Sloan-Kettering: Poems - Couverture souple

Kovner, Abba

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0805211454 ISBN 13 : 9780805211450

Editeur : Schocken, 2004

Synopsis

In this luminous collection of poems, Abba Kovner records his deep engagement with life during his last days, as he lay dying of cancer in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Kovner, the famed Jewish resistance fighter who led the Vilna ghetto uprising during World War II, was also a beloved master of Hebrew literature, and his work has seldom appeared in English. This translation brings us the fierce and humble gratitude of a visionary who has been a fighter not just for himself but for a whole people, as Kovner takes up his pen to say goodbye to a precious, if flawed, world.
 
Weaving together his perceptions of the present moment (“How little we need/to be happy: a half kilo increase in weight,/two circuits of the corridors”); his sorrow at leaving the world (his wife knitting at his bedside, the chatter of his grandsons); the dramatic loss of his vocal cords (“Have I no right to die/while still alive?”); and memories of his heroic comrades in the Baltic forest, Kovner emerges from these pages with yet another kind of heroism. His continual movement toward freedom and his desire to give a complete account of the gift of life, even as that life is failing, make his words stirring and unforgettable.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

ABBA KOVNER (1918–1987) was born in Sebastopol, Russia, and was a leader in the Vilna ghetto uprising during World War II. After the war, he helped take European Jews into Palestine, where he settled with his wife. In 1970, he won the Israel Prize for Literature.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

I. INTRODUCTION


And like that
the door opened without a click
pushing aside the shifting straw curtain
his shadow entered
followed by the man with his mane
of dark hair
a young man with
large eyes

At once
they took their places at the head of his bed
(the shadow quietly folded itself away
between the sink and the bedpans)
and with the stance of a Trappist-to-be
he declared: "The time has come.
"My time has come?" he trembled.
"That's what I said," he added
like a professional phantom.
"Where are we going, do you really know the way?"
"We are taking you there." He fell silent.
"Can I ask a question?"
"Too late."

(The swine!) "Let me take a towel,
some soap, a book?"
"Unnecessary. Anyone who enters
comes out as he went in."

At once he turned
to leave. As he went out,
trailing after him came his smell, his shadow
and his dread.



II. THE CORRIDOR


He fell asleep under strange skies

He fell asleep under strange skies.
Vaulted windows
the neo-renaissance style
of New York Hospital. Outside
the last thing his eyes took in
clearly:
three chimneys a crematorium
a red-tiled roof at the back
Rockefeller University,
the medical center,
a world of vanished routines,
your home and your rooms suddenly emptied
of yesterday's light.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Schocken
• Date d'édition: 2004
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0805211454
• ISBN 13: 9780805211450
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 160
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarie