LiteraryTraveler.net

Our newest feature article takes us somewhere hot, somewhere new, somewhere a little bit dirty and a little bit dangerous: the back roads of Bolivia.

Author Stephen Eisenhammer decides to follow the trail of his personal hero, Che Guevara, who was captured and executed in the South American country.  Like Eisenhammer, Guevara was a man of letters, and took pleasure in documenting his journey.  With Che’s Bolivian Diaries in tow, Eisenhammer sets out on a pilgrimage to discover something new about the revolutionary figure.

It’s always a funny thing when we go chasing after heroes, and Eisenhammer’s trip is no exception.  In recent years, Che has become even more of an international figure, what with the films and books and preponderance of red screenprinted t-shirts.  Che has entered our consciousness as a man of uncompromising ideals and reckless bravery.  However, as it often happens, the myth has obscured the man.

The man was more than just a ruthless general: he was also a lover of poetry.  Che particularly enjoyed the works of Chilean writer Pablo Neruda.  While there are certain ideological similarities between the two men, I like to imagine that Guevara turned to Neruda for refuge from war.  I imagine him paging through the tender love poems, the odes to women loved and lost.  In my mind, this gives a softer edge to the Marxist hero.  Instead of seeing a general, a great fighter and a fearful opponent, I imagine a bearded figure, quietly drunk on words of love.  His appreciation for the written word adds another cast to Che – and it may be the reason he is so beloved by intellectuals everywhere, despite his bloody past.

If you, like me, are curious as to what Eisenhammer learns about his hero, you will have to check out the full article, On The Bolivian Trial of Che Guevara, A Literary Guerrilla.  And when you’re done, spend some time perusing our other articles on Che’s favorite poet: Pablo Neruda.

Israel holds a very special place in the American cultural consciousness.  For many, it is a holy land, a promised place where they will finally be accepted.  It is a place for pilgrimages and coming-of-age visits.  This idea is perhaps best encapsulated in the program “Birth Right,” which provides funds for young Jewish-Americans to visit the Middle Eastern country.  This Israel is somewhat of a utopia, made even more dream-like and perfect by its distance, by our infrequent visits.

However, there is another Israel.  This Israel is real; it is the stuff of politics and war, battlegrounds both actual and ideological.  The beauty of the country is made no less by its contentious political position, but, as Dorit Sasson points out in our newest feature article, there is a schism between the various visions of the country.

In a sense, this schism can be traced down to Israel’s rich past.  This is a country seeped with tradition and history.  It is a place of poetry and song.  In order to understand her view of Israel more fully, Sasson returns to a poem of her childhood, “V’Ulai” by Rachel Blaustein.  For her, the gentle poem speaks to the different versions of Israel, the Utopian image, the longing for a dream that never has been, and the reality of a place unfinished, imperfect.

Though I have never been to Israel, reading Sasson’s article, I am reminded of another great poet of Israel: Yehuda Amichai.  Amichai was born in Germany, but he spent most of his life living in Israel (both the real country and the dream-land).  Like Blaustein, much of his poetry is about his relationship to the relatively-new motherland, but in contrast to Rachel, Yehuda’s poetry is often not fit for children.  Indeed, his poetry for Jerusalem often reads like love poetry, words written by a man to a woman.  While I cannot speak for Israel, I will always remember Amichai’s words about Jerusalem:

But he who loves Jerusalem
By the tourist book or the prayer book
is like one who loves a woman
By a manual of sex positions.

Join us in nostalgia and melancholy this week by checking out Rachel Blaustein’s Kinneret, A Child’s Poem of Israel.