A Tale of Love and Darkness

IN THE COLLECTED poems of Jabotinsky, after "With blood and sweat we'll raise a race," "Two banks has the Jordan," and "From the day I was called to the wonder / of Beitar, Zion, and Sinai," came his melodic translations from world poetry, including Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee," Edmond Rostand's "The Princess Faraway," and Paul Verlaine's heartrending "Autumn Song."

Very soon I knew all these poems by heart and walked around all day drunk on the romantic anguish and macabre torments that enveloped them.