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the complete review - poetry

Greetings From Angelus

by
Gershom Scholem

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : fine little collection; useful supporting material

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Gershom Scholem wrote strong poetry" - Publishers Weekly
  
  
• "Arguably the largest departure from Scholem’s more familiar writing is the directness and certitude that characterizes so much of the poetry in the volume. (...) Also immediately striking to readers acquainted with the author’s broader oeuvre is the deep formal conservatism of his verse. (...) Translator Richard Sieburth wavers in his approach to capturing the feel of Scholem’s verses in English. (...) As it stands, a rather one-dimensional notion of artistic faithfulness preserves structure at the expense of style. (...) That the poems are not, ultimately, of remarkable literary quality is both true and in some larger sense irrelevant." - Erica X. Eisen, The Threepenny Review
  
  
• "(A)n excellent bilingual selection (...) containing all the best-known pieces and several lesser ones. Sieburth’s versions are lucid, sensitive, forceful and always attentive to the originals. Wasserstrom’s incisive commentary provides the ideal context. (...) As a German poet, Scholem remained tied to the idiom of Goethe, Heine and (occasionally) Rilke. But there are also more quirky strains, evident in the echoes of Morgenstern’s nonsense poetry." - Jeremy Adler, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "Scholem’s voice is strong, and what surprises in his poetry is that the poems are in fact highly distilled critical responses to, and interpretations of, ideas and texts. (...) 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." - Peter Constantine, World Literature Today

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Gershom Scholem's poetry is incidental, casual work, with many of the poems he wrote just meant for friends or a small circle; apparently, only two were published during his lifetime and, as translator Richard Sieburth notes in his new Afterword: "Scholem never considered his verse composition to be a major part of his oeuvre". In his Introduction Steven Wasserstrom reports that: "some forty-five" are found in Scholem's archives; this bilingual collection gathers twenty-one of the poems, written between 1915 ('To Theodor Herzl') and 1967 ('To Ingeborg Bachmann') -- with a twenty-second, "a comic piece of doggerel" from 1972, the last verses he wrote, snuck into the notes (albeit only in English translation).
       A third of the chronologically presented poems date to 1918 or before -- like many, Scholem apparently going through a (somewhat) poetic phase in his youngest days. His most famous -- probably only famous -- poem is the title-piece, dedicated to close friend Walter Benjamin, with its subject Benjamin's Paul Klee painting, Angelus Novus (about which Benjamin also wrote, and which he willed to Scholem, who wound up having it hanging on his walls much longer than Benjamin ever had). It's a nice picture-poem -- arguing also: "Ich bin ein unsymbolisch Ding / bedeute was ich bin", which Sieburth translates as: "I am an unsymbolic thing / I mean what I mean" (though the more straightforward 'I mean what I am' would seem more apposite).
       Among the more interesting pieces is 'The Official Abecedarium', an amusing alphabetical sequence of quatrains (double couplets) going through (mostly) great philosophers from A to Z (and beginning: "Anfangs war zwar das Apriori" ("In the beginning was the a priori")). While elsewhere Sieburth is rather half-hearted in trying to (re)capture Scholem's rhyme-scheme, he does try to follow it strictly here. This leads to (considerably) looser translations -- and the occasional embellishment. So, for example, in the first verse:

Argumentiert mit Hilfe des
Ältesten Aristoteles

Made his casuistry equiprobable
With the help of old Aristotle.

Gabirol war ein großer Mann
Selbst Gobineau erkennt das an.

Ibn Gabirol was a hero to his age
Even Gobineau agrees he was a credit to his race.

In alten Zeiten führten alle Bahnen
an Gott und seinem Namen irgendwie.
Wir sind nicht fromm. Wir bleiben im Profanen,
Und wo einst "Gott" stand, steht Melancholie.

In days of old all roads somehow led
to God and his name.
We are not devout. Our domain is the profane
and where "God" once stood, Melancholy takes his place.

I threw myself into ancient books.
I was awestruck by their signs.
I spent too much time alone with them.

- M.A.Orthofer, 2 February 2018

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Links:

• Archipelago Books publicity page
• Ibis Editions publicity page
• Excerpts
• Excerpts

• Jewish Book Council
• Publishers Weekly
• The Threepenny Review
• World Literature Today

• Gershom Scholem at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• See Index of Poetry
• See Index of German literature
• See Index of Bilingual editions under review
• Other books from Archipelago Books under review

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About the Author:

       Gershom Scholem lived 1897 to 1982.

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© 2018 the complete review

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