H.J. Polotsky (1905–1991): Linguistic Genius

Extract

H. J. Polotsky was my teacher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for four years in the 1930s and my friend and mentor and scholarly critic for 53 years. It is difficult for me to speak or write about him without a measure of personal involvement and indeed emotion. In the humanities he was a polymath, as a student of languages he was, I believe, without parallel in this generation. He could appear austere to those not well acquainted with him; he was a man of few words but many thoughts and great profundities. His style in all languages was exquisite and witty; his letters were invariably full of humour and his aphorisms pithy, widely admired, and never forced. He did not suffer fools gladly, but he mellowed with age and developed much tolerance even towards the majority of mankind who could contemplate his mastery with awe – yet never emulate it. While he and I lived in the same city, Jerusalem, for five years only, we were in wellnigh constant communication by letter (more about that correspondence, in part now published, anon), by meetings (often extending over many weeks), and in more recent years by telephone. When I was in error, even in senectute, he could be as sharply reproving as he had been towards the immature undergraduate – and such frankness was not only welcomed, but it had always been of the very essence of our relationship. In a book of reminiscences of Jerusalem in the 1930s I had written of the difficulty of envisaging a future deprived of his guidance and counsel and had expressed the hope that such a contingency would not arise until senility had numbed the blow for me. Alas, this was not to be: he died shortly before his 86th birthday. When his son telephoned me with the sad news on 10 August 1991, I found some consolation in the task of editing his letters in the manner prescribed by him earlier; and that book was published just six months after his death.