Visiting Israeli Scholar Gabriel Levin

Gabriel Levin, the 2008 Joseph B. Glossberg Visiting Israeli Scholar at Knox College, will deliver three free, public lectures in September and October about Middle Eastern literature and his work as a translator. Levin also is teaching a course, "Modern Hebrew Literature," at Knox during the Fall Term 2008.

All three lectures are in the Alumni Room, Old Main, on the Knox campus in Galesburg, Illinois. They are sponsored by the Joseph B. Glossberg Visiting Israeli Scholar Program.

Lecture Schedule and Details:

• Thursday, September 25, 7:30 p.m.: "'My heart is in the east and I'm at the far end of the west': The Life and Poetry of Yehuda Halevi, a Hebrew poet in Medieval Spain"
  
  Details: This lecture will discuss Hebrew poet Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141) by presenting a selection of translations of poems from the major phases in his life, beginning with his youthful poetry from both Christian Spain and Muslim Andalusia, his devotional poems written during his middle years in Cordoba, and concluding with his late poems written at sea as he sailed to the east on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Levin states that Halevi and other Hebrew poets of the Golden Age of Spain were profoundly influenced by the aesthetics and poetic modalities of the Arab world in which they lived.

•  Tuesday, October 7, 4:00 p.m.: "The Tailor's Dummy: Reflections, Anecdotes, and Dreams on Translation"
  
  Details: Levin will discuss his journal that deals with his work as a translator. Some of the notes deal with specific poems and prose texts?poems by Halevi, H.N. Bialik, the contemporary Israeli poet Avot Yeshurun, a lost text by Jacqueline Kahanoff, an Egyptian writer who wrote in English. Others delve into myth and dreams, which Levin views as paradigms for the task of translation. Other journal entries engage a miscellany of writers and shed some light on the work at hand, such as a quote from Franz Rosenzweig "Only one who is profoundly convinced of the impossibility of translation can really undertake it."

• Tuesday, October 28, 7:30 p.m.: "Seeking a Poetics of the Fertile Crescent"
  
  Details: Levin will discuss motifs in western thought originated in three separate ancient Middle Eastern "topologies": the descent into the Mesopotamian "underworld," the pre-Islamic Arabian nomadic ode or "qasida," and the "arabesque" -- intricate Middle Eastern forms of literary expression. Levin will match ancient texts with modern, western poems in order to demonstrate the prevalence of such archetypes.
  

More about Gabriel Levin

A native of France, Levin grew up in the United States and Israel, and is a graduate of New York University. He moved to Israel in 1972, completing a master's degree in clinical psychology at Hebrew University, then working as a clinical psychologist. Since 1983 he has worked exclusively as a freelance author and editor, and as a translator of works into English from Hebrew, French and Arabic.

Levin has published three books of translations of poetry, including works by Yehuda Halevi and Taha Muhammad Ali. He also has published books of his own poetry, prose and essays. Levin is a founding editor of Ibis Editions, which concentrates on English translations of Middle Eastern poetry, prose, and drama. He has taught at Wesleyan University's program in Israel and participated in seminars at Ben Gurion University, Mishkenot Sha'ananim, and City College of New York on translation and related subjects.

Levin has published three collections of his own poetry -- his most recent is "The Maltese Dreambook," and he is completing a book of essays, "Notes from Wadi Rumm & Other Essays."

The Joseph B. Glossberg Visiting Israeli Scholar Program was founded at Knox College with a gift from Knox trustee Joseph Glossberg. Since it began in 1995, the program has brought eight distinguished scholars to the Knox campus for teaching and public lectures, most recently Israeli playwright Motti Lerner.