מלים בדמי החלה אהבה

Haim Gouri

Wayne State University Press, 1996 - Poetry - 255 pages

Haim Gouri has been a major figure in Israeli literature since the War of Independence in 1948-1949. The poems collected in Words in My Lovesick Blood, in their original Hebrew and in English translation, introduce Gouri to English-speaking readers and reflect the range of Gouri's extraordinary achievement as a modernist poet from the 1940s to the 1990s.

In his work, Gouri documents the spirit of the Palmah generation, the generation that effectively established the State of Israel. His voice is not especially patriotic or heroic, but surpassingly humane, testimony to a lyrical mythic and sensual imagination, a complicated and striking Mediterranean sensibility, and a subdued awareness of the tragic facts with which the Jews and the Middle East have had to cope over a lengthy and intricate history. The Hebrew Bible and Greek mythology have a presence in his oeuvre, as does the Nazi Holocaust.

Influenced by such Hebrew poets as Yonatan Ratosh, Uri Zvi Greenberg, and Natan Alterman, French symbolist poets Jules Laforgue, Paul Verlaine, and Guillaume Apollinaire, and Russian pets Akhmatova, Pasternak, and Mandelshtam, Gouri also reveals his interior life in his poems-his loves, regrets, doubts, and above all the charm in the magic of his poetic vision. In Words in My Lovesick Blood, readers will discover an eloquent and civilized means of experiencing the innumerable vicissitudes of Israeli existence.

Contents

• A STROLL AT NIGHT: 5
• THE FORGOTTEN: 11
• IT SEEMS TO: 25
• CIVIL: 35
• YOUNGER BROTHER: 43
• PIYYUT FOR THE NEW YEAR: 49
• YOURE NO KING: 55
• CONSOLATIONS: 61
• APRIL RECOLLECTIONS: 67
• SILK AND SILENCE: 73
• IN THE AMORITE CITY: 93
• AS LONG AS I HAVE LIFE 100: 99
• ONLY THE LETTERS: 105
• PRAY YOU FORGIVE ME: 111
• AND THIS HAPPENED IN PRAGUE: 123
• ALBUM: 135
• SIGNS: 141
• THE SOUL OF: 147
• JERICHO: 153
• YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN HER FACE: 159
• A STROLL TOWARDS EVENING: 165
• RACHEL: 173
• REMNANTS OF CLOTH: 179
• SMELL OF THE FIELD: 185
• A CROWN: 193
• DEFERMENT: 205
• A FINAL WARNING: 211
• A NATIONAL POET: 217
• GENETIC DEFECT: 223
• A WINTERS TALE: 229
• AT MATTIS WITH PARTY VETERANS: 235
• MAYBE IT WILL COME TO PASS: 241
• YOU CAN REST 1976: 247

About the author

Haim Gouri is a novelist, poet, and journalist who was born in Tel Aviv and educated at the Kadoorie Agricultural School. He later studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Sorbonne in Paris. He served in the Palmah from 1942 to 1947 and was an officer during the War of Independence. In 1987 he received the Israel Prize for Literature. Gouri has published over 20 works of fiction and poetry, but only one, The Chocolate Deal, has been translated into English. He has also made several full-length documentary films.

Bibliographic information

• Title: מלים בדמי החלה אהבה; Studies in Spirituality & Theology; 3
• Author: Haim Gouri
• Editor: Stanley F. Chyet
• Translated by: Stanley F. Chyet
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press, 1996
• ISBN: 0814325947, 9780814325940
• Length: 255 pages
• Subjects: Poetry / General; Poetry / Middle Eastern