Poetry
עכשיו ובימים האחרים
Not translated into English
Yehuda Amichai · 1955
Synopsis
Amichai's first collection, eighty pages of poems. Many return to the war of 1948 and the dead it left behind: “God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children” measures a divine pity that decreases as one grows up, down to the wounded soldiers crawling in the burning sand; “Rain on a Battlefield” tells of a friend's death. Other poems speak of the father, or of love, in a sequence titled “High Up in the Tree, Pine Cones”. Irony keeps horror at a distance, and everyday language sits alongside modern images.
Context
The collection appeared in 1955 in Tel Aviv from Likrat, in 81 pages; Nathan Zach had edited the poems. It had the effect of a revolution: Amichai spoke there of an individual's emotions in a new language, and irony served as a response to the trauma of war. The title takes up the last line of the poem on divine pity. The book received the Shlonsky Prize in 1957, a journal took its name, Akhshav, and its poems were reprinted in Shirim 1948-1962, from Schocken.
Who it is for
A slim collection, with no complete French edition. It helps to know what the fighting for independence was like for those who took part in it.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the most important books in the history of Israeli poetry; Shlonsky Prize 1957.