Tuvyah Reubner: an Israeli poet to be read by students of ancient Hebrew

One of the best ways for students of ancient Hebrew to improve their knowledge of the language is to read widely in later Hebrew literature. This may seem counter-intuitive to some. I would lift up Franz Delitzsch, one of the great Hebraists of the nineteenth century, as a model for students today. Before writing, together with Carl Friedrich Keil, a learned commentary on the entire Old Testament between 1861 and 1875, he read widely in Hebrew of all periods, and wrote a magnificent monograph on Hebrew poetry (Zur geschichte der jüdischen Poësie vom abschluss der Heiligen Schriften alten Bundes bis auf die neueste Zeit, Leipzig: K. Tauchnitz, 1836).

Tuvyah Ruebner just won the 2008 Israel Prize for poetry. What a fine poet he is. Below the fold, I provide an example of his art, with translation following.

שם אמרתי

יצאתי מביתי הארעי להראות לבני את מקום מוצאי

שם, אמרתי, שכבתי על הארץ

אבן למראשותי נמוך מן העשב

כעפר הארץ

הכל שם נשמר

עברנו בהרים וביערות ובערים שהיו

מערות והמים נקוו בדרך והכבישים היו רעים

המכונית דלגה על הבורות

 

מה האוויר המתוק הזה? שואלים בני

מה הטיח הנופל מהקירות

אין דבר, הגידה הישישה בחלון

כאן גם העתיד עבר. וסגרה את עיניה היבשות

כעוף העולה וקופל את כנפיו וצולל

כאן נולדתי, אמרתי לבני

הורי וזקני נולדו כאן קרוב

נולדים. כאן היה בית

אמרתי לבני והרוח עברה

ביני לבין המלים

 
יצאתי להראות לבני את מקום מוצאי, ומתי

נאכל; שואלים בני, ואיפה

נלון

 
מתוך: שמש חצות, ספרית פועלים, תשל"ז

There, I Said

 

I set out from my home of the moment to show my children

the place from whence I came.

“There,” I said, “I lay on the ground

beneath the grass, like dust of the earth,

a stone for my headrest,

everything is kept safe there.”

 

We passed through mountains, forests, and cities that were

caves, and water in pools along the way, and the roads were bad.

The car scrambled over the potholes.

 

“What’s that sweet air?” my children ask.

“What about the plaster falling from the walls?”

 

“It’s nothing,” said the old woman in the window,

“here, even the future is past.” And she shut her dry eyes

like a bird that ascends, folds its wings, and dives.

 

“I was born here,” I told my children.

“My parents, my ancestors, were born near here.

Born. Here was the house,”

I told my children, and the wind passed

between me and my words.

 

I set out to show my children the place

           from whence I came, “And when

will we eat?” my children ask, “And where

will we sleep?”

 

For another translation, by Matt Salomon, go here.

I reordered the contents of the first strophe for clarity’s sake. The reference to the Jacob narrative is obvious; at a minimum, the allusion is to a place of dreams. Note the use of the participles, which render the narrative more vivid, in contrast to qatal forms. Most of the vocabulary in the poem is found in the Bible. It’s easy to look up words one doesn’t know by pasting them into the search engine of an online Hebrew English dictionary (here is a list; I like Morfix and Milon).

Comments

[Leora]

Thank you for this introduction to Tuvya Reubner. I read elsewhere that his native language was not Hebrew but German. Makes his poetry all the more amazing. I appreciated the two translations; for example, "nishmar" is translated in two different ways.

The children's response at the end reminds me of my son's response, when he was four years old, to the news of my mother's death. "Will we eat supper there" (we were about to travel 5.5 hours to Boston) "or here?"

[JohnFH]

Leora,

you have a fine blog, by the way - I've seen it before.

Matt Salomon's translation of nishmar by "is preserved" is excellent, probably better than mine.