Literature

The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492

    Translated by
  • Peter Cole

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Published:
Jan 10, 2009
2007
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Literature
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Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies an extraordinary sensuality and intense faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time.


Peter Cole’s translations reveal this remarkable poetic world to English readers in all of its richness, humor, grace, gravity, and wisdom. The Dream of the Poem traces the arc of the entire period, presenting some four hundred poems by fifty-four poets, and including a panoramic historical introduction, short biographies of each poet, and extensive notes. (The original Hebrew texts are available on the Princeton University Press Web site.) By far the most potent and comprehensive gathering of medieval Hebrew poems ever assembled in English, Cole’s anthology builds on what poet and translator Richard Howard has described as “the finest labor of poetic translation that I have seen in many years” and “an entire revelation: a body of lyric and didactic verse so intense, so intelligent, and so vivid that it appears to identify a whole dimension of historical consciousness previously unavailable to us.” The Dream of the Poem is, Howard says, “a crowning achievement.”


Awards and Recognition

  • Winner of the 2010 TLS Risa Domb/Porjes Translation Prize, Jewish Book Council
  • Winner of the 2007 R. R. Hawkins Award, Association of American Publishers
  • Winner of the 2007 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Humanities, Association of American Publishers
  • Winner of the 2007 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Literature, Language, and Linguistics, Association of American Publishers
  • Winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry
  • Finalist for the 2007 National Jewish Book Award in Sephardic Culture
  • Peter Cole, Recipient of a 2007 MacArthur Fellowship
  • Peter Cole, Winner of a 2010 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters