T. Carmi ( he, ט. כרמי) (December 31, 1925 – November 20, 1994) was the literary pseudonym of Carmi Charney, an American-born

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

i poet.

Biography

Carmi Charney was born in New York City. His father, Rabbi Bernard (Baruch) Charney, was the principal of Yeshiva of Central Queens, a Jewish day school. The family spoke Hebrew at home. Charney studied at Yeshiva University and Columbia University. In 1946, he worked with orphan children in France whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust. Obituary: T. Carmi
/ref> He moved to Israel in 1948, just before the outbreak of the

1947–1949 Palestine war The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It is known in Israel as the War of Independence ( he, מלחמת העצמאות, ''Milkhemet Ha'Atzma'ut'') and ...

. He died in 1994. The first initial T is the English equivalent of the Hebrew letter tet, which Carmi adopted as it is the first letter of his original family name as written in Hebrew.

Literary career

Carmi's books translated into English include ''Blemish and Dream'' (1951), ''There are no black Flowers'' (1953), ''The Brass Serpent'' (1961), ''Somebody Like You'' (1971), and ''At The Stone Of Losses'' (1983). He was also translator of Shakespeare to Hebrew. His translations include ''Midsummer Night's Dream'', ''Measure For Measure'', ''Hamlet'', ''Much Ado About Nothing'' and ''Othello''. He co-edited ''

The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself ''The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself'' is an anthology of modern Hebrew poetry, presented in the original language, with a transliteration into Roman script, a literal translation into English, and commentaries and explanations. Two editions of this bo ...

'', together with Stanley Burnshaw and Ezra Spicehandler. His major critical work was as editor and translator of ''The Penguin book of Hebrew Verse'', a chronological anthology that spans 3,000 years of written Hebrew poetry. He wrote the preface to a collection of

Gabriel Preil Gabriel Preil (Hebrew: גבריאל פרייל; August 21, 1911 – June 5, 1993) was a modern Hebrew poet active in the United States, who wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish. Preil translated Robert Frost and Walt Whitman into Hebrew. Biography Gabri ...

's poems, ''Sunset Possibilities and Other Poems'' (1985). T. Carmi was also the pseudonymous co-author jointly with Shoshana Heyman, "Kush" (short for the acronym of Carmi ve(and) Shoshana - in hebr.) of the classic Israeli children's book "Shmulikipod." A sick boy laments that he has no one for company but the donkeys on his pajamas. Relief comes in the form of a visit from a somewhat short-tempered hedgehog (Hebr. "kipod") named Shmulik. After a few messy misadventures that never leave the playpen, Shmulik flees; the book concludes, "And Shmulikipod walked, and walked, and walked, and walked ...."

Awards and recognition

* In 1987, Carmi received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

award; * In 1990, Carmi was a co-recipient (jointly with

Pinchas Sadeh Pinchas Sadeh, also Pinhas Sadeh, ( he, פנחס שדה, born in Lemberg, Poland 1929, died January 29, 1994, in Jerusalem, Israel) was a Polish-born Israeli novelist and poet. Biography Pinhas Feldman (later Sadeh) was born in Galicia (then pa ...

) of the

Bialik Prize The Bialik Prize is an annual literary award given by the municipality of Tel Aviv, Israel, for significant accomplishments in Hebrew literature. The prize is named in memory of Israel's national poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik Hayim Nahman Biali ...

for

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

. * He has also received the

Brenner Prize The Brenner Prize is an Israeli literary prize awarded annually by the Hebrew Writers Association in Israel and the Haft Family Foundation. It was founded in the name of the author Yosef Haim Brenner Yosef Haim Brenner ( he, יוֹסֵף חַ ...

and the Shlonsky Prize.

References

External links

Biography at the Institute for Translation of Hebrew Literature
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carmi, T. 1925 births 1994 deaths Brenner Prize recipients Israeli poets Israeli translators 20th-century translators 20th-century poets Recipients of Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works

Biography

Literary career

Awards and recognition

See also

References

Further reading

External links