#chana kronfeld

[power-chords]

Amichai's combination of readability and elusiveness, familiarity and surprise, is perhaps best illustrated by his unique use of metaphor. The long autobiographical poema “Travels of the Last Benjamin of Tudela” is an important but often neglected poem that reflects on many of the issues that Amichai faces as both a modernist and an antimodernist poet. It offers many excellent examples of Amichai's ambivalence through his use of metaphor. Metaphor, in effect, is the overarching principle of the poem's organization: a fragmented, simultaneous journey of the adult protagonist into “everything that I had,” a nonlinear spiritual autobiography which is also “an autobiography of the world.” [...]

In the middle of the second strophe, as the speaker attempts for the first time to describe his childhood and capture what it was like to see the world through the eyes of a toddler, there appears a complex catalogue of similes which forces the adult perspective onto the child's:

But even then I was marked for annihilation like an orange scored for peeling, like chocolate, like a hand grenade for explosion and death

—Amichai ([1968] 1975:97; translated by Bloch and Mitchell in Amichai, 1986:60)

The fragmented catalogue of similes is prototypical within modernist trends like expressionism and imagism in its focus on the simultaneous, paradigmatic aspects of language rather than on linear, syntagmatic, and logically coherent sequence. Furthermore, a striking semantic and stylistic distance between the frames of reference of the tenor and the first two versions of the vehicle within the catalogue enhances the initial incongruity of the two lines. The selection of the colloquial shokolada and tapuz, rather than their more formal equivalents, shokolad and tapu'ach zahav, for “chocolate” and “orange,” respectively, contrasts with the grand and tragic mesuman li-khlaya (“marked for annihilation”). The switch mid-metaphor to metonymy with the third vehicle (a hand grenade) further complicates the figurative structure of the catalogue; the hand grenade—the instrument of death—is like the victim, implying perhaps that the child is destined not just to be killed but also to kill.

What first appears fragmented and distant—and ultimately modernist in its apparent incongruity and lack of cohesion—actually becomes closely integrated by intricate image schemas that mitigate or bridge the semantic distance between the terms of the metaphor. Various thematic and linguistic clues absorb the vehicles into a quasiliteral frame and thus, subverting modernist tendencies, make the metaphor simple and visually accessible despite its radical novelty.

For example, the visual and associative cohesion within the various versions of the vehicle—orange, chocolate, and hand grenade—reveals a composite visual collage that links the entire metaphoric process. The mapping of one image (the chocolate bar divided into little squares) onto another image from the same domestic realm (the orange scored for peeling) produces a visually realistic motivation for the unexpected, deadly member of the catalogue (the hand grenade). The hand grenade is “simply” a “mapping” of the chocolate bar onto the orange scored for peeling, an inviting looking chocolate orange. From a child's point of view, the adult's powerlessness before the inevitability of death is given shocking sensual immediacy. In typical fashion, Amichai enhances the accessibility of this metaphor through the use of junction words, polysemies which apply—in a different sense—to the domain both of the tenor and the vehicle: the verb k-l-h (“finish off”) is used with reference to both chocolate and life. The poetic message seems to be that ordinary language, not the poet's privileged sensibility, brings together the mundane and the philosophical. Even more poignant is the use of rimon yad as a junction term, returning it to the literal meaning (“hand grenade” in Hebrew literally means “pomegranate of the hand”); thus, for one ironic moment the hand grenade becomes yet another food item on the list.

The larger context of these charged lines enhances the realistic motivation for the use of such radical figures of speech. The items in the catalogue are, for the most part, selected from the immediate experiential field of a child but seen from the war- and death-fearing perspective of the adult. Hence the semantic distance between vehicles in this catalogue of similes is simply a realistic expression of the simultaneity of these two points of view, the child's and the adult's, so common to the genre of autobiography. In the end, the combination of surprise and simplicity, or of the attempt to present the novel and surprising as simple and readable, produces a uniquely cohesive metaphor. Amichai's metaphors follow this same bifurcated pattern of ease and difficulty throughout his poetry: at first, a wild, often playfully violent conflation of heterogeneous semantic material but—after a second look—a combination so natural that we begin to wonder why no one has made it before.

Kronfeld, Chana. On the Margins of Modernism: Decentering Literary Dynamics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

[reachingrachnius]

Yehuda Amichai 

[celania]

“And who will remember the rememberers?”

— Yehuda Amichai, Open Closed Open (translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld)

“No one bears witness for the witness.”

— Paul Celan, ‘Ashglory’ translated by Pierre Joris

[eclogues]

“I, may I rest in peace – I, who am still living, say,

May I have peace in the rest of my life.

I want peace right now while I’m still alive.”

- from I, May I Rest in Peace by Yehuda Amichai, trans. by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

[holisticfansstuff]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types, History Boys - Bennett Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: David Posner/Donald Scripps, Donald Scripps/OFC, David Posner/OMC Characters: Donald Scripps, David Posner, Adil Akthar, Stuart Dakin Additional Tags: Future Fic, Coming of Age Summary:

"I passed by the school where I studied as a boy and said in my heart: here I learned certain things and didn't learn others. All my life I have loved in vain the things I didn't learn."

"The School Where I Studied," by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld.

-

When Scripps gets to Oxford, certain things change and others don't. Or: Don Scripps grows up and, however slowly, attempts to come to terms with God, love, and himself.

[whisperthatruns]

I want to describe with a sharp pain's precision, happiness and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains.

Yehuda Amichai, trans. by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, from “The Precision of Pain and the Blurriness of Joy: the Touch of Longing Is Everywhere”

[endless-unfolding]

I have no share in the infinity of light-years and dark-years, but the darkness is mine, and the light, and my time is my own. [. . .] The years of my life I have broken into hours, and the hours into minutes and seconds and fractions of seconds. These, only these, are the stars above me that cannot be numbered.

Yehuda Amichai, from “I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What is My Life Span? Open Closed Open,” trans. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, Open Closed Open: Poems (Harcourt Inc., 2000)

[rabbit-light]

The Second Trying

If I could only get hold of the whole of you,    How could I ever get hold of the whole of you,    Even more than the most beloved idols,    More than mountains quarried whole,              More than mines              Of burning coal,    Let’s say mines of extinguished coal    And the breath of day like a fiery furnace.    If one could get hold of you for all the years,    How could one get hold of you from all the years,    How could one lengthen a single arm,    Like a single branch of an African river,    As one sees in a dream the Bay of Storms,    As one sees in a dream a ship that went down,    The way one imagines a cushion of clouds,    Lily-clouds as the body’s cushion,    But though you will it, they will not convey you,    Do not believe that they will convey you.    If one could get hold of all-of-the-whole-of-you,    If one could get hold of you like metal,    Say like pillars of copper,    Say like a pillar of purple copper    (That pillar I remembered last summer)— And the bottom of the ocean I have never seen,    And the bottom of the ocean that I can see    With its thousand heavy thickets of air,    A thousand and one laden breaths.    If one could only get hold of the-whole-of-you-now,    How could you ever be for me what I myself am?

Dahlia Ravikovitch

Translated By Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld.

[allyourprettywords]

"The Love of an Orange," Dhalia Ravikovitch

An orange did love    The man who ate it.    A feast for the eyes    Is a fine repast;    Its heart held fast    His greedy gaze.    A citron did scold:    I am wiser than thou.    A cedar condoled:    Indeed thou shalt die!    And who can revive    A withered bough?    The citron did urge:    O fool, be wise.    The cedar did rage:    Slander and sin!    Repent of thy ways    For a fool I despise.    An orange did love    With life and limb    The man who ate it,    The man who flayed it.    An orange did love    The man who ate it,    To its flayer it brought    Flesh for the teeth.    An orange, consumed    By the man who ate it,    Invaded his skin    To the flesh beneath.

(Notes from the translators on this poem.)

[soulclapitshandsandsing]

I, may I rest in peace – I, who am still living, say, May I have peace in the rest of my life. I want peace right now while I’m still alive. I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now. I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face. Wars with the old weapons – sticks and stones, blunt axe, words, dull ripping knife, love and hate, and wars with newfangled weapons – machine gun, missile, words, land mines exploding, love and hate. I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war. I want peace with all my body and all my soul. Rest me in peace.

From Open Closed Open, by Yehuda Amichai

Copyright © 2000 by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

[eatingpoetry]

The Second Trying

If I could only get hold of the whole of you, How could I ever get hold of the whole of you, Even more than the most beloved idols, More than mountains quarried whole, More than mines Of burning coal, Let’s say mines of extinguished coal And the breath of day like a fiery furnace. If one could get hold of you for all the years, How could one get hold of you from all the years, How could one lengthen a single arm, Like a single branch of an African river, As one sees in a dream the Bay of Storms, As one sees in a dream a ship that went down, The way one imagines a cushion of clouds, Lily-clouds as the body’s cushion, But though you will it, they will not convey you, Do not believe that they will convey you. If one could get hold of all-of-the-whole-of-you, If one could get hold of you like metal, Say like pillars of copper, Say like a pillar of purple copper (That pillar I remembered last summer)— And the bottom of the ocean I have never seen, And the bottom of the ocean that I can see With its thousand heavy thickets of air, A thousand and one laden breaths. If one could only get hold of the-whole-of-you-now, How could you ever be for me what I myself am? By Dahlia Ravikovitch Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

[whisperthatruns]

Each year the melons are sweeter than the year before. Is it forgetting last summer that makes me say this or some great weariness?

Yehuda Amichai, trans. by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, from “The Precision of Pain and the Blurriness of Joy: the Touch of Longing Is Everywhere”

[whisperthatruns]

Longings are the fruit. Words and deeds that truly happen are the flowers of the field that wither and fade. The fruit remains a while longer, bearing the seeds of longings to come. The root lasts, deep in the ground.

Yehuda Amichai, trans. Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, from “The Precision of Pain and the Blurriness of Joy: the Touch of Longing Is Everywhere”