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The sensitivity of Yehuda Amichai
BY JOSEPH COHEN
Special to The Jewish News
Yehuda Amichai came to
makes hopelessness into a
New Orleans last month to
sweet human experience
read his poems at Tulane
which keeps you going.
University, his appearance
Q — Getting away from
sponsored by the Jewish
poetry for a moment, how
Studies Program. It was my
would you describe what's
-- good fortune to be his host.
happening with fiction in
Modest and soft-spoken,
Israel right now?
filled with the wonder of
A — Poetry has had an
being in a new place of
unbroken tradition among
enchantment, making of it
the Jewish people since the
an adventure, Yehuda
Bible, through prayers. But
Amichai made a never-to-
prose had had no such tradi-
be-forgotten impression,
tion. The situation with fic-
something his poetry had
tion in Israel is still unset-
already done to me in its
tled. I think it will take a
fresh, vital imagery, its
few generations of people
clarity, its Jewish compas-
living in Israel for an Israeli
Yehuda
Amichai
sion, irony and wisdom. Of
prose to emerge.
his seven volumes of poetry,
The only exception is Ag-
war.
The
two
are
confused
six have been translated
non, but he brought the
elsewhere.
One
notices
how
into English, the most re-
Old World with him to
cent of these being Great much war is going on in Palestine. What we have is
love,
or
how
much
love
goes
Tranquillity: Questions and
largely experimental. We
Answers (Harper & Row), on in war. Ecclesiastes don't have a Henry James or
apart,
in
Israel
we
have
to
which appeared in 1983.
a Faulkner yet. We will
As Israel's major contem- do everything at once, to have to wait a few genera-
laugh
and
weep
at
the
same
porary poet, Amichai has
, tions. Hebrew as a spoken
been a part of its stirring time. You can't just say to language is only several
someone
"I
can't
make
love
history, a pioneer and a pat-
riot. He settled in Palestine to you now because there is
when he was 11 in 1935; and a war going on," or, on the
he subsequently fought in other hand, "we are in love;
four of Israel's wars, includ- I can't go to the war." We
ing the War for Indepen- have to do things as they
dence. Married twice, he is come.
I am reminded of those
presently rearing a second
lines from Rilke in the
family.
Of war and love and many Duino Elegies where he
other subjects, we spoke in says, "What is this life? We
the all too fleeting moments put things into order, and
as our questions and an- then things fall apart. Until
swers went back and forth: again, we put them into or-
Q — You said recently der," and so on, "until we
that you do not think of ourselves fall apart." Living
yourself as a war poet but as is to put order into chaos.
one who has experienced We are part of that process.
Q — Do you view your
much of
A — A poet who uses his composition of poetry in
whole life as material for his that context?
A — Yes. Poetry is for me
poetry is not just a poet of
one subject. I've had an in- the only way to put some generations
old.
'So
teresting life and all of it is order into the experience of novelists have a hard time.
the
world.
my subject.
One finds everything:
Q — Ever since the end of
Q — What do you consider
slang, Hebrew. What is
the
Second
World
War
when
to be the central experi-
lacking is a tradition, a rich
ences of that life which be- the somewhat obscure, tradition.
come the material for your highly esoteric poetry
Q — Do you read the
which had been advocated
poems?
American-Jewish
by
Pound
and
Eliot
was
re-
A — War and love are the
novelists?
only two things that are jected, American poetry has
A — I read Saul Bellow,
become
more
and
more
central. There are many
Philip Roth, Bernard
radicalized.
Allen
other things, of course, but
Malamud and Cynthia
how to deal with love and Ginsberg's work, for exam- Ozick.
ple.
hate in order to survive is
Q — What do you think of
In this respect the most
the central question.
recent poems I've read tend them?
A — I am impressed by
Q — Given the Western to be pessimistic, defeatist,
world's dual mindset, do you confessional and sometimes how Americanized they are.
see love and war as oppo- so introspective it is hard for They have a double con-
sites?
a reader to see much besides sciousness. Part of it is
A — They are opposites, hopelessness. Is there a thoroughly American, but
but they are also separate, parallel to that develop- the other part is very
as Ecclesiastes suggests: ment in Israeli poetry?
Jewish. From their Jewish-
"there is a time for war and
A — Israeli poetry is ness there emerges a kind of
a time for peace."
highly individualistic. Is- hidden nervousness. The
Q — Yet they are occa- rael is a small country and male writers are like nerv-
sionally confused, espe- poetry is much read there. ous horses, constantly sens-
cially in modern literature. You. have a lot of types of ing either a mare nearby or
The terms for love have poetry. Our concerns are an enemy. Their books are
come to be substituted for different: our thinking is marked by sensuality and
the terms of war. A foot- shaped by the Jewish Ques- sensitivity.
soldier loves his rifle and tion, Arab-Jewish relations,
Q — Do you regard the
sleeps with it. Is that re- and war and peace.
sensuality as an advantage
versed terminology in use in
or disadvantage?
Poetry is not defeatist.
A — Well, for a writer, it
Israel?
A — No, but there are Some of my poems are sad, is an advantage. The more
counterparts. For example, but they are not hopeless. sensual the writer is the
religion confuses love with Sadness is'a good way out. It richer his writing will be in
Friday, May 25, 1984 31
its meanings and its double
meanings.
Q — Your own writing is
certainly sensuous, and
that is one of its major at-
tractions, but I want to ask
you about a different aspect
of it. What influence has the
desert had on your poetry?
A — I love the desert. I
spent two years of World
War II in the southern des-
ert. I need the desert as part
of my life. It is an intrinsic
part of my experience, as
much as day and night, and
it is not a negative thing. It
keeps me going.
Q — In what way does it
keep you going?
A — When you are in the
desert there is nothing to
take your attention away
from its vastness. You are
not distracted by trees or
flowers or anything else.
You become there all the
things you take from the
city or the greenness of the
cultivated land.
In the desert this experi-
ence stays with you but it
gets translated into some-
thing larger. It is a wonder-
ful dimension of conscious-
ness. Three powerful reli-
gions had their beginnings
in the desert; and the 40
years the Israelites spent in
the desert helped to form
the Jewish consciousness as
we know it .. .
Recent American
poems "tend to be
pessimistic,
defeatist,
confessional and
sometimes so
introspective it is
hard for a reader Copyright 1984 Joseph Cohen
to see much
NY teens jailed
besides
for daubing
hopelessness.
New York (JTA) — Two
Jewish teenagers were ar-
rested earlier this month
and charged in connection
with April's anti-Semitic
graffiti and swastikas daub-
ing of apartments in one of
the buildings in Co-Op City,
the massive cooperative in
the Bronx.
The boys, ages 14 and 15,
attempted to collect from
police a $3,500 reward
being offered by the Co-
Op's management for in-
formation about the van-
dalism. The identities of the
two boys were not released
because of their youth,
police said.
New leadership
Winnipeg (JTA) — Prof.
Eugene Rothman, of Ot-
tawa University, believes
the idea that leadership of
Jewish communities is re-
stricted to wealthy, older
Jews is no longer true.
Growing numbers of
women and younger,
middle-aged professionals
are taking on leadership
roles in Canada's Jewish
communities, the religious
studies scholar told the
Winnipeg Jewish Post.
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