THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS PROFILE SAVE UP TO 60% ON DIAMONDS 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. • We Sell Diamonds Onl ∎ • By ;Appointment Only Call Jerry Tw-ken at The New York Diamond Cutting Company "The Diamond Cutters" 3000 F ► ‘%n Cenler. Southfield. Michigan: 355-2300 -- Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit xmi YY qpresents BETA YISRAEL THE PLIGHT OF ETHIOPIAN JEWRY Speaker: Barry Weise, Director Task Force on Ethiopian Jewry National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council Tuesday, May 29, 1984 8:00 P.M. laMed Auditorium, United Hebrew Schools 21550 West Twelve Mile Road, Southfield Open to the Public No Charge GET SOMETHING REAL AT AN UNREAL PRICE! 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