Poetae docti: Scholarship and Creative Writing in the Faculty of Humanities
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Mt. Scopus
Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School For Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Opening Date: November, 2018
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This exhibition, of which the first panels are here and most are on the second-floor premises of the Mandel Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies, is dedicated to the elusive connection between research, on the one hand, and artistic creativity, on the other.
The exhibition, which focuses on ten scholars who are also creative writers, and vice versa, seeks to spotlight the movement back and forth between the two worlds, which are so close and yet so far from one another. All ten are associated, or were associated in the past, with the Hebrew University's Faculty of Humanities; many others could have been included, were it not for the limits of space.
In most cases, the writers themselves chose the work displayed as well as the manner in which it is introduced. Each of the works relates, whether directly or indirectly, to the movement between analytical writing and literary writing, or to the complex location of the author between those worlds.
The Hebrew title of this exhibition, "She'ar Ruah," is taken from the Bible, where it appears once, in Malachi 2:15. The medieval commentator, R. David Kimchi, explains that it means "the spirit's advantage"; Later commentators took it to refer to "noble thought," and today there are those who would link it to the notion of "an extra soul." The Latin title of the exhibition, "Poetae docti," points in another direction: to the classical and Renaissance ideal of "a man for all seasons," who knew all that needs to be known and, especially, combined science with poetry, thus bringing together worlds seemingly so distant from one another.
Initiator and Coordinator | Keren Sagi, Mandel Scholion Center
