Sexy yet Spiritual, and Easy to Translate

Don’t blame me! I didn’t come up with the phrase that serves as the title of this post. Read on to find out who did.

In a previous post, I introduced and translated a poem of Yehuda Amichai. Amichai is great poet. It is worth learning Hebrew just to be able to understand his poetry.

In a recent issue of The Jewish Daily Forward, Isaac Meyers reviews a splendid new volume entitled: Creator, are you Listening? Israeli Poets on God and Prayer. Edited by David C. Jacobson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

Meyers begins his review with the following paragraph:

In an interview, Yehuda Amichai once mentioned that some congregations in America had started to use his poems as tefillot, or prayers, in a synagogue setting. This left him pleased (why not?) but also bemused. He had studied Bible at the Hebrew University, not in yeshiva. The Israeli literary scene, which is thoroughly secular, considered him a master and teacher, and sometimes found his flirtation with the Jewish God dishonest, even grotesque. But for other Israelis, and even more for Americans, this flirtation was the very basis of Amichai’s appeal. So he found himself refashioned into a sort of atheist rabbi, sexy yet spiritual, and easy to translate — which is no doubt what we want Israel itself to be.

There is a spiritual depth to Amichai’s poety that is undeniable. Amichai’s atheism contributes to that depth. Do you find it hard to believe that atheism and a relationship with God can go together?

Anyone who has read Psalm 139 will not be surprised. The apophatic tradition, furthermore, knows of a via negativa to the heart of God. There is more than one via negativa, it seems to me, to that destination. (I’m counting on Kevin Edgecomb to read this and suggest a resource or two on apophatic spirituality in the comment section.)

There are many ways to God. Atheism turns out to be one of them.

Is Amichai’s poetry sexy yet spiritual, and easy to translate?

Is ancient Hebrew poetry sexy yet spiritual, and easy to translate?

Yes, they are. Both are full of raw emotion and a yearning for God. In the hands of a skilled interpreter, they also translate easily into the categories of life as we actually live it.

That is different, of course, from saying that ancient Hebrew poetry or Amichai’s poetry translate easily from the technical point of view, word-for-word, phrase-by-phrase. Poetry, any poetry, is untranslatable in the technical sense.

Nevertheless, poetry translates better than prose into the language of heart and gut. Indeed, no translation is necessary. Poetry expresses itself in the language of taut intelligence and raw emotion. By poetry I mean ancient Hebrew poetry, and the poetry of Yehuda Amichai.

Comments

[Doug Chaplin]

I'm sure Kevin will have far more to say on apophatic theology, but remember it's part of the Western tradition as well, from the Cloud of Unknowing, through Meister Eckhart to T S Eliot.

[JohnFH]

Please, tell us more about apophatic theology. It sounds like some sort of disease.

On that note, maybe the Voice of Stefan has an appropriate word to share.

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

The basis of apophatic theology is the Areopagitica, the writings of (Pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite, which I'm sure most people have heard of even if they haven't actually read him. There's a truly excellent edition published in the Paulist Press Classics of Western Spirituality series, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translated beautifully by Colm Luibheid [do NOT ask me to pronounce that last name!], and foreword, notes and "translation collaboration" by Paul Rorem, a preface by Rene Roques, and introductions by Jaroslav Pelikan, Jean Leclercq, and Karlfried Froehlich. Every patristic work should be of such quality. Apophaticism is well-introduced by starting with this volume. To understand the importance of apophaticism in Eastern theology, I'd follow that up with Vladimir Lossky's classic, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church.

The essence of apophatic theology (from apophasis, ineffable) is that human language, human conceptual frameworks, indeed humanly rational theology, is completely incapable of describing God. This is why you find things like the great philosopher-theologian Metropolitan John Zizioulas saying that God doesn't exist, because he is supra-existent. God is above and beyond all categories, all rationalizations, all words which would attempt through their very mortality to limit the Divine. God dwells in that "Cloud of Unknowing," the luminous darkness of the Shekinah into which Moses walked and was transformed. At the core of this lies the experientially gained understanding of a life lived in prayer that God is not meant to be known, but experienced through a frightening epiphanic communion, which brings us into true being. I could go on, but then that's just more words, isn't it?

[JohnFH]

I ordered a copy of Luibheid through Amazon. Thanks for the tips.

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

Any time!

I'm also a fan of Yehuda Amichai. I've posted a few of his poems or excerpts thereof. It's hard to escape the connection between Biblical Hebrew and Modern Hebrew poetry simply because the syntax of the former is the standard for the latter. Those of us familiar with both Classical and Modern Hebrew will be hit in the face by it. Those who haven't learned Modern Hebrew, not so much. The vocabulary and the themes are all there in Amichai. And yes, I think "yearning" is probably the finest description of this very personal and rich poetry: yearning for a present that was possible from a past that went awry, yearning for people, places, and things that are long gone, even yearning for the kinds of certainty that one ruins in taking it for granted, whether in love or life or belief. There are lessons in there for the attentive.

[Theresa Evans]

I think reason cannot come to knowing G-d...
G-d makes Himself known to us...
not reason ... revelation.
After Mt Sinai...G-d is no longer in the realm of
doubt..uncertainty..or belief.
G-d made Himself KNOWN to the Jewish people.
Blessed be He!!!