Avraham Shlonsky: Encyclopedia II - Avraham Shlonsky - Works

Avraham Shlonsky - Works

His collection of verse Rough Stones exemplifies his works as a mature poet. Poems from the Long Corridor is a collection of reflections on the nature of life and death.

Shlonsky is also considered among the best Hebrew children's poets, for books such as Mickey Who? and Me and Tali in Lhama Country.

The play Utzli-Gutzli, about the dwarf Rumpelstiltskin of German legend, became a classic among Hebrew children's plays. In Shlonsky's translation for the stage, all of the monologues and dialogues are spoken in rhyme. They incorporate sophisticated wordplay using the Hebrew language at a high level. The following example from Utzli-Gutzli is presented with a transliteration, placing accents on stressed syllables. An unauthorized translation follows.

In translation of foreign-language works, Shlonsky's uniqueness is evident. The Shlonskian style is prominent from the first lines onward. Shlonsky translated some of the best world classics: William Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Romain Rolland, and others.

In his distinguished translation of Hamlet, which a score of Hebrew translators had already tackled, Shlonsky's distinctive language is again evident. He translated Shakespeare from Russian, as he was not a master of English. Yet translating at second hand did not mar the quality of his result. When Hamlet tells his mother Gertrude not to sleep with his uncle Claudius, who murdered his father, Shlonsky uses the consonance min`i dodayikh midodi: "withhold your love from my uncle", where the unusual word dodayikh (your love) evokes the Song of Solomon. The conventional translation is al ta`ali al yetzu`ei dodi (do not go upon my uncle's couch).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Works", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki