Dan Tsalka

Dan Tsalka

Dan Tsalka (born March 19, 1936 in Warsaw ; † June 15, 2005 in Tel Aviv ) was an internationally recognized Israeli writer , novelist and critic who has received several awards .

Life

During World War II , his family fled to the Soviet Union , where they lived in Siberia and Kazakhstan . At the end of the war, when he was ten years old, he returned to Poland with his family and settled in Wrocław . He studied humanities at the University of Wroclaw , was involved in boxing, an activity that later appears in his novel "Gloves".

In 1957 he emigrated to Israel in the " Gomułka Alija ". He changed his name from Mietek to Dan. His sister recommended this name during her stay in a transit camp (maabara) in Yavne. After studying the Hebrew language in Kibbutz Hazor, he served in the Israel Defense Forces. After his discharge from the army, he studied philosophy and history at Tel Aviv University . He continued his studies in France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Italy.

In 1967 he published his first novel “Dr. Barkel ". He was the editor of Masa, the Literary Supplement of the Lemerkhav newspaper, and also worked as a literary translator from many languages ​​into Hebrew.

In 2000 he made a trip to Morocco with a friend, which he describes in his book "Morocco: Travel Notes."

Tsalka has received numerous literary prizes: the Brenner Prize (1976), the Hayetzira Prize (1972, 1991, 1997), the Alterman Prize for the novel A Thousand Hearts (1992), the ACUM Prize for Clouds and Loose Pages Bound (1994 ), The ACUM Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2000), and the Sapir Prize for Tsalka-ABC (2004).

He lived in Tel Aviv with his wife Aviva and died of cancer on June 15, 2005 at the age of 69.

Works translated into German

• The son of Abraham. Bleicher Verlag 1999
• A thousand hearts. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA) 1999, dtv 2006
• In the sign of the lotus. DVA 2007

portrait

Christoph Grubitz: “(...) We talked for hours in October 1991 on his balcony in Tel Aviv. In French. Dan Tsalka was very form-conscious and attentive in dealing with them. And that's how he was as an author who talks about his craft. He did not bother me with convictions and intentions, but rather explained to me concisely his working method and the design of this novel from the motto from the “Introduction to the Art of the Renaissance” by the Israeli art historian Moshe Barasch , which precedes him. Barasch explains the four distinct terms that the Italian Renaissance has in store for four stages of the design: pensiero, schizzo, studio and disegno. (...) Tsalka himself in his psychological and physical constitution did not correspond at all to the image of the thought-provoking German poeta doctus, who spent himself at his desk to make sacrifices to art, but rather to that of a French intellectual with an education of heart that the Sunday school betrays . I later translated one of his articles and published it for the first time in German in the Festschrift for his 70th birthday. (…) Of course we also talked about Elazar Benyoëtz and German aphorism. Tsalka was surprisingly well informed, but the life of his friend between languages ​​and countries was just as important to him. About Elazar's work, especially on his exhausting reading tours through Germany, he said with full appreciation: "He is a hero." Tsalka himself, he said, did not even have the capacity to expose himself to his Israeli audience in this excessive way. But how was it with Tsalka? Had he dosed his own capacities like an athlete? Whatever the case, he used it for his friend Elazar when he, the author who is probably much better known in Israel, advertised his friend Elazar's Hebrew book in his radio review. We forgot the time on such subjects. At some point she came back in the form of his wife, who worried us - now in English - that we had better come in. A thunderstorm is approaching: “in one minute”, she said urgently. Dan wasn't at all worried and valued the passing moment: "But this minute is important."

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.