The Poet and the World,acollection of essays on pre-modern Hebrew poetry, was
compiled in honor of the esteemed Wout van Bekkum, on the occasion of his 65th
birthday. The title, and the collection of essays within, reflects Van Bekkum’s fas-
cination with Hebrew poetry, and particularly the Hebrew poets and the worlds
in which they lived and which gave them context and inspiration. This is also the
title of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska’s Nobel Lecture, delivered in 1996 on the
occasion of her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.Wisława Szymborska who
never finished her studies at Jagiellonian University and never associated with
any poetical school created for herself a distinctive voice that was expressed
through a poetic language in which “…every word is weighed, nothing is usual
or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day
and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone’s
existence in this world.”¹ Her insights into the world of the modern poet parallels
what Wout van Bekkum, the modern scholar par excellence, exemplifies in his
approach to pre-modern Hebrew poetry.