- Person
- Yehuda Amichai
- Lived
- 1924–2000
- Field
- Poetry
- From
- German-born Israeli
The story
Yehuda Amichai wrote in Hebrew, a language with a relatively small readership, yet he became one of the most widely read poets of his time around the world. His breakthrough abroad came in 1965, when Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort included his poems in the first issue of their magazine Modern Poetry in Translation. His first English book, Selected Poems, translated by Assia Gutmann, followed in 1968, and over the next three decades American and British publishers issued many more collections, some translated by Amichai himself with Hughes.
Sources differ on the exact count of languages. Wikipedia gives the figure as 40, while the Academy of American Poets puts it at thirty-seven. Either way, his books have appeared in languages as varied as Chinese, Japanese, Nepali, Russian and Burmese; in 2018, for example, 37 of his poems were published in Burmese translation in Yangon.
Translators have faced a real challenge. Admirers of the Hebrew originals point out that some of his richest effects come from choosing an ancient word over its modern equivalent. In one love poem he uses shaatnez, the biblical ban on weaving linen and wool together, which a Hebrew reader instantly understands as an image of forbidden union, but which English can only render as linsey-woolsey. Even so, his clear images and his ability to turn private experience into everybody's experience have travelled remarkably well.
Among his greatest champions was Hughes, who called him one of the biggest, most essential and most durable poetic voices of the past century. Amichai was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. He never won, but the nominations, the praise of fellow poets and the steady flow of translations made him one of the most internationally recognised voices of modern Hebrew literature.
His reach has continued since his death in 2000. New English editions keep appearing, among them The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, edited by Robert Alter in 2015, and in 2025 Pope Leo XIV quoted his lines in a Christmas address that was reported around the world.
Why it matters
Through translation, Amichai's poetry carried Hebrew literature and a humane vision of Israeli life to readers in many countries.
About Yehuda Amichai
Würzburg-born soldier-poet who wrote modern Israel’s love, war and doubt in everyday Hebrew, becoming its most widely read and translated poet.
More about Yehuda Amichai
- Yehuda Amichai brought everyday Hebrew into poetryWith his first collection in 1955, Yehuda Amichai became one of the first modern poets to write in colloquial Hebrew, turning prosaic subjects into poetic images.
- Yehuda Amichai's novel faced his German childhoodYehuda Amichai's 1963 novel Not of This Time, Not of This Place follows a young Israeli born in Germany, drawing on the poet's own life.
- Amichai's Open Closed Open was praised as deeply spiritualYehuda Amichai's late book Open Closed Open won high praise from poet Anthony Hecht, who called it as deeply spiritual a poem as any he had read in modern times.
- Many of Yehuda Amichai's poems were set to musicMany of Yehuda Amichai's poems have been set to music, by composers including Mohammed Fairouz and Benjamin Wallfisch.
- Yehuda Amichai taught literature in Israel and abroadYehuda Amichai taught literature at an Israeli teachers' seminary and to students from abroad at the Hebrew University, and was poet in residence at New York University in 1987.
Sources
- Yehuda Amichai Wikipedia
- Yehuda Amichai Academy of American Poets (Poets.org)
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