Greetings From Angelus: Poems - Softcover

Scholem, Gershom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0914671979 ISBN 13: 9780914671978

Publisher: Archipelago, 2018

Synopsis

A bilingual collection of poetry from pioneering scholar in Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem.

With this volume, Scholem's work reaches beyond the confines of the academy and enters a literary dialogue with writers and philosophers like Walter Benjamin and Hans Jonas.

Gershom Scholem's Greetings From Angelus contains dark, lucid political poems about Zionism and assimilation, parodies of German and Jewish philosophers, and poems to writers and friends such as Walter Benjamin, Hans Jonas, Ingeborg Bachmann, S. Y. Agnon, among others. The earliest poems in this volume begin in 1915 and extend to 1967, revealing how poetry played a formative role in Scholem's early life and career. This collection is translated by Richard Sieburth, who comments, "Scholem's acts of poetry still speak to us (and against us) to this very day, simultaneously grounded as they are in the impossibly eternal and profoundly occasional." The volume is edited and introduced by Steven M. Wasserstrom, who carefully situates the poems in Scholem's historical, biographical, and theological landscape.

One of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century, Gershom Scholem virtually created the subject of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Literature played a crucial role in his life, especially in his formative years. This bilingual volume contains his dark, shockingly prescient poems about Zionism, his parodies of German and Jewish philosophers, and poems to other writers, notably a series of powerful lyrics addressed over the course of years to his closest and oldest friend, Walter Benjamin.
 
Translator Richard Sieburth comments, “Scholem’s acts of poetry still speak to us (and against us) to this very day, grounded as they are in the impossibly eternal and profoundly occasional.”

About this title

About the Author:

Gershom Scholem, philosopher, writer, historian, and poet, was born in Berlin in 1897 and settled in Jerusalem in 1923. For years he was Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University. His many books include Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, and Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. He died in 1982.
 
Richard Sieburth is a Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at New York University. His translations include Hölderlin’s Hymns and Fragments and Benjamin’s Moscow Diary—and for Archipelago, Büchner’s Lenz, The Salt Smugglers by Gérard de Nerval, Maurice Scève’s Delie, and Stroke by Stroke by Henri Michaux. His English edition of Nerval’s Selected Writings won the 2000 PEN Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize.
 
Steven M. Wasserstrom is the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College. He is the author of Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam, which received the Award for Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion, and Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

TO THEODOR HERZL
He was the first to pronounce the words
That lifted us to the heights of light,
He was the first to dare a new world
That rose unsuspected before our eyes!
He preceded us with steps that gladly moved ahead
And showed untrodden paths to those in doubt!
To us who suffered from the past in dread
He pointed to a better springtime, a new way out!
He spoke for those who had repressed their longing
And for those devoured by silent grief,
And they all bowed their heads, now belonging
To him who had come to slake their disbelief.
We shall never forget what it was he meant,
Who gave us this dream so rich, so glowing,
And who restored what we had once possessed
And what we had lost—without our knowing!
He shouted of a world that rose, amazed
At his words, the words of our own distress.
He held the flag high as the enemy raged,
And the flag was bloody red.
Thursday, 10.111.1915

AN THEODOR HERZL!
Er war der erste, der die Worte sagte
Die uns erhoben zu den lichten Höhn,
Er war der erste, der das neue wagte,
Vor unseren Augen Niegeahntes ließ erstehn!
Er ging voran mit zukunftsfrohen Schritten
Und wies den Schwankenden die unbetretenen Bahnen!
Uns die wir bitter am Vergangnen litten,
Ließ er den neuen, bessern Frühling ahnen!
Er sprach für die die ihre Sehnsucht schweigen
An denen einsam frißt der stille Gram,
Sie alle hießen nun ihr Haupt sich beugen
Vor ihm, als zu den Hungrigen er kam.
Wir warden seiner nicht vergessen,
Der neu uns gab den bilderreichen Traum,
Der auferstehen ließ, was einstmals wir besessen,
War wir verloren—und wir fühlten’s kaum!
Er schrie der Welt, die staunend sich erhoben,
Die Worte zu, die Worte unserer Not.
Er hielt uns hoch, unter der Feinde Toben,
Die Fahne, und die Fahne war blutrot!
Donnerstag, den 10.111.1915

About this edition

• Publisher: Archipelago
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0914671979
• ISBN 13: 9780914671978
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 150