The poet Nathan Zach passed away at the age of 89

The poet Natan Zach, one of the most important and influential creators in Israeli culture for generations, passed away at the age of 89. In recent years, he has contracted Alzheimer’s, and his health has deteriorated.

Zach, who worked as a poet, writer, editor and translator, and was also a professor of literature, was one of the most important creators of the 1948 generation, who shaped the image of Hebrew culture with the establishment of the state. He himself is considered one of the most prominent designers of modern Hebrew poetry. He received the notable Israel Prize in 1995, the Bialik Prize in Literature in 1982 and the ACUM Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Hebrew Singing in 2003. Zach also won the International Prize for Italian Poetry in 2009, and the title of Knight of the Italian Republic.

He was born in Berlin in 1930 as Harry Zeitlbach, the only son of a German father and an Italian mother. When he was seven, he immigrated to Eretz Israel with his parents. The family settled in Haifa, and later moved to Tel Aviv. He later said that the experience of emigrating from Europe to Israel, the difficulties of adapting to the new reality and the shaky economic situation of the family, left a deep wound in the parents’ souls. Zach’s years of childhood and adolescence in the shadow of that period also imprinted in him the experience of alienation, which sometimes continued in his work even years later, placing him in the position of “the observer from the side.”

At the age of 17, during his high school years, Zach was drafted to fight on the front lines of the War of Independence. He served as an intelligence officer in the IDF until 1951. Upon his release, he enrolled in Philosophy and Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but interrupted his studies due to financial difficulties. He later completed a bachelor’s degree in Hebrew and comparative literature at Tel Aviv University. Among them are Aryeh Sivan, Moshe Dor and Binyamin Hershav (Hershovsky), and this small circle gave birth to the “Lakarat” group, whose literary style marked a breakthrough in Hebrew poetry. Dalia Ravikovic and others.

In 1955 he published his debut book, First Songs, and was received with great enthusiasm. Like many of his contemporaries, Zach expressed in the book a renunciation of the literary frameworks dominated by the authors of the previous generation – for example, the journals edited by Natan Alterman and Avraham Shlonsky, “Columns” and “Notebooks for Literature”. Instead, the younger generation has published alternative journals, including “Towards” and “Now.” While the creators of “Generation 1948” reflected in their writing the social and political order of the hour and the Zionist-ideological component was an important feature in their work (such as Alterman’s “Silver Tray”), the creators of the state generation, Not only in the topical context but also in a personal, intimate, and therefore also more universal context.This position is expressed for example in his well-known poem, “Because man is the tree of the field.”

The intergenerational debate dealt not only with content but also with form. The younger generation called for breaking free from the rigid beads and weight that poets such as Alterman clung to. As part of this revolution, Zach published his founding article “Reflections on Alterman’s Poetry,” in which he argued that the veteran poet’s adherence to rigid frames of weight and rhyme made him a rigid and insensitive poet of language, lacking in sincerity and ability to convey emotion by poetic means. Zach’s tone in the article was sweeping, almost covetous, and alongside the many proponents of his ideas, especially among his contemporaries, many literary figures were shocked by what they saw as an aggressive move by “father murder.” Alterman himself said he was deeply hurt by the young poet’s words, and admitted that his spirit had been suppressed. Years later, Zach apologized to Alterman for his formulations, saying that along with the criticism, he actually had great admiration for Alterman, and even dedicated lines of poetry to him.

Nathan Zach Photo: Michael Kramer

Over the years he has published over 30 books, including books of poetry, reference, prose, translation and plays. His most notable poetry books are “First Songs” and “Various Songs”, “All the Milk and Honey”, “Anti-Erasure”, “Because Man is the Tree of the Field”, “Because I Am Around” and “The Nightingale Does Not Live Here Anymore”. His notable translations include “The Caucasian Wall Circle” by Bertolt Brecht and “Kaddish and Other Poems” by the Jewish-American poet Alan Ginzburg, one of the great and influential creators of the Beat generation and the counterculture of the second half of the 20th century. Zach was friends with him and even met with him several times in New York.

Natan Zach also influenced Hebrew music, as many of his songs were composed and made hits. His most notable collaboration in the musical field was with his close friend Matti Caspi. Among Zach’s most famous songs are “How is it that he stars”, “Because man is a tree in the field”, “Puppy oh in their hands”, “When God first spoke”, “When you rang your voice shook”, “It is not good for man to be alone” , “A Song for the Wise Lovers” and “Second Bird”.

Between 1978 and 1967, Zach moved to England, where he worked on a doctoral dissertation in literature. Upon his return to Israel, he returned to play a major role in the field of Hebrew literature – both as an editor and a literary critic, as a lecturer in literature at institutions of higher learning and as a translator. In 1982, when he won the Bialik Prize for Literature, literary scholar Dan Miron wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth: “This time, contrary to popular belief, the blessings and best wishes should not be directed to the winner but to the prize itself; since the Bialik Prize desperately needs Nathan Zach, if he asks Maintaining its status as our most prestigious and significant literary prize, while Natan Zach does not need the Bialik Prize or any other honorable mention … in fact, it should have been given more than twenty years ago, with the publication of the book ‘Different Poems’ in 1960. A sharp eye could see Even then, this book, the poet’s second collection of poems, is the basic book of modern Israeli literature, the heart of its canon and the key to its world. “

Meron added: “If the award is given to ‘different songs’, it could turn into a gesture of respect for the deed of culture, for it was then a direct vote and directing public attention to the book, in which all the new sensibilities – moral, linguistic, came into full expression. And the artistry – of emerging Israeli culture … he not only removed the layers of dead rhetoric, but also domesticated and cultivated the ‘gray’ language of everyday verbal transaction, producing surprising energy in its power from the semantic material embodied in the most blunt and ‘thin’ words. In all simplicity: Zach was already the dominant personality in Hebrew literature in 1966. Above all: if something of an organic cultural complex had already been created in Israel, then Zach’s character had embodied it. Zach became – at will or involuntarily – a cultural leader, not to mention a hero “Culture, no less than Chaim Nachman Bialik in the first quarter of the century and Natan Alterman in the decade before the establishment of the state and in the first years after.

According to Meron, already in the 1960s “Zach became the starting point, from which every new force in Israeli literature burst forth. There is hardly a poet of those who came after him who learned nothing from him: through the rhythmic organization of the line; the uses of omission; , Out of place; exposing the poetic potential of the contemporary spoken lexicon; the poetic use of the quote, whether from the Bible or from the reading books of childhood; The assimilation of the descriptive element in the Amirah-gothic element in the poem; Indirect ways of metaphorical expression; The uses of ironic drugs, etc. There is no critic who has not had to deal with his tenure and preferences and who has not learned the basics of his craft from his essays, which have meanwhile been made into classic critical indications. Although Zach did not write fiction, it can be proved that there is no real narrator who did not find in his writings the material and operating principles of the language that were used by him in shaping his art. I am sure that A.B. Joshua and Amos Oz will confirm this statement. The late Yaakov Shabtai repeated it to me many times. “

Zach’s influence on Israeli culture transcends the boundaries of Hebrew poetry, and his controversial statements resonated outside the world of literature as well. Over the years, he has published political articles criticizing the Israeli government in the territories, as well as his ambition to achieve national coexistence. He holds many meetings and collaborations with Arab artists in Israel and abroad. Many of Zach’s statements in the social field have often provoked scandals and public criticism from various circles. In 2010 he declared that he was “willing to volunteer” to join the flotilla to Gaza. After his remarks caused a stir, he told Ynet: “I want to remind people that my views have not changed in the last 20 years. When I returned from England in 1978 I announced on a Manny Peer program on television that my feet would never cross the Green Line. I will not visit there, and I do not want spray “They will get there. I will not step on occupied territory.”

On that occasion, the poet said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the source of most of the ills of Israeli society. “Violence on the roads and in schools has permeated the occupation. I do not dodge, I have participated in three wars that have been life and death,” he said, adding that in his eyes there is only one solution to the situation: “They are less interesting to me. How can you fight with the whole Arab world forever?”

In 2009, Zach was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In 2016, his medical condition worsened and he was hospitalized in the nursing ward of the Mashen nursing home in Ramat Efal. Sarah Avital, with whom he had a close relationship for decades and whom he married in 2014, when he was 84 and she was 58, was appointed his guardian. Friends and associates of Zach, including Matti Caspi and A.B. Joshua, claimed that Avital distances him from the world – and even filed a petition against her in the High Court. In 2014, he said in an interview with the “Cross Israel” program that he regrets not having children: “I am sorry that after 84 years I never say that. I said it, and today I am very sorry, and it causes me a lot of pain. I was the most wonderful father there could be in the world. I thought that if I started a family, it would be similar to my family. ”