Robert Friend was an American-born poet and translator. After moving to Israel, he became a professor of English literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Biography
Friend was born in 1913 in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. He was the eldest of five children. After studying at Brooklyn College, Harvard and Cambridge, he taught English literature and writing in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Panama, France, England, and Germany. He settled in Israel in 1950, where he lived the rest of his life. He taught English and American Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for over thirty years. He was well known in Israel as an English-language poet and a translator of Hebrew poetry. Robert Friend was gay, and his sexuality found expression in his poetry well before the Stonewall era. According to Edward Field in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry, Shadow on the Sun is "remarkable in that, for its time, it contains so many poems about the author's homosexuality." Friend's openness continued throughout his writing career.
Literary career
Friend's first published volume of verse was Shadow on the Sun. His last collection of poetry, Dancing with a Tiger: Poems 1941-1998, was published posthumously in 2003. He translated around 800 works from Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. Toby Press published two volumes of his translations in its Hebrew Classics Series: Found in Translation: Modern Hebrew Poets, A Bilingual Edition and Ra'hel: Flowers of Perhaps. Among the Hebrew poets Friend translated into English are Chaim Nachman Bialik, Rachel, Natan Alterman, Leah Goldberg, Gabriel Preil and Yehuda Amichai.
Awards
Friend won the Jeannette Sewell Davis Prize.
Poetry
Dancing with a Tiger: Poems 1941-1998, Edited by Edward Field, Preface by Gabriel Levin
Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Ra'hel, A Bilingual Edition
Found in Translation: 20 Hebrew Poets: A Bilingual Edition, Edited and Introduced by Gabriel Levin
Found in Translation: 100 Years of Modern Hebrew Poetry, Edited and Introduced by Gabriel Levin, Menard Press, 1999
S.Y. Agnon: The Book Of The Alphabet
Featured Translator, "Palestinian and Israeli Poets," Modern Poetry in Translation, No. 14, Winter 1998-99, Edited by Daniel Weissbort
Flowers of Perhaps: Selected Poems of Ra'hel
Featured Translator, "Second International Poets Festival, Jerusalem," Modern Poetry in Translation, No. 4, Winter 1993-94, Edited by Daniel Weissbort
Leah Goldberg: Selected Poems
Gabriel Preil: Sunset Possibilities and Other Poems
Natan Alterman: Selected Poems''
Seminars
Poetry reading and discussion. "Three Maverick Poets: An Unflinching Exploration of the Lives and Works of Robert Friend, '34, Chester Kallman, '41, and Harold Norse, '38." Discussion leaders: Edward Field, Edward Mendelson, and Regina Weinrich. Sponsored by Brooklyn College, New York, October 27, 2005.
Three poems recited by Garrison Keillor in "The Writer's Almanac," January 2003 and January 2004
"Dreamstreets" program, moderated by Steven Leech, devoted to the poetry of Robert Friend, February 2004
Musical compositions
Translation of poem by Natan Alterman in "Mother's Lament", composed by Sharon Farber, performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, September 2002
Translation of poem by Ra'hel in "Women of Valor", composed by Andrea Clearfield
Copyright
Robert Friend's copyrights are held by his niece Jean Shapiro Cantu. His Archives are located at The Brooklyn College Library, Department of Special Collection.
