Meir Wieseltier

Meir Wieseltier (; March 8, 1941 – March 30, 2023) was an Israeli poet and translator. Wieseltier was awarded the 2000 Israel Prize.

Biography Meir Wieseltier was born in Moscow in 1941, shortly before the German invasion of Russia. He was taken to Novosibirsk in southwestern Siberia by his mother and two older sisters. His father was killed while serving in the Red Army in Leningrad. After two years in Poland, Germany, and France, the family immigrated to Israel. Wieseltier grew up in Netanya.

In 1955, he moved to Tel Aviv, where he has lived ever since. He published his first poems at the age of eighteen. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the early 1960s, he joined a group known as the Tel Aviv Poets. He was co-founder and co-editor of the literary magazine Siman Kriya, and a poetry editor for the Am Oved publishing house.

Literary career Wieseltier published 13 volumes of verse. He translated English, French, and Russian poetry into Hebrew. His translations include four of Shakespeare's tragedies, as well as novels by Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, and Malcolm Lowry. Wieseltier often wrote in the first person, assuming the role of a moralist searching for values in the midst of chaos. He penned powerful poems of social and political protest in Israel. His voice is alternately anarchic and involved, angry and caring, trenchant and lyric. In 2000, he received the Israel Prize, for literature and poetry.

Published works Shirim Iti'im (Slow Poems), 2000 Merudim Vesonatot (Merudim and Sonnets), 2009 Perek Alef, Perek Beit (Chapter 1, Chapter 2), 1967 Meah Shirim (100 Poems), 1969 Kakh (Take It), 1973 Davar Optimi, Asiyat Shirim (Something Optimistic, The Making of a Poem), 1976 Pnim Vahutz (Interior and Exterior), 1977 Motzah El Ha-Yam (Exit into the Sea), 1981 Kitzur Shnot Hashishim (The Concise Sixties) 1984 Ee Yevani (Greek Island) 1985 Michtavim Veshirim Aherim (Letters and other poems) 1986 Makhsan (Storehouse), 1994 [Mahsan] The Flower of Anarchy, 2003, Forty, 2010, (Arbaim) Davar Optimi, Asiyat Shirim (Something Optimistic, The Making of a Poem, a new edition + Appendix), 2012