Journal of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center
No.16, Spring  2008


 

Prof. Zvi Luz:

"BY RIVERS AND SEAS"

 

Lillian Dabby-Joury, By Rivers and Seas: Poems, Jerusalem, Carmel, 2007. 120p. + Index. (Hebrew).

 

I was drawn to this poems book because of its multi-cultural significance.

After Jerusalem, Babylon was the second birthplace of Judaism. The Babylonian Talmud has actually had a greater influence than the Jerusalem Talmud, but in the archives of "Modern Hebrew Literature" we do not find many records of Babylonian Judaism and culture. Then I was introduced to Lillian's poetry, which "does justice" to a girl who grew up between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, suggested in the title of this collection: "By Rivers and by Seas". In that young girl, who grew up to become a creative writer, we find the depths and the flow of those very "Rivers" she speaks of in her poems.

 

There is an interesting quality shared by the prominent romantic English poet Wordsworth and the eminent romantic Hebrew poet, Bialik. Each considered childhood experience to be of vital significance, reaching forward from one's early years to shape the "establishing influence" on the rest of a person's life.

I would like to quote from memory two well known lines from Wordsworth: "The child is father of man and I would wish my days/ to be bound each to each by natural piety."

The "man" referred to is the later development of what has been acquired as "The child". Since the child is "the father of man", as defined above, he or she is not only the first stage of the continuum of life, but also forms the origin of a personality that will include all his attributes and accomplishments.

Bialik fostered a lyrical "philosophy" which he referred to as "foundation views", or initial sights. He remained true to this concept and fortified it throughout, in all genres in which he wrote: the lyrical, the literary, and the essays. Bialik cultivates the thesis that everything man is destined to see and experience in his life as an adult will be nothing more than a development of "first sights" groundwork laid down in childhood.

Clearly, Bialik considers the genetic holiness factor to be an element of the child's first sights.

When I apply this romantic Anglo-Hebraic concept to Lillian's poetry, I clearly ascertain in many of her poems a wealth of retold foundation sight, framed in a very specific time and place. These were the landscapes of her childhood in Babylonian-Iraqi Baghdad; and they speak of a very potent Jewish background.

Here a question begs to be asked: does this same romantic law - that shared concept [of the poets Wordsworth and Bialik]- apply to Lillian? Did her foundation sights lay the groundwork for the vision which would be revealed in her adult poems, and the "elder days" she speaks of? Did they form her personality as is known to us? In order to clarify this we must study a poem from her first volume "On the Shores of my Childhood – memories of Babylon" (p. 13, the poem is untitled):

 

Carried on the wings of fairyfolk without number

like the height of thumbalina was my height revealed

sounds were heard encircling eternal trees

their branches brushed the clouds

and pathways like the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

reached up beyond the horizon

and without moving I could move

and when I rose to stand and to traverse all distances

to reach path's end and tree top

at all times like a dreamer rooted 

crossing time and space, yet fixed in place

I could stretch out my hand to God and feel his hold

speak to him without words, talk reaching far forward

in time and space

my face offered to a flower so close,

then together we burst out laughing we dance we jump

on my own on His leg. On the earth

sprawled out to absorb cold damp

with playful gaze to watch a ladybug,

to turn my head to the sky.                                                                 

 

Easy rise up and stride and climb the stairs

with skipping dance to my parents' breakfast table,

smiling they ask about a garden flower

not seeing my flower train in tow.

 

As was my custom I sit solitary, longing to return to the garden

to play to the brink, to the outpost of what I could not 

and did not attain,

till this day I reach for extremities.

 

Is there a beginning and an end?

Perhaps the entire garden is sorcery,

only a trellis of jasmine and narcissus

a boat carried from an uncertain "here" 

to a "somewhere" imagined.

 

The ladybug has gone!

And my hand which supports my cheek

Is warm still from the touch of a Great Hand.

 

 

The phenomena of these sights enmesh on two points: the poet's history and her foundation experiences. The background is specific, authentic - the "bustan", the orchards, the house and the river of her Baghdad childhood. However, the foundation experiences rise above and beyond these facts. They are bound up with religious inspiration and cross over into personal revelation.

 

(Translated from Hebrew by Shira Twersky-Kassel)