Travels: A Bilingual Edition - Softcover

Amichai, Yehuda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0935296638 ISBN 13: 9780935296631

Publisher: Sheep Meadow Press, 1986

Synopsis

Poems, in both the original Hebrew and English translation, deal with childhood, life in Israel, Jewish tradition, and history.

About this title

Review:

Vallejo's poetry combines excruciatingly personal emotions with imagery that at first appears facetious but turns out to be wordplay with a larger purpose. ``Hot bakery of my former biscuits, / pure egg yolk childlike innumerable, mother, '' begins one of many poems that mourn his mother's death; but it is himself he ends up lamenting, since ``everyone keeps charging us / the rent for the world where you left us / and the value of this everlasting bread.'' The 77 poems reflect upon the poet's dual Spanish and Peruvian Indian heritage in a dialect that mocks Spanish grammar with Incan idioms, plays on the similarities between words and tosses in medical terms (Vallejo attended medical school) to enhance the surreal effect. Seiferle's insightful introduction and footnotes serve as necessary maps to the book's political context--Vallejo's assertion of the Incan side of his identity--and intellectual strengths. The sensitive translation of an extremely difficult text in this bilingual edition commemorates the centennial of Vallejo's birth and the 70th anniversary of the book's original publication; ironically, it also coincides with the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America.--PW

About the Author:

YEHUDA AMICHAI was born in Wurzburg, Germany, in 1924 and emigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936. Amichai published eleven volumes of poetry in Hebrew, two novels, and a book of short stories. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. In 1982, Amichai received the Israel Prize for Poetry, and he became a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986. He lived in Jerusalem until his death on September 25, 2000.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sheep Meadow Press
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0935296638
• ISBN 13: 9780935296631
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 141