The Ineffable Name of God: Man: Poems (review)

In his autobiographical novel Ven Yash iz geforn (1938), Jacob Glatstein, a renowned Yididish poet and critic, reminisces on his youth in Lublin just before the outbreak of World War I. He recalls how he and his friends wrote poetry and imagined themselves as romantic heroes from European literature. It is not unusual that young, sensitive people write poetry, and in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s it was perhaps even more common than anywhere else. It is no wonder that Abraham Heschel (1907–1972), at that time a young sensitive student of Hasidic background, exposed to vibrant secular life in Vilna where he studied in the Real Gymnasium before entering universities in Berlin, tried his hand at poetry. While there he was loosely associated with the Yung Vilna group. His poetry was more traditional, and so were his views compared with some very radical members of that group.

Heschel’s oeuvre is well known to American readers. He had a great impact on shaping the image of pre-war East European Jewish life through his poetic prose. Even if readers of his prose do not know about his youthful poetic attempts, it should not come as a surprise that he had such aspirations. Now, thanks to this beautiful bilingual edition translated by Morton J. Leifman, with a preface by Edward K. Kaplan, the English-speaking reader has a chance to get to know Heschel’s poetic work, and readers who know Yiddish can take pleasure in comparing the two versions. As Kaplan puts it: “Poetry can become a form of prayer, sharpening vision, transforming lives. Prayer can become poetry, emancipating words that illuminate the world’s fullness.” The latter was true of Heschel, for whom poetry was undoubtedly a way of rendering his thoughts.

The sixty-six poems are grouped in six sections. The titles of most of them testify to their religious, philosophical, and contemplative character: for example, “Man is Holy,” “Bearing Witness,” “Between Me and the World,” “Repairing the World.” But there is also the mysterious “Lady in a Dream,” to which ten poems are dedicated (some with erotic content), as well as those devoted to nature grouped in the section entitled “Nature Pantomimes.” Some poems are not very original in their philosophical content and express typical dilemmas of a young idealist looking at injustice and the crisis of values. For example, in the poem “Untitled” from the part “Repairing the World,” Heschel talks about human selfishness and lack of faith and wonders if poetry is still possible in a world where “man sentences man to death” and “children suffer hardships” and where “no one knows what’s good, what’s right” (p. 181).

But in others—for example, “People’s Eyes Wait” (from the section “Man Is Holy”)—he foreshadows his future vocation in the following expression mission:

Shamed brothers beg my help, deceived sisters dream of consolation.

And I, with stubborn boldness have promised that I will increase tenderness in this world—

and it seems to me that I will, in time move on through this earth with the brightness of all the stars in my eyes!

(p. 39)

Paradoxically, some of Heschel’s poems sound better in the English translation, in which they are devoid of the rhymes which are not always very fortunate in the original. This concerns mainly poems with philosophical lyrical contents. For example, “In the Palace of Your Face” opens in its English rendition with the lines:

Your face is my palace, your eyes—blue, near— a pillow for my soul.

(p. 93)

Perhaps not very original, perhaps a bit too lofty for modern sensibilities, still acceptable as poetry from earlier times. Compare these lines with the Yiddish version:

Dayn gezikht iz mayn palats oygn nonte bloe dayne— a kishn far neshome mayne.

Those grammatical rhymes (mayne—dayne), not very elaborate, make sound like a very youthful poetry. No wonder that the well-known Yiddish...