A Man in His Life
A Man in His Life - meaning Summary
Contradictions Held Together
Amichai’s poem argues that a single human life cannot be divided into neat seasons for every purpose. Instead, people must hold contradictory states simultaneously—love and hate, laughter and tears, creation and destruction—because history and memory move too slowly for life’s demands. The soul grows seasoned and practiced in managing contradictions, while the body remains clumsy and impulsive. The closing fig image suggests death as the only moment when there might be time for everything.
Read Complete AnalysesA man doesn't have time in his life to have time for everything. He doesn't have seasons enough to have a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes Was wrong about that. A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment, to laugh and cry with the same eyes, with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them, to make love in war and war in love. And to hate and forgive and remember and forget, to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest what history takes years and years to do. A man doesn't have time. When he loses he seeks, when he finds he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves he begins to forget. And his soul is seasoned, his soul is very professional. Only his body remains forever an amateur. It tries and it misses, gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing, drunk and blind in its pleasures and its pains. He will die as figs die in autumn, Shriveled and full of himself and sweet, the leaves growing dry on the ground, the bare branches pointing to the place where there's time for everything.
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