{"product_id":"greetings-from-angelus-isbn-9780914671978","title":"Greetings From Angelus","description":"A bilingual collection of poetry from pioneering scholar in Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith this volume, Scholem's work reaches beyond the confines of the academy and enters a literary dialogue with writers and philosophers like Walter Benjamin and Hans Jonas. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGershom Scholem's\u003ci\u003e Greetings From Angelus \u003c\/i\u003econtains dark, lucid political poems about Zionism and assimilation, parodies of German and Jewish philosophers, and poems to writers and friends such as Walter Benjamin, Hans Jonas, Ingeborg Bachmann, S. Y. Agnon, among others. The earliest poems in this volume begin in 1915 and extend to 1967, revealing how poetry played a formative role in Scholem's early life and career. This collection is translated by Richard Sieburth, who comments, \"Scholem's acts of poetry still speak to us (and against us) to this very day, simultaneously grounded as they are in the impossibly eternal and profoundly occasional.\" The volume is edited and introduced by Steven M. Wasserstrom, who carefully situates the poems in Scholem's historical, biographical, and theological landscape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century, Gershom Scholem virtually created the subject of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Literature played a crucial role in his life, especially in his formative years. This bilingual volume contains his dark, shockingly prescient poems about Zionism, his parodies of German and Jewish philosophers, and poems to other writers, notably a series of powerful lyrics addressed over the course of years to his closest and oldest friend, Walter Benjamin.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTranslator Richard Sieburth comments, “Scholem’s acts of poetry still speak to us (and against us) to this very day, grounded as they are in the impossibly eternal and profoundly occasional.”\"Gershom Scholem's scholarship was of [the] rare, life-giving kind. Not only have his studies of the Kabbalah altered . . . the image of Judaism--but his explorations, translations, and presentations of Kabbalistic writings exercise a formidable influence on literary theory at large, on the ways in which non-Jewish and wholly agnostic critics and scholars read poetry.\" \u003cb\u003e-- George Steiner, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Gershom Scholem's achievement has already put a generation of readers in his debt. He has intrepidly, singlehandedly, almost monomaniacally pursued the task of saving the literature of Jewish mysticism . . . restoring it to an estate of respect, honor, and importance.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Arthur A. Cohen, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We see a great analytical mind at work . . . Richard Sieburth’s deep understanding of Scholem’s thought, and his masterful re-creation of Scholem’s rhythms and rhymes, reflect the inner workings of these original German poems. Sieburth’s translations offer a fascinating insight into the thoughts and literary sensibility of one of the great minds of the twentieth century.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Peter Constantine, \u003ci\u003eWorld Literature Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\"...Scholem’s most private writing... The poems collected in \u003ci\u003eGreetings from Angelus\u003c\/i\u003e were never intended to be published; at most they were written for an audience of one. Often this was Walter Benjamin...[I]n this crucial period of Scholem’s intellectual development, Benjamin was a key stimulus to his thinking about language, myth, and Judaism... [T]he most serious poems Scholem wrote concerned his spiritual disappointment in Zion.\" \u003cb\u003e— Adam Kirsch, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"\u003ci\u003eThe Fullness of Time \u003c\/i\u003eoffers an aspect of Scholem's own communing with the spirit of language that will be new even to those quite familiar with his works in philology and history of religion...the verses collected here were acts of private devotion.\" \u003cb\u003e— Erica X Eisen, \u003ci\u003eThreepenny Review \u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Abrupt, magisterial, quizzical, sometimes acidulous, and at moments poignantly wistful.... Scholem's verses return to an authentic Hasidic tradition of indicting God.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Harold Bloom\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An excellent bilingual selection. Richard Sieburth's versions are lucid, sensitive, forceful, and always attentive to the originals. Steven Wasserstrom's incisive commentary provides the ideal context.... Given the complexities that it resolves-historical, biographical, theological, literary-this edition is a model of its kind.\" \u003cb\u003e-- Jeremy Adler, \u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gershom Scholem wrestled with the great questions of his time: the fate of utopian dreams in the pincers of 20th century history and the lingering, transcendent value of friendship. Richard Sieburth's luminous translations capture Scholem's voice as he dances back and forth across the border line between punditry and prophecy, while always projection sheer passion for the Word.\" \u003cb\u003e— George Prochnik\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Scholem has rare gifts for synthesis and generalization, as several of his more recent essays on Jewish messianism and tradition demonstrate, but his mind is equally remarkable for the way it adheres to the smallest particles of particular historical experience\" \u003cb\u003e- Robert Alter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Gershom Scholem is first and foremost a poet of friendship: you can read this book as a loving, if at times jousting, life-long conversation with Walter Benjamin on topics ranging from Zion to Kafka to Klee. This makes the book a valuable historical document as much as a moving life-sequence of poems. Richard Sieburth’s superb translation not only ferries over the meanings of the originals, but revitalizes them, causing Scholem’s fairly traditional German rhymed verse to positively sparkle in English.” \u003cb\u003e— Pierre Joris\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Richard Sieburth has performed a magnificent service . . . he has found a contemporary equivalent for Scève’s extremely compact music and enabled it to breathe in English, while still retaining the tension of the original.” \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e— \u003c\/i\u003eJohn Ashbery (on Maurice Scève’s \u003ci\u003eEmblems of Desire\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e“Like a jewelry chest, the covers of this book open on a gem of German prose, brought to its full radiance by Richard Sieburth’s splendid translation.”\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003e— \u003c\/i\u003eWilliam H. Gass (on Georg Büchner’s \u003ci\u003eLenz\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eGershom Scholem\u003c\/b\u003e, philosopher, writer, historian, and poet, was born in Berlin in 1897 and settled in Jerusalem in 1923. For years he was Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University. His many books include \u003ci\u003eMajor Trends in Jewish Mysticism, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship.\u003c\/i\u003e He died in 1982.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eRichard Sieburth\u003c\/b\u003e is a Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at New York University. His translations include Hölderlin’s \u003ci\u003eHymns and Fragments\u003c\/i\u003e and Benjamin’s \u003ci\u003eMoscow Diary—\u003c\/i\u003eand for Archipelago, Büchner’s \u003ci\u003eLenz, The Salt Smugglers \u003c\/i\u003eby Gérard de Nerval, Maurice Scève’s \u003ci\u003eDelie\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eStroke by Stroke \u003c\/i\u003eby Henri Michaux. His English edition of Nerval’s \u003ci\u003eSelected Writings \u003c\/i\u003ewon the 2000 PEN Book-of-the-Month-Club Translation Prize.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eSteven M. Wasserstrom \u003c\/b\u003eis the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eBetween Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam\u003c\/i\u003e, which received the Award for Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion, and \u003ci\u003eReligion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos\u003c\/i\u003e.TO THEODOR HERZL\u003cbr\u003eHe was the first to pronounce the words\u003cbr\u003eThat lifted us to the heights of light,\u003cbr\u003eHe was the first to dare a new world\u003cbr\u003eThat rose unsuspected before our eyes!\u003cbr\u003eHe preceded us with steps that gladly moved ahead\u003cbr\u003eAnd showed untrodden paths to those in doubt!\u003cbr\u003eTo us who suffered from the past in dread\u003cbr\u003eHe pointed to a better springtime, a new way out!\u003cbr\u003eHe spoke for those who had repressed their longing\u003cbr\u003eAnd for those devoured by silent grief,\u003cbr\u003eAnd they all bowed their heads, now belonging\u003cbr\u003eTo him who had come to slake their disbelief.\u003cbr\u003eWe shall never forget what it was he meant,\u003cbr\u003eWho gave us this dream so rich, so glowing,\u003cbr\u003eAnd who restored what we had once possessed\u003cbr\u003eAnd what we had lost—without our knowing!\u003cbr\u003eHe shouted of a world that rose, amazed\u003cbr\u003eAt his words, the words of our own distress.\u003cbr\u003eHe held the flag high as the enemy raged,\u003cbr\u003eAnd the flag was bloody red.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThursday, 10.111.1915\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAN THEODOR HERZL!\u003cbr\u003e Er war der erste, der die Worte sagte\u003cbr\u003e Die uns erhoben zu den lichten Höhn,\u003cbr\u003e Er war der erste, der das neue wagte,\u003cbr\u003e Vor unseren Augen Niegeahntes ließ erstehn!\u003cbr\u003e Er ging voran mit zukunftsfrohen Schritten\u003cbr\u003e Und wies den Schwankenden die unbetretenen Bahnen!\u003cbr\u003e Uns die wir bitter am Vergangnen litten,\u003cbr\u003e Ließ er den neuen, bessern Frühling ahnen!\u003cbr\u003e Er sprach für die die ihre Sehnsucht schweigen\u003cbr\u003e An denen einsam frißt der stille Gram,\u003cbr\u003e Sie alle hießen nun ihr Haupt sich beugen\u003cbr\u003e Vor ihm, als zu den Hungrigen er kam.\u003cbr\u003e Wir warden seiner nicht vergessen,\u003cbr\u003e Der neu uns gab den bilderreichen Traum,\u003cbr\u003e Der auferstehen ließ, was einstmals wir besessen,\u003cbr\u003e War wir verloren—und wir fühlten’s kaum!\u003cbr\u003e Er schrie der Welt, die staunend sich erhoben,\u003cbr\u003e Die Worte zu, die Worte unserer Not.\u003cbr\u003e Er hielt uns hoch, unter der Feinde Toben,\u003cbr\u003e Die Fahne, und die Fahne war blutrot!\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eDonnerstag, den 10.111.1915\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Archipelago","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300319842533,"sku":"NP9780914671978","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780914671978.jpg?v=1767728497","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/greetings-from-angelus-isbn-9780914671978","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}