Leah Goldberg
Leah Goldberg or Lea Goldberg (Hebrew: לאה גולדברג; May 29, 1911, Königsberg – January 15, 1970, Jerusalem) was a prolific Hebrew-language poet, author, playwright, literary translator, illustrater and painter, and comparative literary researcher.
Quotes
[edit]- My days are engraved in my poems
like years in the rings of a tree
like the years of my life in the furrows of my brow- first lines of "About Myself", translated from Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back. Included in Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama (2005)
- death. Its weight is not great.
How lightly and with what casual grace
we carry it with us everywhere we go.- fragment from "The Eighth Part (At Least) of Everything", collected in The Remains of Life (1978). Translation from the Hebrew by Robert Friend in Burning Air and a Clear Mind: Contemporary Israeli Women Poets edited by Myra Glazer (1981)
- A young poet suddenly falls silent
for fear of telling the truth.
An old poet falls silent for fear
the best in a poem
is its lie.- poem collected in The Remains of Life (1978). Translated from Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back and included in Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama (2005)
- The years have made up my face
with memories of loves
and have adorned my hair with light silver threads
making me most beautiful.
In my eyes are reflected
the landscapes.
And paths I have trod
have straightened my stride –
tired and lovely steps.
If you should see me now
you would not recognize your yesterdays –
I am walking toward myself
with a face you searched for in vain
when I was walking toward you.
- "Toward Myself" collected in With the Night (1964). Translated from Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back and included in Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama (2005)
- How the passing of Time tries me,
its double reckoning my duty and my right:
Every day it constructs and ruins me
completing thus my life and my death.- "Time" collected in Lightning in the Morning (1955). Translated from Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back and included in Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama (2005)
- The world is heavy on our eyelids
- translated from Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back. First line of poem and included in Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama (2005) in the section "Early Poems"
Quotes about
[edit]- preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters
- Rachel Tzvia Back, "The Last Poems of Lea Goldberg" (May 30, 2017)
- Leah Goldberg, as well as Anda Pinkerfeld-Amir, wrote verse for children, but she is best known for her modernist poetry. In line with contemporary European modernist poetry, she often expressed the poet's inner struggle during the act of writing, and the difficulties in overcoming this inherently artificial medium. Leah Goldberg was active in the field of literary criticism and translation, especially from Russian, and was in search of revolutionary techniques. She experimented with prose as well as drama. Her play "Ba'alat Ha'armon' ('The Castle Owner') introduced the difficult theme of the Holocaust to women's writing.
- Risa Domb, Introduction in New Women's Writing from Israel (1996)
- one of the most important women in contemporary Hebrew literature...At her peak, Goldberg wrote beautifully and sadly about thwarted love
- Vivian Eden, "Life Remains on the Surface of Silence: Lea Goldberg’s Last Poems" (March 28, 2018)
Eilat Negev, Close Encounters with Twenty Israeli Writers (2003)
[edit]- Goldberg lived the bohemian life, debating for days on end with her poet friends in the Tel Aviv cafés.
- The poet, Tuvia Ribner, a close friend for dozens of years, and the executor of her literary estate said: "The memory of the father and her fear accompanied Leah to adulthood. This is the reason, I believe, that she chose the stricter poetic forms, such as a sonnet, which has 14 lines, meticulous rhyming scheme and fixed rhythm, and avoided loose rhythms. Her poetics emerge from a strong need for self-control, every single one of her poems having a rational basis, meant to guard the poem and herself.
- biographer Professor Leiblich: "...from an early stage, she felt herself old, heavy, too serious. She had a sense of guilt about all her loves, she perceived love as a nuisance, something to beware of."
- She was always guarding her secrets behind walls, and her love poems were covered under seven veils of mystery; among her most beautiful is the sonnet sequence, 'The Love of Theresa De-Mon'
- Professor Amiya Leiblich: " 'She suffered from emotional deficiency...She had a permanent guilt towards all the men she was in love with, as well as an inferiority complex. Even in poetry, where her value and superiority were unmistakable, she always thought she was lacking, and not as good as Ben-Yitzhak. As a feminist, I am indignant that a poet as great as Goldberg, erased herself, not just as a woman, but as an artist.'
- 'At times of lack of inspiration in writing, she turned to painting. She often made sketches of the literary protagonists who furnished her life, as she visualized them in her imagination', remembers her friend, the poet T. Carmi.
- 'Leah Goldberg felt herself kin with Dante, Kafka, Beethoven, who also had imaginary loves, which were the muses that ignited their great works', concludes Professor Amiya Leiblich: "First and foremost, she was a poet, willing to let go of life for art's sake. The woman who experienced a miserable love life, succeeded in producing gentle love poems, and remains Israel's High Priestess of Love, who couples quote in moments of the most intense emotional harmony."
- Jerusalem, adorned with the memories of the past, appealed to her more than the 'white cardboard boxes', which she associated with Tel Aviv.
- She was a fascinating university lecturer, who loved to stand on the pedestal, her eternal cigarette in her hand, and read poetry in her deep, rough, unpleasant voice, that nevertheless drew crowds into over-stuffed auditoriums.
- Although she became the Head of Comparative Literature Studies, she remained alien in the academic establishment. 'Being both an artist and a woman, the male colleagues belittled her academic achievements, and she had a hard struggle to be nominated as a professor', recalls Esther Tishbi, a friend.
- Leah Goldberg expanded the spectrum of lyricism, her poems speaking of a search for love, contact and attention, and she inspired hordes of young poets, mostly women. But she became an easy target for the new rebellious generation of poets and critics, who feared to attack the male figureheads like Shlonsky and Alterman. She complained to Tuvia Ribner, 'What do they want from me, I was never at the centre of the stage. Why do they pick on me?'
