Amos Oz
Amos Oz
Amos Ozis an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. He is regarded as Israel's most famous living author...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth4 May 1939
CountryIsrael
country novel jew
"The State of the Jews" was not a title of a country. It was a title of a futuristic novel.
individual
In fact, every one of us - every nation, every individual begins hundreds, perhaps thousands of years prior to the date that appears in the passport.
literature psychological
Literature is not made of ideas and it's not made of concepts, of psychological analysis. It's made of words.
latin language foreign-language
The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.
latin greek language
Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English.
inspired hebrew language
Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages.
different
Things can be translated, but they become different.
mean reality different
Hebrew has a system of tenses, which is, in a big way, different from the English system of tenses, probably different than any European system of tenses, which means a different sense of reality, which means a different concept of time.
musical different
Different musical instruments provide for different music.
trying literature translations
I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.
book musical different
The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.
literature painting music-is
In the same way in which music is made of notes and a painting is made of lines of colors, the matter of literature are words.
dream father redemption
Israel is imperfect, of course it is - a far cry from the monumental dreams of the founding fathers. One of the reasons is that their dreams were unrealistic. They were bigger than life. These were messianic dreams, dreams about total redemption for the Jews, for the world. Such dreams do not come true, not in their entirety.
dream imperfect
Dreams fulfilled are imperfect.