View source for Avraham Ben-Yitzhak

{{Other people|Avraham Ben Yitzhak|Abraham ben Isaac}}
'''Avraham Ben-Yitzhak''' ({{langx|he|אברהם בן יצחק}}{{lrm}}; 1883–1950) was a Hebrew poet.

==Biography==
He was born Avraham Sonne, on September 13, 1883, in [[Przemyśl]], [[Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria|Austrian Galicia]], a region of Eastern Europe which has changed hands throughout history between [[Austria]] and [[Poland]]. In his youth, Przemyśl was part of the Austrian Empire, and he moved to [[Vienna]] to study. In 1938, he fled to the [[Mandatory Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]] after the German occupation of Vienna. He died in 1950 in [[Israel]] of tuberculosis. He had only published eleven poems in his lifetime. These, and a few more, were rediscovered after his death.

He was a friend of [[Elias Canetti]], who met him in 1933. Canetti describes "Dr. Sonne" in his [[Autobiography|autobiographical]] book Das Augenspiel (''The Play of the Eyes''). In his description, Avraham Ben-Yitzhak appears as a profound scholar with interests in religion, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Dr. Sonne had a lasting influence on Canetti, who later wrote a profile of him in the April 7, 1986, edition of [[The New Yorker]]. He was also a friend of [[James Joyce]] and rumored to be romantically attached to [[Leah Goldberg]]. Most of all, and especially in his later years, his friends remembered him for his long silences.

==References==

* ''[[The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself]]'' (2003), {{ISBN|0-8143-2485-1}}
* Avraham Ben-Yitzhak, ''Collected Poems'', trans. Peter Cole (Jerusalem: Ibis, 2003).

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050911041045/http://www.waz.easynet.co.uk/aby/ The Poetry of Avraham Ben-Yitzhak]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110720145437/http://israel.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=3161 New translations of Ben-Yitzhak's poems and other writings]
* [http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/2010/05/avraham-ben-yitzhak-lonely-say-from.html Translation of Ben-Yitzhak's 'The Lonely Say']

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ben-Yitzhak, Avraham}}
[[Category:1883 births]]
[[Category:1950 deaths]]
[[Category:Israeli poets]]
[[Category:20th-century Israeli poets]]
[[Category:Burials at Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery]]


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