Soviet Jewish Poet, Meningitis Victim, Arrives in Israel; ‘only a Miracle Can Save Him’

President Zalman Shazar and poet Avraham Shlonsky were among those who wished Boris Gaponov well this weekend after the Soviet Jewish poet arrived here last Friday in critical condition. The 37-year-old Gaponov, a victim of meningitis who is being treated at Tel Hashomer Hospital, cannot speak, “but his eyes said everything,” Shlonsky reported, Shazar sent a cable to Gaponov and his mother, who flew here with Jews from Riga, Kovno, Leningrad, Tashkent and Vilna–among them Jacob Nossik, a shochet from Samarkand who held on tightly to a Torah scroll he brought with him. Gaponov, who arrived here from Leningrad by way of Vienna, taught himself Hebrew in secret in the Georgian Republic and went on to win Israel’s prestigious Tchernichovsky award for Hebrew literature for his 1969 translation of “The Man In The Tiger’s Skin,” a 1,669-stanza 12th century epic poem. He then applied for permission to go to Israel but was turned down until he developed meningitis, according to his mother. He was operated on in Leningrad before leaving. The poet’s mother said the Russian police had charged him with possession of illegal writings, but had never interrogated him. When two tourists wanted to visit him, she said, the authorities warned him not to let them come over, and instead had the trio meet in a room selected by the police. All of Gaponov’s manuscripts were confiscated before he left the Soviet Union, she added. Now she maintains a round-the-clock vigil at her ailing son’s bedside, and says “Only a miracle can save him.”