David Avidan

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| name = David Avidan

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| native_name = דוד אבידן

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| caption = "David Avidan", painting by Yael-Shahar Sarid, 1994

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| birth_date = February 21, 1934

| birth_place = Tel Aviv, Palestine

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| death_date = {{Death date and age|1995|5|11|1934|2|21}}

| death_place = Tel Aviv, Israel

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| alma_mater = Hebrew University of Jerusalem

| occupation = Poet, painter, filmmaker, publicist, and playwright

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| awards = 1993 Bialik Prize for Hebrew literature

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David Avidan ({{Langx|he|דוד אבידן}}; February 21, 1934 – May 11, 1995) was an Israeli "poet, painter, filmmaker, publicist, and playwright" (as he often put it). He wrote 20 published books of Hebrew poetry.

Biography and literary career

He was born in Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine, and studied Literature and Philosophy while briefly studying at Hebrew University. He wrote mostly in Hebrew, and was an avant-garde artist throughout his life. He translated many of his own poems into English, and received several awards both as a poet and as a translator.

He studied at the ‘Shalva’ Gymnasium. From 1952 to 1954, he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At a young age, he was diagnosed with asthma, which caused him choking attacks and accompanied him throughout his life. In 1952, he began publishing poems, mainly in the daily newspaper Kol HaAm, the publication of the Israeli Communist Party (Maki), and even joined the youth movement of the party, Banki (the Israeli Communist Youth Alliance). Gabriel Moked was the first to recognize his talent while they studied together at the gymnasium and supported his work and writing about it for many years. At the same time, Alexander Penn, the literary editor of Kol HaAm, was impressed by him and encouraged him. His early poems were deeply influenced by the pathos in Penn’s poetry and his translations of Mayakovsky, but even in these early works, there is a clear familiarity with the poems of Shlonsky, Alterman, and their generation.

Avidan became disillusioned with communism and committed poetry, and left Banki in 1953. For a short time afterward, he still published poems combining social pathos with existential anxiety in the HaMishmar newspaper of the Mapam party and in the weekly Bama’avak, but later he distanced himself from the political and aesthetic world of committed poetry{{Cite web |title=דוד אבידן |url=https://library.osu.edu/projects/hebrew-lexicon/00470.php |access-date=2025-06-08 |website=library.osu.edu}}. He was not popular with most critics or the general public throughout his life, often criticized as being egocentric, chauvinistic, and technocratic. His first book, Lipless Faucets (1954), was attacked by nearly all poetry critics; the first favorable review was by Gabriel Moked, editor of the literary quarterly Akhshav, who later became one of Avidan's closest friends.

By the early 1990s he could scarcely make a living, and his mental condition had deteriorated. Avidan died in Tel Aviv, the city which had played a central role in his life, and was, in many ways, the center of his creation. Alongside the literary persona, Avidan developed a real-life character that was somewhat a continuation of his poetic persona. He inherited from the Futurists the rejection of the modest poet figure, one who is hidden only in their texts, and the passion to shock “good taste.” He did everything to be “wise,” as he put it, and not just a poet — that is, a being with intelligence who lives what he writes and continues his texts through various forms of public appearance and provocation of public decency.

This combination — of the fatal literary persona and the provocative public figure — accompanied Avidan throughout his life. He developed and refined this dual personality — who loved to portray himself as a leaping tiger — from book to book, from provocation to provocation. Because of this rebellious and heroic personality, he provoked rejection (he did not receive prestigious prizes, and only the Bialik Prize was awarded to him a few months before his death), but he also attracted attention and influenced poets (for example, a deep influence on Yona Wallach). Even after his death, his personality continues to be a source of inspiration for Israeli poets and many artists

Avidan died on May 11, 1995 Hebrew date Iyar 11, 5755, in his Tel Aviv apartment at the age of 61.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/13/obituaries/david-avidan-poet-and-playwright-61.html|title=David Avidan, Poet And Playwright, 61|author=Associated Press|work=The New York Times|date=May 13, 1995}}. Engraved on his gravestone is his short poem "Adamila, the combination of two words man and word. It represents one of the hallmarks of Avidan's poetry — the expansion of linguistic boundaries, primarily through the creation of new words formed by combining two familiar ones.

Since his death, Avidan's reputation has been on the rise both in literary circles and in the popular imagination, positioning him as one of the core and contemporary poets of the Israeli canon. A volume of Selected Poems by Avidan, "Futureman," translated by Tsipi Keller, has been published by Phoneme Media in 2017.

He left a profound mark on Hebrew poetry, but the notion of being only a poet seemed narrow-minded to him. His image was etched into the cultural consciousness of Israelis primarily thanks to his poems, but also due to the fatal richness and joy he poured into all forms of communication — through his constant movement between texts and actions that challenged public propriety, and through his yearning for the communication of the future.

The David Avidan Archive was deposited in t[https://in.bgu.ac.il/heksherim/Archives/Pages/david_avidan_archive.aspx he archive of the Heksherim Institute] for the Study of Jewish and Israeli Literature and Culture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva.

Awards

In 1993, Avidan was the co-recipient (jointly with Amalia Kahana-Carmon) of the Bialik Prize for Hebrew literature.{{Cite web|title=List of Bialik Prize recipients 1933–2004 (in Hebrew), Tel Aviv Municipality website |url=http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/Hebrew/_MultimediaServer/Documents/12516738.pdf |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071217143811/http://www.tel-aviv.gov.il/Hebrew/_MultimediaServer/Documents/12516738.pdf |archivedate=December 17, 2007 }}

Movies

Message from the Future, a 1981 Israeli film Avidan wrote, directed and starred in, is a science fiction movie in English about future humans visiting present-day Israel. In the year 3005, a man is sent back to 1985 to convince the present leaders make certain that World War III happens, which he guarantees will make for a better future. Having already caused natural disasters and catastrophes by coming back from the future, he now tries to force his message on the world press and TV. Sheldon Teitelbaum has judged the film 'execrable'.John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Orbit Books, 1993, p. 630.

Books (poetry) – partial list

Lipless Faucets, 1954
Personal Problems, 1957
Subtotal, 1960
Pressure Poems, 1962
Something for Someone, 1964
A Book of Possibilities – Poems and More, 1985

References

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070501045434/http://library.osu.edu/sites/users/galron.1/00470.php לקסיקון הספרות העברית החדשה – דוד אבידן ]
[https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/13/obituaries/david-avidan-poet-and-playwright-61.html NY Times obituary, retrieved October 5, 2008]
http://mailchi.mp/1480e735fb8d/a-very-phoneme-fall

Category:1934 births

Category:1995 deaths

Category:Jewish Israeli artists

Category:Jewish Israeli male actors

Category:Israeli male poets

Category:Israeli male painters

Category:Israeli film directors

Category:Israeli male film actors

Category:Israeli male screenwriters

Category:Jewish Israeli screenwriters

Category:Burials at Yarkon Cemetery

Category:20th-century Israeli poets