Poetry
בגלגל
Not translated into English
Avraham Shlonsky · 1927
Synopsis
The book gathers the poems born of the pioneers' work in the Jezreel Valley, including the cycle Amal, labour. The young labourer asks his mother there to dress him in a many-coloured tunic and to take him to work at dawn. The land wraps itself in light as in a prayer shawl, the houses stand up like phylacteries and the roads, opened by hand, flow like their straps. In the evening, the father returns from his toil and blesses his son for his flesh, his bones and his sinews. Jewish liturgy thus becomes the very language of labour.
Context
Shlonsky and his wife Lucia spent about ten months with the labour battalion and at kibbutz Ein Harod, at the foot of Gilboa, building roads and constructing, before reaching Tel Aviv. The poems of this short season, in particular the cycle Amal, have become the emblem of the third wave of immigration and of the pioneer ideal. The book appeared in 1927, the same year as Le-Abba Imma.
Who it is for
A collection of poems in Hebrew, with no French edition. It helps to know the prayer shawl and the phylacteries, which the author makes the substance of his images.
Prizes and reception
The poem Amal, which became a symbol of the pioneer era, appears in the major English anthologies of Hebrew poetry.
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