What does the poetry of the Kabbalah have to say to current readers? The American poet and translator Peter Cole (1957) is convinced that this mystical manifestation can respond “to the hunger that many people today have for a more intense internal life.”
The word cabal means reception. Something that invites you to keep your mind open. It is the most direct, immediate and intense way to share the spiritual experience. The poetry of Kabbalah is the most concentrated form of expression of that part of the Jewish mystical tradition, ”he says in an interview with Excelsior.
The expert in Hebrew, secular and mystical poetry, affirms that “many people, even if they are not religious, turns to Kabbalistic Literature to satisfy that hunger and that desire for spirituality, eternity.
For me, as a poet of the 21st century, I find a lot of power in this poetry and that is what I want to bring contemporary readers, ”he adds about his anthology Kabbalah poetry (Broken glass), translated into Spanish by Aurelio Major, which will be presented today, at 12:00 hours, in the Manuel M. Ponce room of the Palace of Fine Arts.
The professor of the University of Yale offers a substantial compilation of the compositions written over 1,500 years on three continents, where he found “Cosmological masterpieces and poems of occasion, erotic spells and epic phantasmagories, poems such as ballads and simple didactic slogans and hymns of the purest devotion and nomic verses of numerological fascination. ”
The book, originally published in Yale University Press in 2012, brings together 52 poems written originally in Hebrew, Aramaic, Yidis and Ladino, and translated into English by Cole.
The bard, who lives part of the year in Jerusalem, says there are three main characteristics of this poetry. “A works with the potential of language, the experiences that give us a deeper understanding of reality and what it means to be alive.
Many writers in Kabbalistic Tradition, especially poets, say that language is the best way we have for revelation. And the value given to language is, for me, as an animal that speaks, something very rich and valuable, ”he adds.
He explains that the second particularity is mystical tradition, a little known aspect. “Many think of the observers of religion, the type of food, the rituals around the cycles of life, ethical practices. But a mythical part is hidden in the Jewish tradition. Cabalistic writers understood it. ”
And the third, continues, is created when the two previous two, language and myth together. “It is the greatest vision of the cosmos and the order of existence. It is presented in the Kabbalah as a complicated dynamic between the male and feminine elements of everything, the language, the presence of God, the awareness of the divine. You can think of him as something erotic, but not sexual. ”
Cole emphasizes that he respected the original structure of the poems of the cabal. “I felt that it was important that the reader felt the structure of the original, because the change from verse to verse brings the reader to the universe of sound and rhythm. These poems are a kind of machines that move the reader. ”
For his part, Aurelio Major indicates that he proposed to Cole the possibility of translating anthology into Spanish. “In addition to that it is an exceptional work, many of the poets included here wrote in Spain, because here the cabal was born. Several of the poems written in Hebrew are translated. But it was about accounting for them in a single volume. ”
In a separate interview, the poet also narrates that Spanish translation was a job of many years. “It is not a philological translation in which word is respected by word, but the game was privileged with language.”
On the validity of the poetry of the Kabbalah, he concludes that “every good poem is always present. They are with us here and now. The history of literature does not exist, only the now of your encounter with that poem. Cabala’s poetry speaks to you at this time. All authors collected here, anonymous or not, are alive now because you read them. ”
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