When the poet and translator Shimon Buzaglo speaks of the utopian vision in the book of Isaiah, "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares," he sheds a tear of excitement.
Texts are the raw material for the work of the veteran translator, and Buzaglo finds the deepest connection to the oldest texts.
"Almost all the texts written in the Hebrew language after the Bible do not speak to me," he declares. "New texts do not excite me.
Some are not bad at all, but these are not great works.
"One great work was created in Hebrew - the Bible. It's enough for thousands of years. The best texts there are just black diamonds."
We meet in honor of the publication of the seventh book of poetry that Buzaglo publishes, "Herman."
Buzaglo, who has translated dozens of poetry books and plays from world literature, sees himself first and foremost as a poet.
The purpose of his life is to write poetry.
But he does not particularly appreciate the poetry written in his day.
"There is no one in the country I like. There is no great poetry here. There is not even good poetry here," he states emphatically.
"There are some poets who have good songs, obviously - Avot Yeshurun wrote some good songs, Amir Gilboa wrote some great songs. Alterman was not a poet in my eyes, just fireworks. Beads for children. Zach at the beginning of his career wrote some beautiful songs, such milk and honey , Nice, pleasant, not great, but something very local.Although he thought he had brought the Anglo-Saxon gospel to earth, there was something local about it in the good sense of the word.You felt in his poetry the spirit of the period.But it is not great poetry.
Beads for children.
Nathan Alterman, Photo: Avraham Soskin Courtesy of the Lavon Institute
"We have the right to be born in the time the book is available, and once you have the curiosity everything is laid out before you, 5,000 years of written history. I have the right to read the Bible in the original language, my mother's language, so I see myself as a happy person.
This is one of the books I read the most. "
How do you explain your claim that for 5,000 years no great work has been created in Hebrew?
"We've only been here a hundred years, it's not a long time at all. It takes at least a few hundred years to create such works."
Canaanite poetry, for example, has reached greater achievements than the achievements of modern Hebrew poetry?
"Obviously. It's a huge work. Anat's poetry, for example, is a huge thing. When you look at the ancient Egyptian sculpture, especially of the earlier dynasties, the statue of Josser, it's a pure monolith. Absolutely. I guess as a person everyday it was not the best It's fun to live in such a period, but in terms of the work itself, in terms of our view of this work - all we have left is just amazement. "
The softness of the period.
Nathan Zach,
If so, why not advocate a Canaanite ideology, such as that of Jonathan Ratosh?
"I'm not a matter of restoration, I're a matter of creation. It's all a matter of time - we exist too little time and there are too few people. When there are more time and more people, then there will be great things. To say there is a huge poet here on an international scale? No.
"I look at our time - Raymond Carver was wonderful, Hans Magnus Ansensberger was a wonderful poet. Joseph Brodsky was a huge poet. Cheslav Milos was wonderful. It's a lot for such a short period. If you do an anthology of world literature, of the last 5,000 years, then You'll find a lot of modern names there. It's a lot. I'm dying for our period - I'm dying for the music of the period, I'm dying for the plastic arts. Ari Pullman has done wonderful things in the field of cinema, Ohad Naharin in the field of dance. "No, I do not see it. I am allowed to."
Talk about things in a whisper
Buzaglo does not find great poetry around him, but his life is devoted to poetry and translation.
He was born in Acre 60 years ago, the son of a working father and a housewife mother, and grew up with six brothers.
He began writing poetry in his youth and immediately after the army decided to dedicate his life to writing, to become a poet.
"In all my twenties I have worked endless jobs that work as little as possible. All that interested me was to get home as soon as possible and as exhausted as possible to immerse myself again in reading, contemplation and writing. I worked in guarding, errands, hospitals as an auxiliary, dozens of jobs. "Something beyond that I got up and left. It did not interest me at all. All I was interested in was paying the rent, having a few shekels to eat, and writing."
At the time, he focused on writing prose, and at the age of 28, his story won a prize from the Jerusalem Foundation and NIS 4,000 in aid for publishing a book.
But he waived the grant and did not use it: "I was sober enough to understand that I was not due at all to put out a book."
It took him another ten years to publish his first book, the poetry book "Aram", so he realized he was meant to write poetry.
In his book that is coming out these days, Buzaglo presents stormy songs, full of raging passion and touching areas that are pushed to the bottom of human consciousness, situations that are in the areas of the social taboo.
"In my world there is no subject that should not be talked about," he declares.
"It's not my world at all, to talk about things in a whisper. In this sense the poetic form has given vent to the worlds that exist in me. Poetry has drawn these materials - dreams, fantasies, blurring between the outside world and the inside world. "I have no problem with that. I'm strong enough to let it be."
Rebel in the old style
Apart from the poetry in which Buzaglo's world is invested, he is known among Israeli readers as a translator of daring and daring classics.
He translated from the best of classical Greek plays, such as "Antigone" and "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles, or from the philosophical dialogues of Plato and the poems of Ovid, the Roman poet, and Sappho, the Greek poet, and many others.
Buzaglo's translations stand out in the translational landscape as texts that seek to place the ancient occurrence in contemporary linguistic space.
Instead of the lyrical language of old texts, Buzaglo gives the classics flavors of the here and now.
"When I translate I ask for accessible texts," he explains.
"An ancient Greek poet wrote his texts so that when the audience immediately understood what was said there. The creators then were just like us - they wanted to be understood, there were people who lived and fell in love and acted, they did not live in lyrical language, there is no connection between lyrical language and high language. "It is important for me to be understood. Not to translate the texts into archaic hate language."
The Herman Book,
Over the years Buzaglo has been criticized for his accessible style, but has also taken a firm stance towards other approaches to translation.
One of the great open controversies in which he took part was in an article he wrote against Prof. Aminadav Dickman's Latin translations.
"Anyone who translates for his contemporaries in the style they wrote decades ago is a traitor. It is a slip and it is the result of petrification. Dickman is my age, but he behaves like a 300-year-old. Living time is not a crime. I translate for my contemporaries, it is my role as a translator."
Over the years you have been criticized for your style.
"My approach was not received with great sympathy. It took many years until people understood what I was doing. The Israeli approach is a conservative approach that is almost non-existent in the world today. The translation here has always been classic, very fossilized. "If there is anyone like Dickman, then it is something so remote and delusional. This style is a completely Israeli curiosity. I did not invent anything in that respect."
In the end, you get to make a living from what you love to do - translate.
"Economically everything I have translated is a total loss of money. People think I gain something from translation, but I just lose, I do not get a penny spent on it. I make a living from translating books that do not interest me and teaching, from lectures, things poets do. Just not Writing workshops. I think writing workshops is a terrible lie. Either you have talent or you do not. If you have this thing, you will find your tools to get to it. A poet is a lone wolf, he should not sit in a workshop that looks like a bunch of social workers Talking about emotions. A true creator finds his way in the world, alone. He reads, studies, experiences, seeks inspiration, finds a master who accompanies him. Writing workshops are a matter of dishonest writers and poets who want to make a living on lost backs. "I will never say these things, because they make a living from it, but that's the situation."
"The main thing is to have a good song"
In recent years, Shimon Bouzaglo has left the Tel Aviv literary scene and established his home in the far green and the north.
Like his colorful personality, Buzaglo's choice of residence is surprising - for the past three years he has lived with his partner, theater director Ofira Henig, in the Druze town of Dalit al-Carmel.
We meet at his house, a two-story ground floor apartment with a large balcony and a bunch of cats welcoming me.
"Something bad has happened to the Jewish population in the last generation," he explains his decision to move.
"The population has become too hard, too rude, too violent. I have a hard time with it. There is something that is less respectful of others in contemporary Jewish society. There is a sense that someone can die next to you and you will not care at all. And if I ask myself what is evil, then evil "To me it is opacity. There is no such thing as a bad or good person. The question is just how opaque you are to the suffering of others, to the joy of others, to the existence of others. And that is something I feel has been greatly damaged in the last generation."
What attracted you to Dalit al-Carmel?
"Life here is very reminiscent of life in Israel in the 60s and 70s, before decay, decadence. Sometimes it seems to me that the State of Israel had a period of childhood and adolescence with a bruise and from there a sharp leap into a corrupt and rotten beard. There was no adulthood. Something not. Cooked right in the country, did not mature properly.And in this area there is something very pleasant, very generous, there is a feeling that people are smiling at you.
"In Arab and Druze society, things are not immediately approached, they first begin with explorations of how you are, how you feel, and only then do you approach the thing for which you meet. There is a kind of respect for your private autonomy. Understanding that you can not immediately get your hands on autonomy "
Are you trying to create some kind of social correction in your choice of residence?
"No, I'm not such a person. The only correction a person can make is to do their best within his abilities and talents. My betrayal of myself will be if I am not busy with what I am good at. So I have no priority for a particular religion or country. The only group that interests me "It's a group of curious and amused people, artists, they're the only ones who interest me. Unfortunately, the country also hardly invests in culture. Why do we live if not for the culture, just to eat and sleep?"
What else do you have left to complete?
"To write even better songs. To see the happiness of my two children, who are in their early twenties. I see that they do not take life for granted, they explore and examine, and that makes me very happy. And of course, my great love for my wife, which I wish for myself But the purpose of my existence, the thing that makes me most happy, the thing that really uplifts my soul, that I really feel my soul is uplifted by - is to write a song that I feel is good. What matters is that I think it's good, people can think what they want, It's interesting, the main thing is to have a good song. "
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