With Reference to at Least 2-3 of Amichai’s Poems, Identify the Main Stylistic Elements of His Work and Comment on Their Effectiveness.
With reference to at least 2-3 of Amichai’s poems, identify the main stylistic elements of his work and comment on their effectiveness.
The main stylistic elements of the work of Yehuda Amichai greatly reflect the time in which he was writing and the place in which he was located whilst writing. Being born in Germany in 1924 and then living in Israel in the 20th century meant that Amichai was exposed to a turbulent stage in world history as Israel had only just been created as a separate state after World War II and Hitler’s persecution of the Jewish race. At this time politics, war and religion were all at the centre of the world’s attention, and particularly for the Jewish people living in Israel as there was the constant threat of violence from the Arab people in neighbouring Palestine. Throughout his work, Amichai is able to effectively convey the disruption and confusion caused by this conflict by using techniques such as scattered imagery and irregular structure.
To better understand the effectiveness of the stylistic elements used by Amichai, it is important to look at how he uses these techniques in his works. The first area of focus that is important to understand Amichai’s style is to study where and when each poem is set. With contextual background it seems to be that nearly all of his poems are set in Israel or some sort of similar desert-like place. ‘God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children’ is one of Amichai’s earliest works and it gives a good indication as to the importance of place in his poetry. The importance of place is that in many of his works the setting is very much abstract and sense of a place in which the poem is set appears to change constantly, making the poem more universal and often with religious additions to the poems the setting is taken to a metaphysical, God like, all seeing dimension. In ‘God Has pity on Kindergarten Children’, Amichai changes place from a ‘first-aid station’ to a desert like place as he describes ‘sand’ before
The main stylistic elements of the work of Yehuda Amichai greatly reflect the time in which he was writing and the place in which he was located whilst writing. Being born in Germany in 1924 and then living in Israel in the 20th century meant that Amichai was exposed to a turbulent stage in world history as Israel had only just been created as a separate state after World War II and Hitler’s persecution of the Jewish race. At this time politics, war and religion were all at the centre of the world’s attention, and particularly for the Jewish people living in Israel as there was the constant threat of violence from the Arab people in neighbouring Palestine. Throughout his work, Amichai is able to effectively convey the disruption and confusion caused by this conflict by using techniques such as scattered imagery and irregular structure.
To better understand the effectiveness of the stylistic elements used by Amichai, it is important to look at how he uses these techniques in his works. The first area of focus that is important to understand Amichai’s style is to study where and when each poem is set. With contextual background it seems to be that nearly all of his poems are set in Israel or some sort of similar desert-like place. ‘God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children’ is one of Amichai’s earliest works and it gives a good indication as to the importance of place in his poetry. The importance of place is that in many of his works the setting is very much abstract and sense of a place in which the poem is set appears to change constantly, making the poem more universal and often with religious additions to the poems the setting is taken to a metaphysical, God like, all seeing dimension. In ‘God Has pity on Kindergarten Children’, Amichai changes place from a ‘first-aid station’ to a desert like place as he describes ‘sand’ before