Bialik, Haim Nahman (1873-1934)

Reproduced with permission from ©Haaretz
Tue., January 18, 2005
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/527933.html

The national poet and the new generation

By Shiri Lev-Ari

Everyone in the copyright and new media department of ACUM, the Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers of Music in Israel, breathed a sigh of relief. The end of 2004 marked 70 years since the death of national poet Haim Nahman Bialik, and his work entered the public domain.

Under Israeli law, copyright belongs to a writer's heirs for 70 years. Eli Moreno, the department's head, was very happy. For years he has received scores of applications per month asking to use Bialik's poems. "Bialik is a big hit here," he said.

"The greater a poet's popularity with the general population, the stranger the uses people want to make of his poetry. Someone is now putting poems on boxes of chocolate. There are poems on jars of honey. We ask the holders of the rights for permission to use the work in question and grant the license in return for royalties - NIS 82 for use of a poem in an edition of up to 1,500 copies."

After Bialik's death in 1934 the copyright belonged to the Dvir Publishing house, which was established by the poet and was acquired 20 years ago by Zmora-Bitan Publishers. Now it is possible to quote Bialik anywhere and anytime, without asking permission.

Developing new approaches

Until now, Dvir has made excellent use of its rights to the complete works of Bialik. Over the years it has published 34 books of his works - the complete works, the complete poems, academic editions, children's books, albums of songs, plays, collections of letters that he wrote and much more. During the past two years Zmora-Bitan has been quick to issue Bialik's book of children's poetry "Rutz ben sussi" (Run, My Colt) and the album of love poems "He yoshevet bahalon" (She Sits at the Window).

Two weeks ago, just before the copyright expired, Dvir published a new edition of Bialik's poetry - "Haim Nahman Bialik, hashirim" (Haim Nahman Bialik, the Poems), edited by professor Avner Holzman. Gathered in the book are Bialik's canonical poems, arranged according to the periods of his life and work. An introduction is appended to each poem containing information about its history, the context in which it was written and a suggestion for interpretation. Alongside the poems are glosses of especially difficult words, and at the end of the book there is a selection of Bialik's previously unpublished poems, a table that chronicles his career and a bibliography.

Is Bialik's work published today in a way that is relevant to Israeli readers and speaks to them in contemporary Hebrew? Holzman invested two years in the effort, which began as an initiative of the late Ehud Zmora. In the end, he compromised between the approach of the popular edition of Bialik's complete poems, which the poet himself edited in 1923, and the academic edition that was published in conjunction with Tel Aviv University.

"A large gap developed between the popular and the academic editions, a gap that I wanted to fill," Holzman said. "This gap developed because today we need new keys to appreciate Bialik."

Holzman did away with the traditional division of the poems into three categories, left Bialik's children's poems out except for "Behind the Gate, added 20 previously unpublished poems and divided them into eight chronological periods.

Why wait?

What will happen now that the works of the national poet are accessible to everyone? The Internet has already given its answer. At the beginning of this month, the Ben Yehuda Project uploaded all of Bialik's work. The project, at benyehuda.org, started in 1999 and presents the works of Hebrew writers, poets and thinkers who died more than 70 years ago.

On January 3, 220 of Bialik's poems appeared on the site, as well as stories, essays, articles and oral works that were later put in writing. Assaf Bartov, 28, an undergraduate student in classical studies, began to type Bialik's poetry into a computer in 1999. All of Bialik's works on the site were entered and vowelized by Bartov and a team of volunteers. The site is run entirely by volunteers. In recent months, the Shenkar School of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan has been providing facilities for the project.

Bartov plans to propose a change to the copyright law to reduce the period that heirs hold the rights to work. "There is a lot of old material by important writers and less popular material that has disappeared from the stores and is out of print, and thus is inaccessible to readers," he said. "Anyway, it does not pay financially for publishers to reissue them, so why wait 70 years?" he asked. He cited a line from a lecture Bialik gave entitled "The Assembly of the Spirit": "We cannot be nourished by the works of the most recent generation alone."

As for the publishing houses, some are glad for the opportunity to publish Bialik and intend to do so in the near future, and some are hesitating - if only because they expect many publishers to "seize the opportunity" and the market to be flooded with Bialik.

Some publishers will undoubtedly reissue Bialik, if only for the textbook market, an unfailing source of sales. Tens of thousands of literature textbooks are sold each year.

The danger is that publishers are likely to concentrate on his best-known poems, those taught in schools or poems for children - those sure to sell. "We don't have plans to publish Bialik," said Yehuda Meltzer, the publisher of Aliyat Hagag books, which works mostly in conjunction with Yedioth Aharonoth's publishing arm. "Those who will publish will no doubt use his most popular works, and all the rest will be forgotten. Or else they'll take his poems that have been set to music and publish them together with the music."

At Am Oved publishers they are considering publishing Bialik. "We haven't reached any conclusions yet," said CEO Yaron Sadan, "but this is a situation that has to be weighed seriously.

Hakibbutz Hameuchad publishing house is also interested in Bialik. "In the near future we will issue one of his children's books, a narrative poem with illustrations by Yossi Abulafia," CEO Uzi Shavit said. "At a later stage, we will publish a small selection of his poems designed for readers' pleasure, not for students. I don't think that this will commercialize Bialik; rather it will only be good for him."

Schocken Publishing is not planning to publish Bialik in the near future, because the market is liable to be saturated. "Usually overseas, when the rights to an author are about to expire, a lot of publishers leap at the opportunity," said Schocken publisher Racheli Edelman. "In France, when the copyright to [Marcel] Proust's work expired, five of his books came out at once. Here, the market is small and there isn't much room."

Keter Publishing is thinking more about Bialik's prose works. "There are enough editions of his poetry," said Shimon Adaf, Keter's literary editor. "An opportunity has now emerged to start a debate about his poetry - after all, his poetry became canonical without any debate. All of us naturally think of him as `The Poet.' It could be that precisely because the rights have now expired, it will be possible to discuss him and his status as poet."

Now, when nearly all of the national poet's works are available on the Internet, it is their added value that will determine the fate of the new Bialik books. The competition over Bialik, said Holzman, "demonstrates that his poetry is still living, and this is not a small matter."  

Links

Biography (Encyc. Judaica for Youth)
http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/people/BIOS/bialik.html

Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
Biography, list of publications, anthologies and works in translation
http://www.ithl.org.il/author_info.asp?id=58 

The Ben Yehuda Project
Works of Bialik online, Hebrew language database (ongoing) 
http://www.benyehuda.org/bialik/