Asher Reich: portrait of a Hebrew poet 9780299181536, 9780299181543, 9780299181505

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Asher Reich

This book was made possible through cooperation

between the University of Wisconsin Press and | the University of Wisconsin—-Milwaukee Center for Jewish Studies.

Asher Reich Portrait of a Hebrew Poet

Yair Mazor Illustrations by

agi

~ Michael Kovner

The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street Madison, Wisconsin 53711 www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/ 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England Copyright © 2003 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

, All rights reserved | I3542 ! Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mazor, Yair, 1950-. The poetry of Asher Reich: portrait of a Hebrew poet / Yair Mazor; illustrations by Michael Kovner.

, — p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-299-18150-2 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-299-18154-5 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Reich, Asher, 1937— — Criticism and interpretation.

I. Kovner, Michael, 1948- Il. Title.

PJ5054.R389 263 2003

892.416 —dc21 2003005679

For YAEL, my daughter, | | for BILHA, my wife, and for RACHEL and ITZHAK,

my late, eternally remembered parents. Tender is your love.

and for SARAH ROSENTZWEIG

whose love and devotion, support and affection everlastingly rest, nest, in my heart.

What are we without our Loved ones

: Without our love Without our memories Good and bad

Without our yearnings Missed and met.

Y. M.

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LD OL et

_ 4 —aeLocull a aaade

Illustrations | ix ~ Asher Reich: No Fear of Flame 3 Michael Kovner: A Painter of Many Colors; or, |

Abstract Does Not Live Here Anymore 5 To Be or Not to Be Is Not the Question: How to Be and

How Not to Be Is Both the Question and the Answer IO Fervent Love Forever: Asher Reich's Poetic Portrait and

Its Prominent Role in Contemporary Hebrew Poetry 13

Notes 107 Works Cited III

The Poetry of Asher Reich: An Anthology «57

Index of Names 114 Index of Titles and Subjects 116 Vil

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~~ fF [llustrati UstVaTLONS

1. Morose Realism 8 2. All Drums Had Died 15

3. Mute and Tender 23 4. The Witty Touch of Simplicity 31 5. A Hounding Day of Doom 40

6. A Goddess Shrouded by Shadows 53

7. Doomed Is the Bloom 60 8. Portrait of a Pining Gloom 65

9. A Distant Landscape Mistily Hovers Above 68

10. Loom Loneliness 70 1. Lake Reflection of a Fir Forest 85

12. The Soul, Lonely Tree, Whispers a Hissed Lullaby 89 13. No Telegram Can Either Tell or Convey

Her Everlasting Sorrow 94.

14. Landscape: No Place for Softness 97 15. Oh, Lord, Did You Ever Envision Such a Doleful View? 102 ix

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Asher Reich

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Ae

sher Reich

No Fear of Flame

Asher Reich is a prominent and fascinating voice in the intricate choir of contemporary Hebrew/Israeli poetry. Born in Jerusalem in 1937, he is firmly rooted in the cultural landscape of Israel’s secular society—which has enthusiastically absorbed the artistic values of

America and Europe—although he was educated in a religious, orthodox Jewish school and yeshiva until the age of eighteen. Reich's colorful and expressionistic poetry faithfully reflects the dual strands of his biography. Conservative past meets the defiant, liberal secular present, and layers of Jewish sources—the Bible, the Talmud, the Torah, pious prayers, folk tales, and aphorisms— interlace with modern Western values in art, culture, and philosophy. In Reich's poetry, polar opposites meet and yield a uniquely colorful and rich texture. If a flame is a metaphor for fervent passion, vitality, and sensuality,

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SY Asher Reich then Asher Reich’s poetry can be described as one that plausibly displays fervent love forever and never fears flame. Recognition came early, in 1961, when he won the Anne Frank Award from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. His first pub-

lished volume of poetry, On the Seventh Year of My Wanderings (1962), marked his arrival as a contemporary Hebrew/Israeli poet. His second volume, A Nocturnal Sunrise (1969), won a distinguished

prize from the Israeli Association of Artists, Composers, and Writers. More volumes of poetry followed: The State of Affairs (1975), A Reference (1978), Womens Tractate (1980), A New Packet (1983), Table

of Contents (1983; awarded the Bernstein Prize of the Federation of Israeli Publishers), Works on Paper (1988), Fictional Facts (1993), Winter Music (1996), The Face of Earth (1999), and Lifeless Future

(2003). Other awards include the Israeli Prime Minister Prize for Poetry (1989), a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship in Berlin (1990), Tel Aviv Award for poetry (1992), and Israel’s President Prize (2000). In 1999, Reich was elected to the German Academy of Poetry and Languages. And in 2000 he was given the Poetry Prize by the city of Basel, Switzerland. Reich’s poetry has been translated into twenty languages. Tou-

louse Press published a volume of his poetry in French in 1980. Works on Paper was published in German (Arbeit auf Papier) in 1992,

and Winter Music is forthcoming in German, both by Rowhot Press. ~ Reich’s novel, Memoirs of an Amnesiac, is currently in press in German translation by Bleicher Publishing House. Reich also writes prose fiction. His novel, Memoirs of an Amnesiac,

was published in 1997, and his volume of short stories, A Man with a

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Door, is currently in press. He was editor-in-chief of Moznayim, a

| monthly literary periodical of the Israeli Association of Writers. He has taught creative writing in various academic institutions, including Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva. He lives in Israel.

LOA _ yf ya 4

Michael K A Painter of Many Colors; or, Abstract Does Not Live Here Anymore

Michael Kovner was born in 1948 on Kibbutz Ein-Hachoresh (“Spring of the plower”) in the sylvan part of the Galilee.! After completing his military service in the paratroopers’ elite commando squad (under Ehud Barak, who became chief of staff of the Israeli army and later prime minister of Israel), Kovner studied art, painting, and drawing at the New York Studio School under Philip Guston, Mercedes Matter, and Steven Sloman. He is one of Israel’s most gifted artists. Kovner did not surrender to the sweeping postmodernist spirit of perplexing abstract and nonfigurative painting associated with such

styles as minimalist art, Arte Povera (poor art), and conceptual art. Rather, his work has a figurative, lyrical touch that corresponds to

)

FP Michael Kovner French fauvism (a branch of French impressionism), to postimpressionism, and to some extent to cubism. His works cover such wideranging themes and subjects as Israeli landscapes, evincing some influence of cubism; tenderly erotic female figures, often reminiscent

of Edvard Munch's dusky, murky expressionistic paintings; urban sites and still life, which seem to marry a fauvist touch with urban futurism and Paul Cezanne’s commencing cubist inclinations; and “untamed” nature, which reveals a singularly personal and intimate style of postimpressionism. In no way diminishing Kovner’s origi_ nality, the artistic influences that his art has enlisted, absorbed, and — ~ internalized have acted as an Archimedan point, a “goading trigger,”

a springboard from which his art tracks, invents, cultivates, and fashions its unique artistic handwriting. Kovner’s work has been shown in museums and galleries in Israel

and abroad. His one-person exhibitions have included “Paintings from New York’ (Artists House, Jerusalem, 1978), “Landscape Drawings: From Flying Bird’s Perspective” (Binet Gallery, Tel Aviv,

1979), “Old Desert Paintings” (Binet Gallery, 1981), “Houses in Gaza’ (Binet, 1983), “Images: Painting Inspired by Lego” (Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv, 1985), “Meet an Israeli Artist” (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1988), “Portraits” (Binet, 1988), “Landscapes” (Binet, 1990), “Jerusalem Scenes” (Binet, 1992), “A Girl in a Room” (Binet, 1995), and “End of the Year 1995” (Binet, 1996; NAFI Gallery, New York, 1997; and Yale University, 1997). His works have appeared in such

group exhibitions as “A Turning Point: Twelve Israeli Artists” (Israel

Museum, Jerusalem, 1987), “Towards a New Realism” (Ashdot-

| Yaakov museum, near the Sea of Galilee, 1988), “Fresh Paint: The Younger Generation of Painters in Israel” (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1992), “A Tribute to Ayala’ (Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1995; Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art, 1997), “Landscapes” (Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art, 1997), and “Port” (Haifa Art Museum, 1998).

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Michael Kovner Wye The artistic evolution of Kovner'’s paintings and drawings was motivated by ideology. It seems to have begun during the mid-1970s,

after a long stay in southern France and Italy amid traditional art and painting, when Kovner concluded that the fashion of abstract painting had come to a dead end.” His conclusion proved beneficial, for it enabled him to develop to the fullest his personal artistic potential and to mark his own unique territory in the artistic landscape of contemporary Israeli painting, which tends toward abstract and deliberately obscure “conceptual art” and “minimalist art.” Many of Kovner’s early paintings (from the mid-1970s through the eighties) portray stark landscapes of the Israeli desert, the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, or wooded sites in Jerusalem. They use striking colors, which seem to enhance the landscape’s tempestuous, even turbulent quality, its restless, relentless movements. These landscapes strongly emphasize the outlines of steep slopes, stones, rocks, and trees, echoing Vincent Van Gogh’s piercing forcefulness, yet bestowing a touch of assertive expressionism as well as bold, vibrant

impressionism and postimpressionism. Other paintings portray buildings in semirural landscapes, which seem to reflect several influences. While the bold colors bring to mind French fauvism (for instance, Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy’s beaming color spectrum, or Robert Delaunay), the objects (mostly houses) tend to echo the cub_ ist, plain architecture of the German Bauhaus style, tinted by a Middle Eastern atmosphere that corresponds to Giorgio de Chirico’s and

Edward Hopper’s cold surrealism. The fingerprints of de Chirico and Hopper are particularly visible in Kovner’s paintings of the eighties, which present toys, shop windows, and other objects in a surrealistic atmosphere of cold, dreamlike alienation and a scary, even nightmarish ambience. In his series of portraits (1985), Kovner displays a skillful and delightful ability to incorporate various artistic sources in his own innovative work. Thus, the colorful portraits

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