The poet, writer and editor Ran Yigil returns to the Jewish, Hebrew and Israeli bookshelf
The poet and actor Avraham Halafi’s (1906-1980) song “Attor Mitzhak” composed by Yoni Rechter and performed by Eric Einstein is one of the greatest love songs in Hebrew-Israeli poetry for generations. Some will say, as the theater man Prof. Yossi Yazraeli pointed out, in the film made about Halafi, that he is on the same level of beauty as the Song of Songs in the Bible.
Today, we know from the movie that was made on the heels of “Hiyo Melai Shir” (directed by the journalist Uri Meshgav) that the song was written about Zehava Berlinski, the wife of the actor Zeev Berlinski, who had gold-black hair and also a seductive robe as appears in the song.
In general, Khalafy liked to fall in love with the impossible. Kela Goldberg He loved, in his life and in his poems, to fall in love with love. And in the case of Khalafi, it is usually his neighbor’s wife. Berlinski asked that when she died the song would be engraved on her grave and so it was.
Open for the future
Words: Avraham Halafi
From the book: “As strangers in the rain”, 1958
melody: Yoni Rechter
s a l e: Arik Einstein
Processing: Avner Kenner
From the album: “The Old and Good Land of Israel Part III” from 1977
Song duration: 3:59 minutes
Change of connector between the “Ketubim” group and the “Lekarat” group
But it is appropriate to look poetically at this song as a revolutionary song in another way as well, without the melody and without the words of love, but on the form and style of writing. The poem itself, especially at the beginning, stands in the middle between the two revolutions in Hebrew-Israeli poetry.
The first of the group of “writers”: Avraham Shalonsky, Natan Alterman and Leah Goldberg in the 1930s, to which Halafi clearly belonged generationally, socially and even to some extent stylistically; And the second is the “Lekarat” group, also called the Madinah generation, which came after “Ketubim” in the 1950s and renounced its predecessor and sought, after World War II and the establishment of the state, a different kind of poetry, and the most famous of its poets are: Natan Zach, Yehuda Amichai, David Avidan and Dalia Rabikowitz.
Halafi beautifully demonstrates in “Ator Mtsachach” how stylistically he lives in between, between the generations and between the groups. My father didn’t get this idea out of nowhere, it is found in Prof. Dan Miron’s comprehensive essay “The Score to the Poetic Speech” which appears at the beginning of Halfi’s selection of poems “Shirim” in two parts (1986, 1998); But I develop and expand on it here.
Open to the future
Black and gold front
(I don’t remember if they wrote that in a poem)
A face that rhymes with eyes and light,
(I don’t remember if they rhymed like that in a song)
But whoever you will be –
His life is full of poetry.
The pink rose is thick and long.
You always wrap yourself in it at night.
I would not want to be your brother,
No monk prays to the image of an angel,
and sees sad dreams of holiness –
And in front of him you, woman.
you like to be sad and silent,
To listen to tell about near, about far.
And I, who never once looked at you in silence,
There is no voice or words,
Everyone forgets about others.
My soul dwells between the walls of your house.
and captivity between you and me separated from me
When I, in my body, am separated from you.
Spread my dreams like a carpet for your feet.
Walk, my love, on the flowers of your steps.
Wear a pink dress at night.
A little more and I will come to you.
And your face
The title is gold and black
He will approach my lips like a rhyme to a song.
I will whisper in your ears until morning,
until light,
drunk:
Black and gold front
The legacy of contrasts of Alterman and his contemporaries
Alterman and Doro’s poetry is built on oxymorons that juggle the language. The oxymoron refers to a new combination created from the welding of opposite combinations. If we take for example Alterman’s well-known song: “Meeting without end”, the very name of the song is an oxymoron: “meeting” is a momentary and sometimes accidental thing, on the other hand, “there is no end” is a combination that indicates time without end, something never-ending.
Even in the body of the poem itself we find the conjunctions “suddenly forever”: “suddenly” is a momentary matter, “forever” a word indicating eternity. All of Alterman’s poetry is built on these contrasts.
Even the combination “black gold”, a central combination in Halafi’s love song, is a kind of oxymoron, mixing colors, although not completely opposite, into one color. But Halafi doesn’t simply mean shiny black like we do. He uses an oxymoron and creates a new concept “with your forehead crowned with black gold”.
In the next line of the poem, Halafi immediately challenges the oxymoronic, lofty, romantic combination, and says with sarcasm and irony, and even goes so far as to put parentheses there “(I don’t remember if they wrote that in the poem)”, which means he lowers the tone. He supposedly does not remember who wrote that. Obviously he remembers, that’s the way of Alterman’s song.
The irony of the poets of the state generation
This irony characterizes the poetry of the state generation led by Zach: take a line and immediately drop it to the ground through diminution and irony. Zach uses irony. Avidan in pathos in pathos, rises to the heights with the tongue (pathos) and immediately brings it down to the ground (pathos). Halafi even responds to Amichai’s order, who says in his poem “A Merciful God”: “I who only use a small part of the words in the dictionary”. This is how Halafi will do in most of his poems: he will have one sublime word and surround it with everyday words.
If we thought for a moment that this challenge by Halfi was accidental, the third and fourth lines immediately come to strengthen the thesis. The third line says: “Your forehead rhymes with eyes and light.” Halafi’s intention is that the forehead crowned with shiny black hair plays with flickers of light accompanied by the shining eyes of the beloved, but he uses the actual intention to rhyme.
Who rhymed the poems superbly while counting the syllables in the line and the taste in it, was it Alterman and his contemporaries who believed that the more elaborately and flamboyantly the poem rhymes and rhymes, the better it is; Reverse the poetry of Zach who believed in free poetry and not rhyme. And what is the fourth line in the song, and again in brackets, “(I don’t remember if they rhymed like that in the song)”. It’s an ironic quip of Halafi, surely he remembers, Alterman rhymed like that.
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The favorite of love songs
That’s how Halafi’s song lived for him in between, between generations, and became his favorite among love songs. Fact: Half a million views on YouTube is enough, but 12 re-releases for a selection of Halfi show how much this song penetrated the hearts of poetry readers and its lovers, whether they are fans of Alterman’s jangler poetry or whether they are lovers of Zach’s frugal poetry with restrained emotion.
On a personal note: Halfi loved children and had no children. He loved all the children of the actors: from Eric Einstein himself, through Nili Rabinowitz, Nira Rabinowitz’s daughter wrote a beautiful song named after her, and even me.
He was a kind of third grandparent or a babysitter for the parents when they were together. He and Uri Zohar, who also passed away recently, even signed the mortgage for my parents. When I was born he wrote me a blessing in the form of a poem
and gave it to my parents, Belha and Gadi Yigil. There is no doubt that not only the children of the actors and artists but all the children of Israel loved him and he loved them.
After all, year after year they came to see him as a dwarf in Avraham Shalonsky and Dovi Seltzer’s “Otz Li Gotz Li”. In the fairy tale by the Grimm brothers, the dwarf is completely evil, but Halfi, who loves children, women and men, instilled in him the qualities of mischief and goodness, that you couldn’t help but fall in love with the green dwarf as well.