On the Slaughter - by Hayim Nahman Bialik (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The first comprehensive English translation of a Russian-Jewish master's poetry, from the fiery poems he wrote in the wake of the pogroms of the early 20th century to his sublime lyrics about longing and self-reflection.

On the Slaughter, named for Bialik's most famous poem, also includes a sample of the poet's work for children and an impassioned introduction by the collection's translator, MacArthur winner Peter Cole.

Few poets in the history of Hebrew have possessed the power and prescience of Hayim Nahman Bialik. Born in 1873 in a small Ukrainian village, he spent his most productive years in Odessa and in his fifties made his way to British Mandatory Palestine. He died in Vienna in 1934.

Bialik's body of work opened a path from the traditional Jewish world of Eastern Europe into a more expansive Jewish humanism. In a line that stretches back to the Bible and the Hebrew poetry of Muslim and Christian Spain, he stands out--in the words of Maxim Gorky--as "a modern Isaiah." To this day he remains an iconic and shockingly relevant poet, essayist, and tutelary spirit.

Translated and introduced by MacArthur-winning poet Peter Cole, On the Slaughter presents Bialik for the first time in English as a masterful artist, someone far more politically and psychologically unsettling than his reputation as the national poet of the Jewish people might suggest. This compact collection offers readers a panoramic view of Bialik's inner and outer landscapes: his visionary "poems of wrath" respond in startling fashion to the devastations of pogroms and a Jewish community in crisis, while his quietly sublime lyrics of longing, doubt, and withering self-assessment bring us into the silence at the heart of his art. The volume also includes a sampling of slyly sophisticated verse for children, and a moving introduction that bridges Bialik's moment and our own.

Review Quotes

"Like all great poetry, Hayim Nahman Bialik's Hebrew verses are shockingly language-specific. Biblical and Talmudic resonances ring out in almost every line together with the strange freshness of an ancient language coming back to life. So I always thought that Bialik was untranslatable, until I read Peter Cole's razor-sharp, sonorous, loving translations. What is more, Cole's introduction to this volume may well be the best essay ever on Bialik and his oeuvre, as it brings out a devastating irony: the poet's signature poem, "On the Slaughter"--written in the wake of the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev--reads today like a bitter, proleptic threnody for the victims of the massacre of October 7th; of the unthinkable, vengeful catastrophe of Gaza; and of the pogroms being perpetrated against innocent Palestinian villagers on the West Bank by savage Jewish settlers. Great books--and poems--have their own fate." --David Shulman, author of Tamil: A Biography

"It's here, Peter Cole's translation of Hayim Nahman Bialik's famous and infamous poetry about the April 1903 Kishinev pogrom along with a compact selection of the poet's other visionary, strange, passionate, and mournful works, which are just as striking and durable in altogether different ways. These translations bring us a living voice, nuanced, melodic, orchestrated with touches of rhyme that seem inevitable, less the product of a translator's will than of the desire of language itself. But first there is Cole's introduction: so finely tuned, with pulsing syntax and shapely thought, readers might not be in a hurry to reach the poems. Until they do!" --Forrest Gander

"Look closely: and Bialik's angry, explicit, uncontainable but also transcendent witness to genocide will blast away the cynical and selective attempts of nationalists and authoritarians to appropriate his work. Peter Cole is one of our greatest living poet-translators. With his note-perfect ear and an intensity rooted in scholarship one finds a music entirely equal to the task." --Vivek Narayanan

"Once upon a time in Odessa, Hayim Nahman Bialik forged a modern Hebrew poetry, with a Biblical ear for lamentation, exile, longing, rage, blame, shame, and revenge along with an achingly contemporary recognition of their glorious, holy, and cursed echoes. Peter Cole makes these verses vivid, visceral, and chilling with both his prescient translations and his essential commentaries." --Charles Bernstein

"Bialik's poetry flies up as 'a hidden spark in the stone of my heart.' Peter Cole's translations glow with that Kabbalistic spark. These poems catch Bialik's huge range: rage, grief, curse, prayer, celebration, irony, tenderness. Here is the father of modern Hebrew poetry in electrifying modern English, recording in horror the pogrom at Kishinev but also echoing the Psalms in praise and gratitude. Bialik died in 1934, but he seems an inescapable poet of our day." --Rosanna Warren

"No voice comes closer than Hayim Nahman Bialik's to capturing the agonizing interplay between Jewish hunger for redemption and the inadequacy of its devotees. Peter Cole--a major poet himself--has mastered the consummate master of contemporary Hebrew letters, rendering him into English, after so many others have tried, with unrivaled clarity, erudition, and multilingual precision. Here is Bialik taking his rightful place in the larger poetic world."--Steven J. Zipperstein

About the Author

Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934) is widely considered the greatest Hebrew literary figure of his age. In addition to his own path-breaking poetry, he catalyzed the "ingathering" of key works from the Hebrew past, and remains an iconic and shockingly relevant poet, essayist, and tutelary spirit.

Peter Cole's most recent books include Draw Me After: Poems; That Simple?... and That Complicated: Conversations on Poetry and Translation; and Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations. Among his collections of translations are The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 and The Poetry of Kabbalah: Mystical Verse from the Jewish Tradition, as well as contemporary poetry and fiction by Aharon Shabtai, Taha Muhammad Ali, Yoel Hoffmann, Harold Schimmel, and others. Cole has received numerous honors for his work, among them an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the PEN Translation Prize, fellowships from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation, a National Jewish Book Award for Poetry, and a MacArthur Fellowship.