J'Accuse [Paperback]

Aharon Shabtai (Author), Peter Cole (Translator)

Book Description

Series: New Directions | Publication Date: April 2003

Explosive poems by an Israeli accusing his country of crimes against humanity.

Playing on Zola's famous letter denouncing the anti-Semitism of the French government throughout the Dreyfus affair, Aharon Shabtai's title can be taken literally: it charges his government and his people with crimes against the humanity of their neighbors. Here we find snipers shooting children, spin-masters trying to whitewash blood baths, ammunition "distributed like bars of chocolate," and "technicians of slaughter" for whom morality is merely "a pain in the ass."

With a splendid lyrical physicality that accentuates Shabtai's terse immediacy and matter-of-fact scorn, the poems cover a period of six yearsfrom the 1996 election of Netanyahu as prime minister through the curfews, lynchings, riots, sieges, and bombings of the second intifada. But at the heart of J'Accuse is the fate of the ethical Hebrew culture in which the poet was raised: Shabtai refuses to abandon his belief in the moral underpinnings of Israeli society or to be silent before the barbaric and brutal. He witnesses, he protests, he warns. Above all, he holds up a mirror to his nation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this provocative collection, Israeli poet Shabtai, author of more than 15 books of poetry, confronts what could be described as a collective identity crisis in Jewish culture, particularly in Israel. Having suffered immense persecution throughout history and learned to identify keenly with the dispossessed, Israeli Jews are now in a position of dominance over another people. Shabtai condemns Israel's role as occupier and military power, distancing himself from his country ("I'm a disciple of Shakespeare, not Ben Gurion") and identifying explicitly with the Palestinians ("I'm a Palestinian Jew"). While there are occasional glimmerings of personal struggle here-"O my country, my country,/ with each sandal,/ with each thread / of my khaki pants, / I've loved you"-for the most part, the book is a relentless polemic, elegizing innocent Palestinians and demonizing Israeli soldiers: "Idiotic soldiers of lead, / was your father a knife/ that only knows how to chop?" Plumbing modes familiar from Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet's subtle eroticism, Shabtai veers into sexual and violent shock value: "In the morning she sucks off a sniper in uniform,/ and at evening he returns/ and proudly displays/ the X he etched / into the butt of his rifle,/ after he'd terminated/ a young woman, age 19,/ who was hanging up laundry/ on her roof in Hebron." Titled after Emile Zola's impassioned defense of Alfred Dreyfus, these poems seem particularly designed to provoke a Jewish audience, using images of oppression drawn from Jewish liturgy and history. The book compares Israeli soldiers to Pharaoh's troops in ancient Egypt, refers to "pogroms" against Palestinians living in "ghettos" and explicitly likens present-day Palestinians to Jews living in 1930s Germany. What role this book will play in ongoing debates about Israel, the West Bank and Gaza remains to be seen, but it could prove even more controversial than Mahmoud Darwish's recent (and much more nuanced) Unfortunately, It Was Paradise.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

A poetry of glare, of migraine...blunt, incendiary, wide-awake. -- Poetry Wales, Lyndon Davies, Fall 2003

A shocking book of poems that is powered by political rage....an upsetting and provocative book. -- Washington Post, Edward Hirsch, 27 April 2003

Current political events and their historical background have given a richness of allusion to Shabtai's poems. -- Martha Collins, Field Magazine, Spring 2004

Deftly translated from Hebrew into English by Cole...sharply denounces Israel's current policy toward the Palestinians. -- Midwest Book Review

Peter Cole's translations superbly capture the stark rhythms and cadences of the original. -- World Literature Today

Shabtai delivers his scathing testimony with Bertolt Brecht's rhetorical clarity and his own potent poetics, steeped in...classic Greek drama. -- Sesshu Foster, Speechless, 28 May 2004

Shabtai is one of the most exciting poets writing anywhere. -- C. K. Williams

[Shabtai's poems aim to] give birth to a new ethical cohabitation that celebrates rather than demeans Israel's splendid heritage. -- Debbie Shoeneman, Jewish Book World, Fall 2004

[These] poems create a voluminous chorus of sorrow and outrage. -- Willa Schneberg, American Book Review, March/April 2004

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811215393
• ISBN-13: 978-0811215398
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,194,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deftly translated from Hebrew into English, July 15, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: J'Accuse (Paperback)

Deftly translated from Hebrew into English by Peter Cole, J'Accuse is a collection of verse written by Aharon Shabtai, an Israeli poet who sharply denounces Israel's current policy toward the Palestinians. Resolutely criticizing the occupations of the West Bank and Gaza, this emphatic collection contains a dramatic signature of determination that what is wrong should be put right for the sake of both the Palestinians and the Israelis. To A Pilot: When next you circle/in your chopper/over Jenin,/pilot, remember the children/and old women/in the homes at which you fire./Spread a layer/of chocolate across your missile,/and do your best to be precise --/so their souvenir will be sweet/when the walls start to fall.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a gorgeous little book, January 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: J'Accuse (Paperback)

By turns venomous and lyrical, brutally contemporary, melancholically nostalgic, and timelessly erotic, this slim collection has an enormous range of emotion and poetic technique. Most of Shabtai's poems collected here are quite short, often only a page in length; the translation is seemingly prosy and plain, but this is the right choice, as it only renders the poetry more direct in its impact. The politics of these poems are complex and resist the oversimplification of controversy-mongers; Shabtai is at once bitterly nostalgic for the utopian dream of early, socialist Zionism, and angrily opposed to the current state of things. Contemporary poetry readers would do well to give this book a serious look; also, American spectators to the Middle East will find Shabtai presents a very different picture of the politics of Israeli Jews than we are commonly presented with by domestic media.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The pungency of oregano, May 28, 2006

By 

S. Foster "Caustic" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: J'Accuse (Paperback)

Aharon Shabtai is a classicly-minded (translator from the Greek) Israeli public poet, their Neruda, bringing a powerful poetic conscience to bear, even in his erotic verse. Peter Coles' translations are a great gift, delivering new vistas from the Middle East. This poetry is unexpected, sharp, tensile and fresh. Sage in brilliant heat.