About David Avidan
The poet David Avidan (Tel Aviv 1934-1995) strove throughout his life to break down barriers in language, genre and time.
This mission was manifested in his many works concerning the future. His poetry displays daring innovation and an unusual use of language which influenced many later authors. His stormy life is reflected, among other things, in the experimental cinematic movies that he created. The archives contain personal documents and correspondence, his newspaper columns, postcards and a wide range of visual materials.
Archive History
After David Avidan's death, he left the rights of his estate to Tziporan Lotam – the mother of his son, and subsequently the archive moved from place to place in the North.
Prof. Nissim Calderon had been in close contact with David Avidan for many years, as a result of his doctoral subject which concentrated on Avidan's works. When he discovered that he had bequeathed the rights of his estate to Tziporen Lotam, he approached Prof. Yigal Schwartz with the idea that the Heksherim Institute acquire the rights. Prof. Schwartz agreed and Prof. Calderon travelled to meet with Tziporen in the Galilee where she lived. He was accompanied by the library manager and the person responsible for the Amos Oz Archives. They checked the estate and were impressed by its scope and recommended to Prof. Schwartz that he acquire the rights. This is how the archive arrived at Heksherim.
What's in the Archive?
The archive includes his works, books, script drafts, poetry, plays and the like, research and reviews of his work, a wide range of correspondence with people both in Israel and abroad, and business correspondence of the companies he managed. His published articles in daily newspapers in many subjects, hundreds of notes of literary thoughts, and thousands of other articles which are still being sorted and deciphered are also housed in the archive, along with his original typewriter on which he wrote.
Curriculum Vitae
David Avidan was born in Tel Aviv on February 21st, 1934. He studied at Tel Aviv's Shalva High School and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At the beginning of the fifties, he was a member of the Young Communist League of Israel and his first poems were published in the Israeli Communist Party newspaper Kol Ha-Am.
The first anthology of his poetry, Lipless Faucets, was published in 1954. Avidan continued to publish poetry collections until his last years, wrote film scripts, directed, and was involved in other fields of art.
Tonight We Go Out, the first recording by The Twins Trio in 1966 includes the song Hit The Road Ruth, Avidan's translation of Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles and other of his songs: We Are Not Dancers, It's Not So Bad and Shabbat. Some of his poems have been set to music and performed by Israeli artists. Avidan was interested in innovative technology and the ways they could be used in his work. His book My Electronic Psychiatrist (1974) includes 8 conversations between Avidan and Eliza, the computer program written by Joseph Weizenbaum, which won wide-scale acclaim as a pioneering step in artificial intelligence.
Avidan translated some of his books to English, and others were translated to additional languages, including French, Russian and Arabic. He was awarded the Bialik Prize for Literature in 1994. David Avidan died in Tel Aviv on May 11th, 1995.
Criticism and Research Books
- Achshav, Issue 66, Dedicated to David Avidan -1999
- Time and motion in the poetry of David Avidan - Dissertation - Anat Weisman -2005
- Poetry as parody: aspects of laughter, modernism and postmodernism in David Avidan's poetry -Dissertation - Gilad Meiri -2007
- Poetic pessimism: Initial mapping of David Avidan's work - Hagai Hoffer - 2010
Prizes
- 1971 - Abraham Woursell Prize (from the University of Vienna)
- 1971 - Tel-Aviv Prize for Literature
- 1973 - Prime Minister’s Prize to encourage literary creativity
- 1993 - Bialik Literature Prize
