When I was setting up this website in memory of my father, my husband suggested that I quote Bialik's famous poem "After My Death". I didn't know of any translation, so I put the Hebrew original (scanned from our very old "Complete Bialik Poems" book), and added my own translation (corrected by Edna Tal) to the first stanza:
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After my death eulogize me thus: "There was a man - and lo! he's no more: This man died before his time, And his life's poetry was halted in the midst; Pity! He had one more song - And now this song is forever lost, Forever lost! |
Within a few days, Yehuda Pinchover pointed my attention to the following website, where I found a complete and beautiful translation of the whole poem. It tuned out that this translation of Bialik's poem was recited at the memorial ceremony for the fallen astronauts of the Columbia space shuttle. The translator's name was David Stern.
As I was teaching a new course during the spring semester, I didn't find the time to search for David Stern's email address (to ask for his permission for using his translation), and it wasn't until the end of the summer when I got to this again. When I finally typed "David Stern" and "Bialik" in Google, I got a few websites which reffered to Prof. David Stern of the University of Pennsylvania, who was teaching at that time a course on Hebrew poetry, Bialik's poems included.
Being sure that this was the man I was looking for, I sent him a polite email:
"Dear Prof. Stern, I found on the web your beautiful
translation..." etc.
Within a few days came the answer -
Dear Lydia,
I'm a little confused -- I don't think I translated the poem.
Do you have the right David Stern?
I thanked Prof. Stern for his letter, and now I had to find another man called David Stern, who translated Bialik, but without typing "David Stern" in Google... Eventually I ran accross an on-line review of Atar Hadari's new translation of Bialik's poems, and at the bottom I found a comment by someone called David Stern who reffered to his own translation of this poem. I followed the link, and found his personal website: imagine my surprise when I found out that this man was in fact a Physicist who got his PhD at the Technion...
Well, I sent him a very polite email:
"Dear Prof. Stern, I found on the web your beautiful
translation..." etc.
On the following day came his amazing answer, reproduced here with his permission:
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I feel honored to have my translation of Bialik's poem used in commemorating your father, Prof. Asher Peres, and of course, agree to your use of it. It is strange, but I actually once taught a class in which your father was a student. It was during my years as graduate student in the Technion (1955-9), when Professor Kurt Sitte, who was my thesis supervisor (on cosmic rays) asked me to take over a class in modern physics he was giving to 4th year engineers. It was held in the old Technion, in a small classroom on the roof--I am not any more sure if it was beneath the cupola or next to it, but anyway, on a high level of the building where I usually did not go. It was a strange class, probably instituted because it was felt that graduating engineers should be exposed to at least a taste of modern physics. By their 4th year engineering students were already quite specialized, well beyond their physics classes, so all I could give them was a general, qualitative introduction--somewhat like a recent one at the high-school level, in my web collection "From Stargazers to Starships" (pages Q1 to Q8). The students did not follow the lesson too well, their minds were probably on other matters--except for one, who stood out right from the beginning. That was your father! While I was trying to get across simple things like Bohr's model of the atom, Asher right away asked, "and what about the spin?" I quickly realized that here was someone who may have known the subject as well as I did (if not better), but of course, I could not address his questions without leaving the class far behind. It was an experience. I was not surprised when later he became department chairman. Shanah Tovah
David P. Stern |