Yehuda Amichai
Yehuda Amichai was an Israeli poet, novelist, playwright, and translator who worked across multiple literary forms in Hebrew.
Born on May 3, 1924, in Würzburg, Amichai was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His working languages included both Hebrew and German, and alongside his creative writing he also worked as an educator.
Over the course of his career, Amichai received a number of literary honors. These included the Bialik Prize, the Brenner Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize. He also received the ACUM award, the Golden Wreath, and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award.
Amichai died on September 22, 2000, in Jerusalem. His work spanned poetry, prose fiction, drama, and translation, with Hebrew serving as his primary literary language across each of these forms.
Quotes by Yehuda Amichai
The echo of a great love is like the echo of a huge dog’s barking in an empty Jerusalem house marked for demolition.
Il diametro della bomba era di trenta centimetri e il diametro del suo raggio d’azione era di circa sette metri, con quattro morti e undici feriti... E non parliamo nemmeno del pianto degli orfani che si leva fino al trono di Dio e ben oltre, creando un creando un cerchio senza fine e senza Dio.
My love turns me like a salt sea, it seems, Into sweet drops of autumn’s first rain. I’m brought to you slowly as I fall. Take me in. For us there’s no angel who will come to redeem. For we are together. Each of us alone.
Knowledge of peace passes from country to country, like children’s games, which are so much alike, everywhere.
I was a very religious child – I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good – I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.
I think the end is endless. It’s either a big black hole or a big white light or both together. But it’s totally meaningless, because even if someone would explain it, I wouldn’t understand it.
A flock of sheep near the airport or a high voltage generator beside the orchard: these combinations open up my life like a wound, but they also heal it. That’s why my feelings always come in twos.
I’ve often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.