Religious Poems

Amichai, Yehuda. Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers. Translated from the Hebrew by Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt. New York, Harper & Row, 1983. ISBN: 0060910852
Yehuda Amichai (May 3, 1924 - September 22, 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. Yehuda Amichai (Ludwig Pfeuffer) was born in Würzburg, Germany, to an Orthodox Jewish family, and was raised speaking both Hebrew and German. Amichai immigrated with his family at the age of 11 to Petah Tikva in Mandate Palestine in 1935, moving to Jerusalem in 1936. He attended Ma'aleh, a religious high school in Jerusalem. He was a member of the Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the defense force of the Jewish community in Mandate Palestine. As a young man he volunteered and fought in World War II as a member of the British Army Jewish Brigade, and in the Negev on the southern front in the Israeli War of Independence. After discharge from the British Army in 1946, Amichai was a student at David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem and became a teacher in Haifa. After the War of Independence, Amichai studied Bible and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Encouraged by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first book of poetry, Now and in Other Days, in 1955. In 1956, Amichai served in the Sinai War, and in 1973 he served in the Yom Kippur War. Amichai published his first novel, Not of This Time, Not of This Place, in 1963. It was about a young German Jew in Israel after World War II, trying to make sense of the world that created the Holocaust. His second novel, Mi Yitneni Malon, about an Israeli poet living in New York, was published in 1971 while Amichai was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a poet in residence at New York University in 1987. For many years he taught literature in an Israeli seminar for teachers, and at the Hebrew University to students from abroad. Amichai was married twice. First to Tamar Horn, with whom he had one son, and then to Chana Sokolov; they had one son and one daughter. His two sons were Ron and David, and his daughter was Emmanuella. He died of cancer in 2000, at age 76. Amichai's poetry deals with issues of day-to-day life, and with philosophical issues of the meaning of life and death. His work is characterized by gentle irony and original, often surprising imagery. Like many secular Israeli poets, he struggles with religious faith. His poems are full of references to God and the religious experience. He was described as a philosopher-poet in search of a post-theological humanism. Amichai has been credited with a "rare ability for transforming the personal, even private, love situation, with all its joys and agonies, into everybody's experience, making his own time and place general." Some of his imagery was accused of being sacrilegious. In his poem "And this is Your Glory" (Vehi Tehilatekha), for example, God is sprawled under the globe like a mechanic under a car, futilely trying to repair it. In the poem "Gods Change, Prayers Stay the Same" (Elim Mithalfim, ha-Tfillot Nisharot la-Ad), God is a portrayed as a tour guide or magician. (Wikipedia)

8°. 90 pages. Original softcover. Wonderful association copy. Inscribed and signed by Yehuda Amichai to american poet William Jay Smith and his wife Sonja: "To Bill and Sonja - with much affection - Yehuda - NY - 2-10-84".

[SW: Hebrew, Inscribed, Israeli Literature, Jewish Literature, Jewish Poetry, Poems, Poetry, Signed]

Details

Heidi R.M. Pauwels: In Praise of Holy Men: Hagiographic Poems by and About Hariram Vyas, Groningen, The Netherlands Egbert Forsten 2002 ; weicher Einband / soft cover; Schutzumschlag / dust cover; 1. Ed. ISBN: 90-6980-141-8
90-6980-141-8 New

This book is a contribution to understanding the formation of religious communities as revealed by the rhetoric of hagiographical works. It studies how religious groupings legitimize themselves by affiliation by holy men, and how do they go about "imagining" this affiliation in songs and stories in praise of holy men. The focus of the book is on the influential North Indian Krishna bhakti (devotional) movement of Hinduism and its multiple hagiographic works by and about Hariram Vyas, a sixteenth-century Hindu holy man or bhakta. The book includes a new scholarly edition and first-time translation of an important set of poems by Vyas in praise of several holy men, including the famous Kabir. It also provides an edition and translations of selected hagiographical material about Vyas himself. The history of Krishna devotion in particular and Hindu devotion in general, and has broader relevance for the history and phenomenology of religion. Printed Pages: 300. First Edition New Paperback 17.5 Cms x 25 Cms; First Edition

[SW: INDIAN NOVELS LITERATURE HARIRAM VYAS]

Details

GODEAU, ANTOINE: Oeuvres Chrestiennes. Paris: Jean Camusat 1633.
Godeau (1605 Dreux -1672 Vence) war eines der ersten Mitglieder der Academie Francaise. "He was induced to settle in Paris, where he soon became a favorite at the Hotel Rambouillet, rivalling in the fecundity and ingenuity of his verse the most famous writes of his period. At that time to say of any work c'est de Godeau was to stamp it with the seal of approval. After some time Godeau forsook the company of gallants and the pursuit of literature for its own sake to devote himself to the service of God, and in 1636 was named Bishop of Grasse by Richelieu, to whom he had dedicated his first religious composition. Godeau by no means gave up his public and literary interests. He turned his talent for versification to religious uses, his best known productions being a metrical version of the Psalms, poems on St. Paul, the assumption, St. Eustace, Mary Magdalen, and one of 15,000 lines on the annals of the Church. The monotony and mechanical arrangement of the poems are relieved at intervals by passages remarkable for thought or expression." (CatholicEncyclopedia). Das Werk ist Kardinal Richelieu dediziert, zu Beginn der umfangreiche "Discours de la Poesie Chrestienne". Die sehr seltene Erstausgabe von Godeaus Frühwerk (im KVK in Deutschland nur das Exemplar der bayerischen Staatsbibliothek verzeichnet), jedoch inkomplettes Exemplar: es enthält ausschließlich (und vollständig) die Poesien (Eklogen und Paraphrasen der Psalmen), jedoch nicht die mit eigenem Zwischentitel und eigener Paginierung folgenden "Prieres et Meditations Chrestiennes". Benutztes Exemplar: Der Kupfertitel bis an die Darstellung beschnitten, mit Fehlstelle und alt aufgezogen, zu Beginn leichte Nässespur im Unterrand, teils etwas eselsohrig und mit kleinen Bundfehlstellen, alter Klosterbesitzvermerk auf erstem Dedikationsblatt, Schnitt abgegriffen.

8°. 46 S. (incl. Kupfertitel), (1) Bl., 180 (recte 200) S. Schlichter graublauer Umschlag um 1800 (fleckig, Rücken unschön mit Papier überklebt und mit Fehlstellen, Vorderdeckel im Gelenk unten eingerissen).

Details

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Palgrave, Francis T., Terry, Rose et al: The Chamber of Peace and other Religious Poems. Selected and Edited by the compiler of The Changed Cross, The Shadow of the Rock, etc. , New York Published by Anson D.F. Randolph & Co. , 1874
small octavo ( 6 x 4 inches )

, 288 pages First Edition small octavo ( 6 x 4 inches ) Hardback , head and tail of spine and corners a little scuffed, edges and covers slightly rubbed, front hinge cracked with front free endpaper and first blank detached, neat previous owner's name to front free endpaper, book in good condition , green cloth with gilt title to front and spine, black border to front, black rulings to spine, blind stamped border to rear, all edges gilt

[SW: Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Palgrave, Francis T., Terry, Rose et al, The Chamber of Peace and other Religious Poems. Selected and Edited by the compiler of The Changed Cross, The Shadow of the Rock, etc., poetry religion Christian anthology]

Details