Article
“Whoever uproots the house of another, in the end his soul will be uprooted”
January 18, 2006
Whoever scars the house of another,
in the end his eyes will be scarred.
Whoever uproots the house of another,
in the end his soul will be uprooted.
In the first half of Amir’s poetic document, she reads the public spaces of state, neighborhood, and apartment buildings. Then she undertakes correspondence with foreign landscapes, myths and writers. The power of these sometimes naïve descriptions, directly expressing a restless longing for beloved people and a beloved country, lies in the fact that they embody a deviation from political and emotional correctness.
Autobiographical documentation depicts a clash between fragments of reality and their reverberation in an individual’s memory, which looks back from a distance and also views them from beyond the future. The secret of documentation is in the repression of that which is too hard to bear – loneliness, violence, losing one’s parents – [and bringing it] toward a television movie, an imaginary correspondence with a beloved author, the experience of a passerby in a foreign landscape, or to objects that contain precious memories. If it is possible to document anything correctly, this act only represents a small step forward, survival which is neither heroic nor more important than it seems. This understanding is embodied in Amir’s poetry and turns the reading of it into an outstanding experience of close observation.
Published in Haaretz literary supplement, Friday May 21, 2004.
Dvora Amir’s poetry says what should be well understood, but isn’t always taken for granted, argues Omri Herzog.
In the poem ‘Geography Lesson’ in Documentary Poems, Dvora Amir writes, “In the land of vengeance dripping mother’s milk and blood/ poems are moveable property –/ stones, ridges, houses, fences.” If it is possible to write documentary poems, Amir sticks to documenting the soul of someone who views daily life – television news, a grieving mother, the illness of a beloved dog, reading a book – sometimes compassionately and sometimes anxiously, and taking place against a landscape of property that has been abandoned or soon will be. This documentation is neither didactic nor elusive; simply and precisely it says what should be well understood, but isn’t always taken for granted:Whoever scars the house of another,
in the end his eyes will be scarred.
Whoever uproots the house of another,
in the end his soul will be uprooted.
In the first half of Amir’s poetic document, she reads the public spaces of state, neighborhood, and apartment buildings. Then she undertakes correspondence with foreign landscapes, myths and writers. The power of these sometimes naïve descriptions, directly expressing a restless longing for beloved people and a beloved country, lies in the fact that they embody a deviation from political and emotional correctness.
Autobiographical documentation depicts a clash between fragments of reality and their reverberation in an individual’s memory, which looks back from a distance and also views them from beyond the future. The secret of documentation is in the repression of that which is too hard to bear – loneliness, violence, losing one’s parents – [and bringing it] toward a television movie, an imaginary correspondence with a beloved author, the experience of a passerby in a foreign landscape, or to objects that contain precious memories. If it is possible to document anything correctly, this act only represents a small step forward, survival which is neither heroic nor more important than it seems. This understanding is embodied in Amir’s poetry and turns the reading of it into an outstanding experience of close observation.
Published in Haaretz literary supplement, Friday May 21, 2004.
© Omri Herzog
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