Translating Agi Mishol and Nurit Zarchi

Abstract

© 2009 bridges association translation of the intangible, the unknown or the fantastic into concrete terms is a subj ject and a technique in these poems by two very different Israeli writers. In one poem, Agi Mishol portrays a highly spiritual expej rience that occurs just before cutting a toj mato. In the second, she reports on a momentary flash of pantheism: a shared life force surging through animals, plants and people’s minds. In the first selection by Nurit Zarchi, the speaker quotes an absurd philosj ophizing fish who talks sense, and the secj ond portrays the Israeli Independence War through the eyes of a young girl, whose surj realistic vision portrays its destabilizing inj fluence more effectively than realism. Obviously, among other things, both poets are questioning the classic divisions of matj ter and spirit, reality and fantasy. One comes away from these poems feeling that the maj terial world of women is charged with spirij tuality, and that spirituality requires solidarity with the material environment. In Mishol’s “Revelation,” preparing salad is interrupted by a visionary experience. The experience is described and the poem ends with an allusion to a Talmudic story. It is a welljknown scene in which Rabbi Akiba warns that (in one interpretation) the desire to have a spiritual experience may lead us to fake translating agi Mishol and nurit Zarchi