When I visited Jerusalem, I also visited a famous Jewish bookstore (see here and here). Frankly, when I got there I wasn't quite sure why the fame was merited. Perhaps it is due more to quality than to quantity; after all, Israel is a small country. But I have seen Border's Books and similar American chains that could fit the entirety of this bookstore into an antechamber.
Quality rather than quantity, then? Where else, for example, could you by an edition of Winnie-the-Pooh in Hebrew? So I did...and even though it is a children's text (and therefore has relatively simple vocabulary and vowel-points as well), I have found it more challenging than I dreamed. But then, A.A. Milne took his craft seriously even when he went into the nursery, and wrote more for adults about children than for children.
Milne's light and nonsense verse is probably underrated today; certainly it is out of fashion. But willy-nilly (and proving his own maxim that the man of talent will find his place), Milne's peculiar talents in prose and poetry shone in his four Children's Books. This probably explains why out of all his works (and they were many), only these (aka the "Pooh Books") have wide currency or even memory today.
Pooh's talent as a versifer is justly famous; he is the poet laureate of the Forest where Christopher Robin and his friends live. ("The Hundred Acre Wood" is incorrectly applied by "Disney Pooh" to the entire Forest, whereas in the Pooh Books it is but one small portion, the portion where Owl lives - see here.) As Pooh puts it, poems are not things which you get, they're things which get you, and all you can do is go where they can find you. (Maybe Pinsky and his Poets would profit from that advice.)
Apparently and unhappily, one cannot now get all of the Pooh Books in Hebrew -- only Winnie-the-Pooh. Its Hebrew title is Pu ha-Dov (פו הדוב), "Pooh the Bear". I would've liked to give you a long example of his work in English and Hebrew, but on experiment I find that my transcription skill in Hebrew is just too slow and limited. But a short example (in which the Hebrew actually adds something) will do.
So in the spirit of Pooh's and Piglet's (in The House at Pooh Corner) wishing everyone a Very Happy Thursday (and, We Hope, not a Blustery one, either), I give you a short example of Pooh's verse, then the Hebrew translation, and then a transliteration and a back-translation.
CHAPTER 1
It's a very funny thought that, if Bears were Bees,
They'd build their nests at the bottom of trees.
And that being so (if the Bees were Bears),
We shouldn't have to climb up all these stairs.
חשבתי משהוא מצחוק – אלו דבים היו דבורים
אז דוקא הם מתחת לעצים היו גרים.
ואם דבים היו גרים על ראש העץ
אז לא היינו מכרחים להתאמץ.
hashavti mashehu matshoq: ilu dubim hayu devorim,
az davqa hem mitahat la`etsim hayu garim.
ve'im dubim hayu garim `al rosh ha`ets,
az lo hayyinu mukhrahim lehit'amets.
I've thought of something funny: if bears were bees,
Then exactly at the bottom of the trees they would be dwelling.
And if bears were dwelling at the top of the tree [sic, for the sake of the Hebrew rhyme],
Then they would not be forced to exert themselves.
It seems that the translator (Ms. Aviramah Golan) has to do a bit of interpretation. Are the Bears and the Bees just being switched as entities, or in their dwelling places also? I always assumed the former. A Bear naturally would prefer to walk along and find Bees at the bottom of a tree, without considering whether he'd also want to live at the top of a tree. (I find it interesting that those "dwelling" here are "sojourning" in the old biblical sense; such is the force of the Hebrew word garim.)
wr ()() (יוחנן רכב)
