Abraham Shlonsky, also spelled Avraham
Shlonski (b. March 6, 1900, Poltava
province, Russia [now in Ukraine]—d. May
18, 1973, Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel),
Israeli poet who founded Israel’s
Symbolist school and was an innovator in
using colloquial speech in Hebrew verse.
In the
early 1920s Shlonsky emigrated to
Palestine, becoming literary editor of
various periodicals. He translated into
Hebrew works by authors such as Bertolt
Brecht, Nikolay Gogol, Aleksandr
Pushkin, William Shakespeare, and G.B.
Shaw. Much of Shlonsky’s poetry concerns
the Israeli pioneer’s rejection of
Western values and the emergence of
Israel as a modern country. Verse
collections include Shire ha-mapolet
ve-ha-piyus (1938; “Songs of Defeat and
Conciliation”) and ʿAl mileʾt (1947; “On
Filling In”).
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