Leah Goldberg

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David Eldan : Leah Goldberg (1946)

Leah Goldberg ( Hebrew לאה גולדברג; born May 29, 1911 in Königsberg in Prussia ; died January 15, 1970 in Jerusalem ) was a Jewish writer , poet and linguist . She was one of the leading intellectuals in Israel of her time. She spoke seven languages ​​and translated numerous works by European authors into the Hebrew language .

Life

Goldberg came from a family of Lithuanian Jews from Kaunas . However, her mother traveled to Königsberg in East Prussia to give birth to the daughter under better medical circumstances. The family fled to Russia during World War I and returned to Kaunas after the October Revolution , where Leah spent her youth and began studying after finishing school. She studied Semitic languages , history and education. After a study visit to Berlin was in 1933 at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn to Dr. phil. doctoral thesis on the manuscripts of the Samaritan Targum - the translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch into Aramaic . In 1935 she immigrated to Tel Aviv under the League of Nations mandate for Palestine , where she worked as a literary advisor to the Habima National Theater . She also worked for the publishing company Sifriyat Po'alim and the newspapers Haaretz , Davar and Al Ha-Mishmar . Like Moshe Lifshits , Israel Zmora and Jocheved Bat-Miriam, she belonged to the Shlonsky Group , an association of contemporary Israeli poets led by Avraham Shlonsky . In 1954 she became a lecturer at the University of Jerusalem and from 1963 headed the department for comparative literature there .

In 1936 her mother Tsila Goldberg (1885–1982) followed her to Palestine. The two lived together until Leah Goldberg died of complications from cancer at the age of 58. Her father Avraham Goldberg (life data unknown) was tortured by Lithuanian soldiers during World War I. He suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. Hospitalized in various institutions, he stayed in Lithuania.

Act

Lea Goldberg 1964

Leah Goldberg published Hebrew poems as a student. She later became a versatile writer who wrote poetry, literary reviews, children's books, but also prose for adults. The main focus of her work as a translator was on Italian and Russian authors, for example Francesco Petrarca and Dante Alighieri . She translated War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy , but also works by Charles Baudelaire and Rainer Maria Rilke . Goldberg preferred a straightforward style, the images of which, as she herself described it in a poem, are clear-sighted and transparent. Presumably that contributed to their great success in the field of children's and youth literature and led to generations of Israeli children growing up with their texts. Her adult books often deal with love, loneliness, tragic failure, old age, and death. Thematically, she draws on both European and typically Jewish figures and images.

Leah Goldberg was a versatile writer. From 1935 onwards she wrote more than 20 children's books and probably as many volumes of poetry and books for adults. Examples are Shibolet Yerukat ha-Ayin, Ba'alat Ha-Armon, At Telchi ba-sadeh and Dan Ve-Dina Metaylim be-Tel Aviv, Harpatkah Ba-Midbar and Ma Nishkaf be-Haloni . Her works have been translated into more than 25 languages, including English, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish, Korean, Telugu , Tamil, and many other Indian languages.

Letters from an imaginary journey

The book Letters from an Imaginary Journey (1937; Hebrew מכתבים מנסיעה מדומה) is one of the few texts by Goldberg that is available in German translation. It depicts the imaginary escape of a young woman, Ruth, from an unhappy love. In her imagination her path leads through Berlin in the early 1930s, from there to Brussels, Ostend, Paris and Marseille. Her personal feelings are mixed with philosophical considerations on literature and art as well as descriptions of the conditions in Europe of the looming catastrophe. "So these letters speak not only of Ruth's love for Immanuel, but also of the great love many Jews have for European culture."

Awards

Two poems from Three Songs at the End of the Road

Poem II

Teach me, my God, to bless and pray
The secret of the withered leaf, the shine of the ripe fruit
The freedom then: to see, feel, breathe,
To know, hope, fail.

Teach my lips to bless and praise
When your time renews itself in the morning and in the evening
So that my day is not like yesterday and the day before yesterday
So that my day doesn't become a habit.

Poem III

You said: One day chases the day, and one night the other
See, days are coming - you said in your heart
At your window you will see evenings and mornings
And say: there is nothing new under the sun.

And now you have grown old and full of life
Your days are numbered and measured many times over
Now you know: every day is the last under the sun
And you also know: every day is new under the sun.

Works in German translation

Songs of My Beloved Country

literature

  • Lexicon of World Literature , Alfred Kröner, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-520-80702-5
  • Tuvia Rübner : "With this night and all its silence". Lea Goldberg (1911-1970) . In: Norbert Oellers (Ed.) "Some words shine". German-Jewish poets of the 20th century . Erkelenz 1999, ISBN 3-932483-07-3 , pp. 83-109
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , Vol 2, 1, p. 389
  • Yfaat Weiss : Lea Goldberg. Apprenticeship years in Germany 1930–1933. Translated from the Hebrew by Liliane Meilinger. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-35099-7

Web links

Commons : Leah Goldberg  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lea Goldberg: The Samaritan Pentateuch argument. An examination of his handwritten sources (= Bonner Orientalistische Studien 11). Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1935
  2. ↑ Avner Shapira: On the edge of an abyss of blood . In: Haaretz , January 21, 2010; Retrieved July 3, 2015
  3. ↑ Cover text of the book, Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 2003
  4. ↑ Report in Hebrew about the ceremony
  5. ↑ From songs at the end of the road  :( שירי סוף הדרך ). Translation: User: Khatschaturjan
  6. ↑ on the two following pages, explanations by the translator
personal data
SURNAME Goldberg, Leah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goldberg, Lea
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lithuanian-Israeli author
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg (Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH 15th January 1970
Place of death Jerusalem