The Psalm Engravings of Berta R. Golahny

• In Event: Interpretation: Translation and Illumination

Abstract

In the early 1970s, American painter and printmaker Berta R. Golahny (1925-2005) made a series of six boxwood engravings intended to be published alongside poetry by Naftali Chaim Brandwein (1921-1996). Brandwein was an Israeli who for some years lived in the US as a Professor of Hebrew at Brandeis University. The project got as far as a mock-up; a publisher could not be found. The collaboration failed, but each artist found an audience elsewhere. Brandwein published some of his poetry in Hebrew (1994) and some of his own translations of it into English (1983). Golahny’s engravings were widely exhibited, acquired by institutions and individuals, and published posthumously in an exhibition catalogue.

But these engravings had been created in response to Brandwein’s poems, and their titles quoted these poems. Separated from their sources, the engravings needed new titles. The Hebrew Psalms, in the 1917 JPS translation, supplied the solution: Golahny found in them short phrases that complemented each engraving.

What’s in a name? This paper studies two of Golahny’s Psalm engravings, first in light of the the poem it was meant to accompany, and then in light of the Hebrew Psalm that provides its title. For instance, WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG (1971, 12 x 9 in.; in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Art) features a happy flutist whose body resembles a cloaked trellis. In the mock-up, Brandwein’s accompanying poem begins “When the world was young / father’s prayer rang in the air.” This father's prayer is a “song” delivered at “night.” Golahny may also have had in mind a Brandwein poem in which “a midnight flute / Intones Hallel.” In retitling this engraving, Golahny borrowed a phrase from Psalm 139, NIGHT SHINETH AS THE DAY. In this psalm, the speaker acknowledges that God’s omnipresence makes concealment impossible: “Even the darkness is not too dark for Thee, / But the night shineth as the day” (verse 12). And in a parallel to the flutist's “Hallel,” the speaker of Psalm 139 “give[s] thanks.”

Blending art history with literary analysis, this paper explores how titles influence the interpretation of visual art.

Author

• Emily Kopley, McGill U