Lea Goldberg was born in Koenigsberg, East Prussia, (today Kaliningrad in Russia), spent her early childhood in Russia, and returned with her family after the 1917 Revolution to their home in Kovno (now Kaunas), Lithuania. She began to publish Hebrew verse while still a schoolgirl. Goldberg attended the University of Kovno, and then Berlin University (where she earned a doctorate in Semitic studies in 1933) and the University of Bonn.
In 1935 she settled in Tel Aviv where she became one of Israel's leading intellectuals and poets. She joined the staffs of the newspapers Ha’aretz and Davar and became children books' editor of Sifriyat Po'alim publishing house, as well as as literary consultant to the Habima theater and theater critic for the Al Ha-Mishmar journal. Goldberg was the founder of the Department of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (which she chaired from 1952 until her death).
A prolific and versatile writer, Lea Goldberg’s work includes lyrical poetry, literary criticism, books for children, and translations of European classics into Hebrew. Goldberg translated numerous foreign works into Hebrew, using her excellent knowledge of seven languages. These include works of modernist Russian poets and translations from the Italian. She was also one of Israel’s most successful children’s writers with twenty popular works to her credit. Two entire generations of Israeli youth have grown up on her stories and poems. Her poetry for adults deals mainly with childhood, love, aging and death; it is highly personal, introspective, and modern in its understated (and often starkly simple) tone. Goldberg’s poems often speak about loneliness and broken relationships, with a tragic intonation, originating, some say, in her own loneliness. Some of her subjects are deeply entrenched in western culture (for instance, the Odyssey); she also used Jewish themes. She wrote too about nature, with a longing that produced perhaps some of her best-known and loved poems. Although she sometimes chose to write poems that do not rhyme (especially in her later period), she always respected formal verse; moreover, in the sonnet sequence ‘The Love of Theresa di Meun’, about the love of a fictitious married Italian noblewoman for a younger tutor, Goldberg adopted complex rhyming schemes.
Selected bibliography
You Will Walk in the Fields (poems and songs) [At telkhi ba-sade: shirim u-manginot], Sifriyat Po'alim, Tel Aviv 1989
Lady of the castle: a dramatic episode in three (play), [Ba'alat ha-armon: epizoda dramatit be-shalosh ma'arakhot] Sifriat Poalim, Merhavya 1956
Lady of the castle: a dramatic episode in three, translated from the Hebrew by T. Carmi, The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, Tel Aviv 1974
Light on the rim of a cloud; 14 poems by the Hebrew poet Lea Goldberg, English version by Rama Commanday, Didymus Press, San Francisco 1972
Encounter with a Poet (non-fiction) [Pgisha 'im meshorer: 'al Avraham Ben Yitshak Sona], Sifriyat Po'alim, Merhavya 1952
Room for rent (children) Pictures by Avner Katz, Ward Ritchie Press, Los Angeles 1972
Russian literature in the nineteenth century: essays, Translated into English by Hillel Halkin, Magnes Press, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1976
Selected poems, Translated and introduced by Robert Friend; foreword by Yehuda Amichai; afterword by Gershom Scholem Menard Press, London, Panjandrum Press, San Francisco 1976
Links
Short biography of Lea Goldberg and links
Language: Catalan
Page on Lea Goldberg by the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
Language: English
Three songs by Lea Goldberg for female voice and piano (audio)
Language: English
On Lea Goldberg in the Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia
Language: English
Two Songs to the Rivers, two poems by Lea Goldberg
Language: English
An article on Israeli Poetry and Literature
Language: French
Short biography of Lea Goldberg
Language: German
Poems of Lea Goldberg in Polish
Language: Polish
Short biography of Lea Goldberg
Language: Russian
A poem of Lea Goldberg in Spanish translation
Language: Spanish
Poems on Jerusalem by Lea Goldberg and other Israeli poets
Language: Spanish
A poem of Lea Goldberg in Spanish translation
Language: Spanish
