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In Hebrew. 159 pages. 20 x 14 cm. Large tear dust jacket verso. Pages are yellowed. Avraham Shlonsky (March 6, 1900 Kryukovo (Poltava guberniya, now a part of Kremenchuk, Ukraine) - May 18, 1973 Tel Aviv, Israel) was a major Israeli poet and editor, influential in the development of modern Hebrew and its literature in Israel through his many acclaimed translations of literary classics, particularly from Russian, as well as his own original Hebrew children's classics. He brought unusually clever and astute innovations in the newly evolving Hebrew language. Shlonsky was born to a Hasidic family. His father, Tuvia, was a Chabad Hasid, and his mother, Tzippora, was a Russian revolutionary. When she was pregnant with her sixth child, she hid illegal posters on her body. Five-year-old Avraham informed on his mother, leading to her arrest. In 1913, when Shlonsky was 13, he was sent to Ottoman Palestine to study at the prestigious Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv. When the First World War broke out, he returned to Ukraine. In 1921, the whole family moved to Palestine. Tuvia Shlonsky worked as a warehouse manager and bookkeeper in the Shemen factory in Haifa. Avraham was a manual laborer, paving roads and working in construction along with other members of the Third Aliyah. He joined Gdud Ha'avoda and helped to establish Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley. He married Lucia but conducted a secret affair with Mira Horowitz, the wife of a friend and colleague. She had a child with him in 1936. Shlonsky published his first poem in 1919 in the newspaper Ha-Shiloah. He contributed to Jewish cultural life with songs for satirical stage productions, as well as the Purim holiday costume balls that were a tradition in early Tel Aviv. Even at this early stage in his career as a poet, he showed a tendency for witty writing, incorporating linguistic innovations in the revived and developing Hebrew language. During this period, he edited the literary columns of several newspapers. Gradually, he became the representative of the "rebel" group that rebelled against the poetry of Bialik and his generation, expressing a particular aversion to what was seen as their characteristic clichés. The new group tried to create a vibrant, youthful, lively poetry, and not perpetuate what they saw as being something second-hand from the literary establishment. For years, perhaps as a result of this stance, Shlonsky's poetry was not taught in schools alongside the classic poems of Bialik, Shaul Tchernichovsky, David Shimoni, and others. In 1933 Shlonsky founded the literary weekly Turim, which was identified with the "Yachdav" society in which major poets Natan Alterman and Leah Goldberg were also members. As an editor, Shlonsky gave aspiring poets an opportunity to publish their poems. Dahlia Ravikovitch merited one such opportunity when her first poem was published in the literary quarterly Orlogin edited by Shlonsky. Shlonsky was noted for his sensitive activism on behalf of Boris Gaponov. Gaponov, as editor of the Communist Party daily in an auto plant in Soviet Georgia, translated the Georgian epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin by Shota Rustaveli into Hebrew. Shlonsky orchestrated the publication of this translation in Israel, and was among those who worked to enable Gaponov to immigrate to Israel. Despite his reputation for comic wit, Shlonsky did not shrink from the tragic situation around him, but rather expressed it in his works. In 1946, Shlonsky received the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation, for his translations of the novel Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin and the play Hamlet by Shakespeare. Shlonsky is among the finest Hebrew children's poets. In Shlonsky's translation for the stage, all of the monologues and dialogues are spoken in rhyme. They incorporate sophisticated wordplay using the Hebrew language at a high level. Shlonsky translated many of the world's best known classics. . . . Seller Inventory # 014499
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