POEMS FROM THE HEBREW
London, England: 1924. First Edition. Hardcover. Quarto. Olive green cloth over boards with gilt lettering to front board and spine. Rubbing to extremities (corners and spinecaps, in particular, and some staining to edges of this more than 100-year-old book.) Hinge starting, but still holding, with sizeable and quite readable print upon supple pages. A good reading copy from this enormously talented poet.
A selection of 39 of Bialik's poems, largely in "the language of the Old Testament, unchanged as to grammar, but enormously enriched as to vocabulary, by additions made during some twenty-five centuries of literary evolution -- the Talmud, rabbinical books, medieval philosophy and poetry..." (from Introduction by Vladimir Jabotinsky)
Chaim Nachman Bialik (pronounced Bee-ALL-ik) born in 1872 in a village of South Russia,was known best as the poet of the Hebrew Renaissance, but he was also the folk poet, the poet of the common people...He emerged from a strictly theological education whose gaps the poet had later to fill in bh hard reading and self-tuition; a literary career, successful and brilliant from its very beginning; then, almost suddenly, a relapse into silence which...lasted, with but few interruptions, well over ten years. (also from Jabotinsky's Introduction).
A solid, if unglamorous reading copy and an apt introduction to this soulful yet incisive poetic voice. Good. Item #100882
Price: $65.00