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Six chapters of verse from the prolific Hebrew poet, editor, and translator, Abraham David ben Tuvia Shlonsky. Shlonsky holds a central position in the development of modern Hebrew poetry and modern Israel poetry in particular. His work marks the transition from the rhetorical, didactic, naturalist type of poetry of the European period to the modernist, symbolic, and individualistic poetry of the Palestinian and Israel periods. Modernism entered European and Russian poetry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but reached Hebrew literature somewhat later. Although symbolism and expressionism had some influence on Hebrew literature before Shlonsky's day, the subsequent shift to these types of poetry is primarily due to him. His contribution to the development of modern Hebrew literature goes beyond his achievements in poetry. By his manifold literary activities as editor, translator, polemicist, popular lyricist, editor for the theater, and author of children's literature, he set the literary tone for an entire generation.
He was born in a Hasidic family in Karyokov, Poltava guberniya. His younger sister was composer and pianist Verdina Shlonsky. When he was 13 (1913), he was sent to Israel to study at the prestigious Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv. When the First World War broke out, he returned to Russia. Shlonsky published his first poem in 1919 in the newspaper Ha-Shiluah. In 1921 he relocated to the Land of Israel as a development worker, paving roads and working in construction. At the same time, he contributed to Jewish cultural life with songs for the satirical stage productions of the time, as well as the Purim holiday costume balls that were a tradition in early Tel Aviv. Even then, he showed a tendency for witty writing, incorporating linguistic innovations. During this period, he edited the literary columns of several newspapers. Gradually he became the representative of the "rebel" group against the poetry of Bialik and his generation, expressing a particular aversion to their characteristic clichés. His group tried to create a new, youthful, lively poetry, not a hand-me-down 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 beginning poets an opportunity to publish their poems. Dalia Rabikovich merited one such opportunity when her first poem was published in the literary quarterly Orlogin that Shlonsky edited. His sensitive activism on behalf of Boris Gaponov is especially remembered to his credit. 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. (Shneiderman 1970) Shlonsky orchestrated the publication of this translation in Israel, and was among those who worked to enable Gaponov to immigrate to Israel. When Gaponov, who had learned Hebrew by listening to Israel Radio broadcasts, finally immigrated to Israel he was already very ill and near the end of his days. Israeli television viewers of the time remember the image of Shlonsky stroking Gaponov's head in a loving, fatherly manner, as the latter lay on his sickbed. Despite his reputation for comic wit, Shlonsky did not shrink from the tragic situation around him, but rather expressed it in his works. In the poem "Distress" he laments the fate of the victims of the First World War and of the Jews who suffered from pogroms in Ukraine during the Bolshevik revolution. During the Holocaust, he published a collection of verse titled ממחשכים (from concealing shadows) in which he expressed his feelings from that darkest period in human history. He particularly lamented the fate of the Jews in a diseased Europe. In 1967 Shlonsky won the Israel Prize for literature.
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