed an opportunity to bond with the parents of the sleeping
girl. Many political analysts, and
Carter himself in his memoir, regard this famous incident as a serious faux pas
In contrast,
Amichai’s human approach and exceptional personal skills, combined with his strong and timeless
poetry which so easily translated into English, contributed to his great
success outside Israel. Evidence of his popularity can be seen in the fact that
Amichai sold his archive for over $200,000 to the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library of Yale University.
The English poet Ted Hughes, who translated Amichai's poems
into English together with Amichai himself, wrote in the Times Literary
Supplement: "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.”
I agree, and to illustrate his power in English here is one of his love poems translated from Hebrew by Amichai and Ted Hughes
Once a Great Love
Once a great love cut my life in two.
The first part goes on twisting
at some other place like a snake cut in two.
The passing years have calmed me
and brought healing to my heart and rest to my eyes.
And I’m like someone standing in
the Judean desert, looking at a sign:
“Sea Level.”
He cannot see the sea, but he knows.
Thus I remember your face everywhere
at your “face level.”
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