Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel's National Poet
Yehuda Amichai is one of the twentieth century's (and Israel's) leading poets. In this remarkable book, Gold offers a profound reinterpretation of Amichai's early works, using two sets of untapped materials: notes and notebooks written by Amichai in Hebrew and German that are now preserved in the Beinecke archive at Yale, and a cache of ninety-eight as-yet unpublished letters written by Amichai in 1947 and 1948 to a woman identified in the book as Rudi Z., which were recently discovered by Gold.
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An astonishing revision of the prevailing critical analysis of the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, based on newly discovered materials
1 Introduction: Camouflage as the Key to the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai 12 Childhood in Wuerzburg: A Dubious Paradise 263 The Murky Mirror of Wuerzburg in Amichai's Work 474 Hiding between the Languages: The German Mother Tongue in Amichai's Universe 1015 Growing Up in Palestine 1516 "And the Migration of My Parents Has Not Subsided in Me" 1607 The Love Story 1918 The Literary Legacy of the Love Story: "Binyamina, 1947" and "We Loved Here" 2099 The Lovers in the Public Garden 24310 The Haifa Letters: The Making of an Israeli 26711 The Making of a National Poet 29012 Conclusion: Retrieving the Abandoned Landmarks 313App. A Texts of Poems Discussed in Their Entirety 325App. B Map of Wuerzburg and Legend 350Select Bibliography 425Index 435Illustrations follow page 178
\ From the Publisher"The complexities of the Hebrew revival are at the center of Nili Scharf Gold's exhaustively researched, passionately argued and highly persuasive study of Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000), Israel's 'beloved unofficial national poet.'"--Washington Post\ " . . . groundbreaking . . . Yehuda Amichai caps years of obviously painstaking and devoted research. Gold's skillful efforts have yielded an achievement of serious scholarship and academic significance, packaged in a format accessible to the general public."--Jerusalem Post\ "[Gold] has written a very exciting book that enriches and deepens the poet's personality, showing it to be much more complex than previously portrayed. This is a persuasive, unique book that is strongly supported by sources and poetry, a book that presents a new poet - more complex and fascinating than ever, and a faithful representative of his people. Not only does the new side of Amichai revealed in Gold's book enrich his marvelous poetry, it depicts Israel as a multicultural society, gathered from all ends of the earth, bearing numerous and varied traditions. And his Israeliness in combination with his distinct Jewishness gives rise to a rare complexity that is perfectly blended in this representative of all the generations."--Haaretz\ "Nili Scharf Gold is an impressive scholar, and her reading of Amichai's poems is enormously valuable . . . There is genuinely new and useful material is this book. . . . He was always Israel's best ambassador whether on a public stage or in a social gathering, and that is the memory that will endure. But Nili Scharf Gold has given us fresh look and an important book. Anyone interested in Amichai will be grateful for it."--Jewish Quarterly\ \ \
