The Doubts and Loves of Yehuda Amichai: Israeli, European, and International Poet presents the life and works of Yehuda Amichai, born Ludwig Pfeuffer in W?rzburg, Germany. The book is based on copious material from Amichai's personal archive in the Beinecke Library at Yale University, other archives and numerous interviews with family members and others who knew him well. Each phase of the biography is linked to its overarching historical context and provides a literary analysis of the key features of his writing. What emerges is a multifaceted picture of a crucial period in the 20th century in which Amichai was both a witness and an actor, without ever taking a simplistic, direct position in his poetry.
Amichai, an engaged political poet, was an enlightened, humanitarian European while remaining an authentic Israeli who loved his country and was deeply involved finding solutions to its problems. Amichai was also a great admirer of women. The analysis of his tempestuous love life helps shed light on important aspects of his prose and poetry. Several chapters are also devoted to the background and influence of Amichai's works in genres other than poetry including his two novels and a collection of short stories, his radio plays, and his children's poetry.
Industry Reviews
Ido Bassok is a master of his dual craft: he is a thorough and meticulous researcher, whose treatment of archival materials demonstrates the depth of his knowledge and insights which he harnesses to weave events small and large into a complete life. More importantly, and this is his power as a biographer, he knows how to tell a story. He knows how to evaluate a good anecdote and to frame it and is aware of the characters who populate his book. He provides a vivid setting to Amichai's works, and turns him from a lexical item into the protagonist of a rich literary work. --Dr. Yehosheva Samet-Sheinberg, researcher and critic Ido Bassok plunged into the archives and has produced a detailed, comprehensive and complete research work. His in-depth examination of the media from every period of Amichai's life and his correspondence, his analysis of Amichai's numerous interviews, criticism and diverse texts brings to life the voices of dozens of men and women who knew him. --Nitza Ben Dov, professor emeritus at Haifa University? and laureate of Israel Prize for literary research This comprehensive book provides a robust grasp of Amichai's multidimensional thinking by anchoring it firmly in his life story. Bassok leans towards both detail and the big picture, and the reader gets to know Amichai's complex environment from his forebears to beyond his death. This biography provides the readers of his poems with a particularly vital interpretive tool since Amichai's poems rely heavily and fundamentally on his actual life. --Tsur Ehrlich, deputy editor of the quarterly Hashiloach This is a thoroughly researched and well-written literary biography of Yehuda Amichai, the internationally renowned Israeli poet. Both as a literary historian and as one of the few surviving contemporaries of the poet, I can testify to veracity of this volume: everything here is true: from the detailed account of Amichai poetic career to the empathic yet perspicacious portrayal of the lovely person Amichai was. Bassok's book clearly achieves its goal of telling Amichai's story fully, elegantly, and truthfully. --Dan Miron, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Leonard Kaye Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at Columbia University of New York City
