Poems from the Hebrew (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Poems from the Hebrew William Rosen (bio) Poems from the Hebrew Selected by Robert Mezey. Etching by Moishe Smith. 159 pp. (Thomas Y. Crowell, $4.50). This anthology for children aged 12 and up is one of a series; other volumes assemble translated poems from the German, and from Africa, France, India, Ireland, and Italy. [End Page 236] Is there a distinctly Hebrew spirit, vision, and sensibility? one is likely to ask after reading through this collection. It is a question Uri Zvi Greenberg poses in an excerpt that introduces "The Modern Poets," the longest section of the book: "And is our nervous system in any way like that of the Gentiles?" And he replies: "The Hebrew mouth is more like a wound; behind the Hebrew forehead an eagle screams." In reading these poems, one becomes aware of historical patterns that have helped shape both a consciousness and a literary sensibility. The Biblical selections, with their songs, psalms, and prophecies are more than personal celebrations and laments; they record the joy and sense of obligation of a people who believe in a special covenant with God. An individual is of supreme importance because God watches each; whatever happens to one person may therefore represent the experiences of many and even represent the destiny of a nation. To celebrate life is to praise the wonders of God, not as abstractions, for the Hebrew language is uncomfortable with such things, but with concrete images and sharply defined details. The beauty of the world is to be enjoyed fully in this life: How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. But when adversity comes, the anguish is particularly sharp because of the feeling of a broken covenant, of personal betrayal. Job would try to see and reason with his God. During the Diaspora, personal anguish can be even greater: there is still the feeling of special dedication to God, but the experience of living in alien lands seems to stress sharply the mythic pattern that each individual who is born is somehow dispossessed. My heart is in the East, and I in the uttermost West—My food has no taste, there is no sweetness in it are the words of Judah Halevi in the section "The Poets of Moorish Spain." Job's defiant quarrel with God becomes in Abraham Ibn Ezra's poem a resigned protest against the inevitability of bad fortune, its wit, a defense against total despair: If I decided to sell lamps,It wouldn't get dark till the day I died. Some stars. Whatever I do,I'm a failure before I begin.If I suddenly decided to sell shrouds,People would suddenly stop dying. It is understandable that many Jews in the Diaspora dreamed of Eden, a return to the promised land where one might live in harmony with nature and family. "Man is nothing but the soil of a small country,/ nothing but the shape of his native landscape," writes Tchernichovsky. But the return does not miraculously [End Page 237] resolve all conflicts—that would make dull poetry indeed. There are, as before, poems that defiantly praise present life against postponed hope; poems that shout their outrage at genocide. In their own land, at last, the Hebrews celebrate the will to live, now triumphant over despair against all odds. And still there is a sense of apartness and special dedication, if not to God, then to man and to life itself. The present dilemmas, best represented in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, are remarkably similar to old ones. A German by birth, with European sensibilities, Amichai writes of the experiences of one who has become an "insider" but can never lose the perspective of the "outsider." Belonging to the history of his people whether he wants to or not, he finds the landscape of Israel strange—even savage—as in the poem "Mayor." In "National Thoughts" he describes what it is like to be "trapped in the homeland of the Chosen People," and how The language which described God and the Miracles,Says:Motor car, bomb...