Yale will hold a memorial event celebrating the life and work of recently deceased Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai on Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 4:30 p.m. in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St.

At the "Homage to Amichai," Benjamin Harshav, the Blaustein Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature, will speak about the poet's literary importance and the interplay between his life and writing. Harshav is one of Amichai's chief translators. Several Yale professors and students will read from Amichai's poetry in Hebrew and English, including Harold Bloom, Barbara Harshav, Geoffrey Hartman, Michael Holquist, Leslie Brisman, John Hollander and Maria Rosa Menocal. The event is free and open to the public.

Amichai, who died Sept. 22, had close ties with Yale, teaching and giving readings on campus from time to time. Some weeks before his death, he arranged for the Beinecke Library to receive his extensive personal papers and literary archive.

The collection includes all of Amichai's extant papers -- manuscripts of his poems and books, and correspondence with fellow writers (including British poet Ted Hughes, among others), as well as diaries, office journals, audio tapes, video tapes, film and printed materials such as clippings, programs and posters. The Amichai papers are the first archive of a major writer in Hebrew to be added to the Beinecke, where they join an extensive international gathering of 20th-century literary archives, including the papers of the Yiddish writer Sholem Asch and poets Ezra Pound, F.T. Marinetti, William Carlos Williams and Czeslaw Milosz.

"This acquisition is a result of many years of discussions with the poet," says Vincent Giroud, curator of modern books and manuscripts at the Beinecke. "It is our first major collection of an Israeli writer, and we are extraordinarily fortunate to be able to have the archive of such a major writer as Amichai."

Amichai was born in Würzburg, Germany, in 1924, and immigrated in 1936 to Palestine with his Orthodox Jewish family. After high school, he served in the British army during World War II, then joined the underground Jewish military organization in Palestine. He was a soldier in the Israeli army, fighting in the Israeli War for Independence and in several later wars. While teaching high school as a livelihood, he attended Hebrew University, where he studied Hebrew literature and the Bible.

Amichai traced his vocation as a writer to his time stationed in Egypt with the British army. There he chanced upon an anthology of modern British poetry, and the works of Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot and W. H. Auden inspired his first serious thoughts about becoming a writer. His first book of poetry, "Now and in Other Days," was published in 1955.

Amichai's works, which include plays, stories, novels, essays, and three children's books as well as numerous volumes of poetry, have been translated into more than 30 languages. Many are available in English, including two books translated by Ted Hughes ("Amen" and "The Early Books") and two translated by his friends Barbara and Benjamin Harshav ("Even a Fist was Once an Open Palm with Fingers" and "Yehuda Amichai, a life of poetry, 1948-1994," a comprehensive selection from all his books). His most recent publication in English is "Open Closed Open: Poems."

Amichai's poetry reflects his lifelong political commitment to the state of Israel; yet, it is also deeply personal, drawing on his own particular experience of war, love, loss, mortality and everyday life. The role of the poet, he said, was "to name each thing, each feeling, each experience, plainly and accurately, without pretense."

In a review of "Open Closed Open: Poems," Hughes wrote, "Poets have always talked reverently about unlocking the human heart, but when I read Amichai, I wonder who before him actually managed it."

According to his translator and friend of 50 years, Benjamin Harshav, "Amichai is the most universal Israeli poet, expressing the human condition in the 20th century through the eyes of a Jew and an Israeli. ... In an age of ideology, he celebrated the individual's private moments and existential situation; in an age of war, he celebrated love and love-making. The most iconoclastic poet, he was anti-establishment and anti-taboo, and saw the role of the poet as the one who raises direct experience against the stereotypes of official discourse. He combined straight-forward talk with sudden shifts to analogical situations, comparing the high and the low, the sacred and the mundane, the personal and collective destiny, God and the hapless garage repairman."

-- By Gila Reinstein

T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Class of 1954 Gives Yale $70 Million

Wolfe returns to old hunting grounds

George Mitchell: Peace in Northern Ireland is 'remarkably fragile and remarkably enduring'

Study finds key areas of brain smaller in many premature infants

ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPS

• Donald Cohen named Sterling Professor of Child Psychiatry
  
  
• Pharmacology expert John Krystal is designated as Kent Professor
  
  
• Stephen Strittmatter is appointed to new Coates Chair in Neurology
  

  
  

New initiative to explore issue of patients' adherence

Former Connecticut College official is new associate secretary

Irish poet Seamus Heaney to give reading of his work

Event celebrates the life of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai

Judge 'misread' Microsoft antitrust case, journalist says

'Master classes' help teaching fellows become stars in classroom

McClatchy and Ruff honored for contributions to the arts

Pianist Boris Berman to discuss 'the making of a musician'

Divinity Dean Richard Wood is named president of international educational venture

Yale Parents' Weekend October 20-22, 2000

Experts will discuss new research at annual women's health conference

Events featuring Yale affiliates explore how art, medicine can converge

A day at the beach

April Bernard, award-winning poet and novelist, will read from her new work

ISPS is seeking proposals for new field experiments in the social sciences

Campus Notes

In the News

Yale Scoreboard

---

Bulletin Home|Visiting on Campus| Calendar of Events|Bulletin Board

Classified Ads|Search Archives|Production Schedule|Bulletin Staff

Public Affairs Home|News Releases| E-Mail Us|Yale Home Page

---