Creator Bio
Haim Gouri
1923–2018
Haim Gouri, poet, author, journalist, and documentary filmmaker, was born in Tel Aviv. He was a poet of the 1948 Generation and exerted a major influence on modern Hebrew literature. Gouri joined the fighting force, the Palmach, in 1941 and fought in Israel’s War of Independence. He wrote more than twenty books of prose and poetry as well as autobiographical works. From 1974 to 1983, when he headed Documentary Films, Gouri created a renowned trilogy of films on the Holocaust, together with David Bergman and Jacquot Ehrlich.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
The Crazy Book
Arab Halva—moist, sticky, fibrous. The taste tears across my lips like a memory. Within me Jaffa stirs, wakens from sleep; eyes and faces of Jaffa.
I am there, it is afternoon, a city half-awake…
Primary Source
Behold, Our Bodies Are Laid Out
To Dani and his friendsBehold, our bodies are laid out—a long, long row.Our faces are altered. Death looks out of our eyes. We do not breathe.Twilight dwindles and evening falls over the mountain.Look…
Primary Source
The Song of Friendship
On the Negev an autumn night falls
Surreptitiously igniting star after star
And as the wind crosses the threshold
Clouds spread over the path.
It’s been a year already. We hardly felt
How the times…
Primary Source
1923–1958
And I didn’t have time.
Now it is certain
I didn’t have time.
Half my life.
It is now allowed
To be silent.
My shadows grow
With the stride of the sun.
I am the man
Who didn’t have time.
Primary Source
The One Following Us
I’m no longer the man that once was. I am the one I precede,
An approximate continuation of the selfsame countenance.
I continue walking without him. At times I run in the night,
Trying to break my…