Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid [Paperback]

The first major poet of the Hebrew literary renaissance of Moslem Spain, Shmuel Ben Yosef Ha-Levi HaNagid (993-1056 c.e.) was also the Prime Minister of the Muslim state of Granada, battlefield commander of the non-Jewish Granadan army, and one of the leading religious figures in a medieval Jewish world that stretched from Andalusia to Baghdad. Peter Cole's groundbreaking versions of HaNagid's poems capture the poet's combination of secular and religious passion, as well as his inspired linking of Hebrew and Arabic poetic practice. This annotatedSelected Poemsis the most comprehensive collection of HaNagid's work published to date in English.

The Multiple Troubles of Man

The multiple troubles of man,
my brother, like slander and pain,
amaze you? Consider the heart
which holds them all
in strangeness, and doesn't break.

I'd Suck Bitter Poison from the Viper's Mouth

I'd suck bitter poison from the viper's mouth
and live by the basilisk's hole forever,
rather than suffer through evenings with boors,
fighting for crumbs from their table.

"Winner of the 1998 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Translation Prize, Modern Language Association""Peter Cole, Winner of a 2010 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters""Peter Cole is the recipient of a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship"Peter Coleis the author ofRift,a collection of poems. . . .a wonder of poetic alchemy. [Cole's] deftly cadenced translations embody, as Pound demanded, 'trace of that power which implies the man'. They are delicately poised between fidelity to the Hebrew and an ear finely-tuned to the possibilities of a modern, poetic idiom in English . . . At last HaNagid's gift resonates for the English reader. Cole's vigorous inventive translation is equal to the task of rendering the work of a poet whose range encompassed commerce and God, war and wine.l#