the new hebrew poetry of the twenties: palestine and america

The New Hebrew Poetry of the Twenties: Palestine and AmericaAuthor(s): UZI SHAVIT and Naomi SeidmanSource: Prooftexts, Vol. 12, No. 3 (SEPTEMBER 1992), pp. 213-230Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20689340 .

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UZI SHAVIT

The New Hebrew Poetry of the Twenties: Palestine and America

THE 1920s SAW A RADICAL SHIFT in modern Hebrew poetry. This turning point was similar to the one that occurred in the 1890s, with the

appearance of Bialik and Tchernichowsky and the new poetic norms they introduced, and that of the 1950s, when the poets of the "Statehood

Generation," especially Zach and Amichai, introduced yet another new

set of poetic norms. There were two historical bases for the literary reorientation of the 1920s. First, the growing success of the Bolshevik Revolution destroyed the Russian literary center, which had been the

major center of Hebrew poetry in the second half of the nineteenth

century and the first part of the twentieth; this center was eventually transferred to Palestine. Second, the rapid decline of the literary center in Poland coincided with the attempt to create a new literary center in America. From the sociological perspective, these processes were accom

panied by the appearance of a new generation of poets, the majority of whom could be characterized as pioneers or immigrants who shared the

primary experience of having migrated from the countries of their birth to new countries and cultural-linguistic environments (although this process took on decidedly different forms in Palestine and America).

From the poetic perspective, the crucial historical shift of the Hebrew

literary center from Russia to Palestine involved far-reaching and funda mental transformations. For the first time, Hebrew poetry began to be

written, to a notable extent, in an environment in which the spoken language was Hebrew. Literary Hebrew finally met the Hebrew verna

cular face-to-face, an encounter that could not fail to spark an interaction between spoken and literary or poetic Hebrew. Furthermore, in the wake of this encounter, and with the acceptance of the Palestinian-Sephardic

PROOFTEXTS 12 (1992): 213-230 ? 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



214 UZI SHAVIT

accentuation as the basis for the rhythmic organization of Hebrew poetry, a progressive transformation of the phonetic structure of Hebrew poetry began. This process was essentially finished by 1927-1928 in Palestine.

Finally, the new generation of poets arose in a period of profound historical change, which included the disintegration of the European "old world" in Russia, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in Germany; the

collapse of the old Jewish way of life with the antisemitic disturbances at the end of the Great War; and the wave of immigration of the Third

Aliyah and the laying of the foundations for a national homeland in Palestine. These poets were connected in their search for a new nusah, a new poetic idiom, different from that forged by Bialik and Tcher

nichowsky, which could express the new historical reality, both the Jewish and the more general, and the new literary reality, which was charac

terized, especially in the second decade of the century, by the rise of various modernist movements.

The global map of Hebrew poetry in the twenties is both complex and

fascinating. Geographically, it is spread across three continents and

includes, aside from the Palestinian and American centers, secondary centers in Russia (Bat-Miriam, Lensky, Kariv, Bat-Hamah, Pregerson, Chanowitz and others), in Poland and Lithuania (Frishman, Cohen, Katzenelson, Shoham, Zeitlin, Uri Zvi Greenberg, M. Basok, G. Talpir, M. Chunder and others), in Germany (Bialik, Tchernichowsky, Schneour,

Jabotinsky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, A. Pressman), in Vienna (Kaminka, Vogel), in Paris (Schneour, Vogel, Bat-Miriam), and in Bessarabia (Metos). Gener

ationally, four different literary generations are active during this period, both separately and together: the generation that first appeared in the 1890s (Bialik and Tchernichowsky); the generation of "shiratenu hatseHrah"

(our young poetry), who appeared in the first decade of the century (Cohen, Schneour, Steinberg, Shimanowitz, Fichman, Katzenelson); the

generation that was first published in the second decade of the century (Carny, A. Hameiri, A. Barash, Y. Rabinowitz, A. Metos, Silkiner); and the

generation that had its start in the twenties (Shlonsky, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Lamdan, Rahel, E. Raab, Elisheva, S. Shalom, M. Temkin, G. Talpir, A.

Penn, E. Zusman, Y.Z. Rimon and many others in Palestine, and Lisitzky, Efrat, S. Ginzberg, Bavli, Halkin, Feinstein, Regelson, B. Katzenelson,

Silbershlag and Grossman in the United States). In this essay on historical poetics, I shall focus on one small but

central portion of this general picture: the last generation (although I shall also discuss a few poets from the previous generation who could be included with them, for instance, A. Hameiri in Palestine and Silkiner in the United States). I shall deal with only two of the literary centers: the Palestinian and the American. In a previous essay entitled "The Wild Poem: Toward an Outline of Literary Climate and Stylistics in Pre

Statehood Hebrew Poetry of the Twenties," I tried to chart the general



The New Hebrew Poetry of the Twenties: Palestine and America 215

characteristics of this poetry.1 I also explained how and why the literary style and environment of this decade differed, specifically during the

years 1922-1928, from that of the thirties. This essay, which is partially based on my earlier work, draws parallels between the styles and literary environments of pre-Statehood and American Hebrew poetry during these same years, on the assumption that a comparison of the two literary centers can mutually illuminate the specific poetics that distinguished them. I rely, in places, on the explicit poetics of this period, as evidenced

by the manifestoes and essays of this poetic generation, especially those of Uri Zvi Greenberg and Shlonsky, on one hand, and Halkin and

Ribalow, on the other; in other places I discuss the implicit poetics of this

generation, as reflected in the works themselves. The dominant element in the consciousness of the pre-Statehood

poets, particularly Uri Zvi Greenberg and Shlonsky, is the revolutionary element, or, more specifically, the continuation and revitalization of Hebrew poetry through poetic revolution rather than through direct,

epigonic continuity. This is directly and indirectly expressed both in

Greenberg's and Shlonsky7 s essayistic writings of the 1920s and in the ars

poetica proclaimed in their poetry. The dominant element in the con

sciousness of the American Hebrew poets, in comparison, is continuity and the carrying on of the tradition?to be "the bearers of the poetic tradition," to quote Shimon Ginzberg.2 More specifically, the American

poets strive for continuity accompanied by renewal, principally, accord

ing to Halkin, through the assimilation of the positive influence of the

English Romantic and Victorian poetic tradition.3 Thus we can understand their different relationships with their

predecessors, Bialik and the generation of shiratenu hatseHrah: Shlonsky, Lamdan and Greenberg see themselves as the inheritors and true heirs of the revolutionary Bialik of the first part of the century, who melded individual poetic expression with the poetry of the collective. They seek to bypass, to a large degree, the generation of shiratenu hatseHrah as a

generally epigonic generation. As Greenberg writes in his Klapei tishHm veteishah (To the Ninety-Nine, 1928):

As the sun of the Zionist revolution rose over the Jewish streets of the

Diaspora ... within us, we heard a lion roar in the Hebrew tongue: You have

arisen, Bialik, the poet of this vision . . . Bialik is silent, as if he had sunk the essence of everything he had to tell us?into what he had already told us. He was and remains the glorious First Temple in the kingdom of Hebrew poetry. But those of his contemporaries who came later are gently flowing poetry in the Hebrew tongue ... for lack of other possiblities, they want to share between themselves the heavy crown, to parcel out the crown of literature into smaller crowns, and to fashion ostrich-feathered hats for each one?

priests of "the blessed Hebrew tongue" ?and to live thus, just so ... they live

frugally, spiritually and physically, and create frugally and modestly.4



216 UZI SHAVIT

Yitshak Norman, the militant critic of the Ketuvim circle in the early 1930s, puts it similarly: "The cock's-call begins with the divinely inspired poets: Uri Zvi Greenberg, A. Shlonsky

. . . you can skip over the poetry written after H.N. Bialik (or maybe after Z. Schneour) as a poetic wasteland."5

The American poets, on the other hand, see their poetry as a contin uation of the poetic tradition that began with Bialik and continued with the poetry of his younger contemporaries. As Halkin writes: "Another

generation of poets, who are accepted by all of us as true poets?Bialik, Schneour and Yaakov Cohen, Tchernichowsky, Steinberg, Fichman and Shimonovitz?continue to strike roots in our consciousness, passing along to us and to those who will come after the fruits of their labors, and we have already begun to complain: new poets are not arising in our

midst."6

The underlying foundation of pre-Statehood Palestinian poetics is the

conception of the poem as engaged, nationalistic, collective, political and militant. According to Greenberg, Shlonsky, Lamdan, Hameiri, Talpir, and

Almi, poetry has a mission, which is why they rejected the idea of "art for art's sake" or the concept of "the poem of the individual." As Greenberg writes in his poem "Prophecy to Europe / A Poet of Israel between the

Pieces," from Hagavrut hacolah (Masculinity Rising, 1926):

And I lowered the curtain on the life of a single body and gave it over in its flesh and blood to the people of millions,

Who were hauled before Moloch with their sons and daughters in the middle of Europe.

I am not the poet for the sake of the poesy of this world. On the anvil of the earth the feet of millions of Jews

And their heavy sorrow is my sorrow and their glory my glory; And their end is also my end7

For their part, the American poets, according to Halkin, place the romantic ideal of "a life of feeling, that breaks through to a distilled and

all-embracing understanding, even to a tragic grasp of the world" at the center of their poetic universe.8 Halkin argues that, under the influence of

English poetry, "the poet is enriched . . . the emotional concepts increas

ingly become his own concepts?his own emotions, and the spiritual seriousness . . . that could attain the level of religiosity ... is fused with his spirit, and imparts it with the special nuances of both depth and

maturity which are the exemplary signs of a true spiritual awe of the

glory of life, which is the aspiration toward purity in the face of the

beauty of life, which is the aspiration toward beauty, and before the

perfection of life, which is the aspiration toward perfection."9 Thus we can understand the different conceptions of the essence of

the poet and the meaning of his poetic work: the major pre-Statehood poets remain faithful to the Russian literary tradition, from Pushkin on,




and to Bialik's tradition, as regards the persona of the prophet-poet and the prophetic dimension of poetry.10 This conception is particularly noticeable in the case of Shlonsky and Greenberg, as in Shlonsky's poem Hitgalut ("Revelation"), for instance, which opens his collection Bagalgal (In the Whirlwind, 1927), or as Greenberg put it in Klapei tishHm veteishah

(To the Ninety-Nine, 1928): The poetry we publish demonstrates, as required by our own prophetic codes, a kind of prophetic troubadorism that demands the realization of a central pragmatic idea; and that is because we use prophetic, heartfelt, intellectual allusions that emanate like rays from the egotism of the

individual-in-the-nation, who placed himself in the middle of the rank.11

In the American circle, on the other hand, the poet is conceived as a

poet qua poet, and the motivating force of his poetry is the aesthetic

impulse, or, to quote Halkin: "The aspiration toward purity . . . the

aspiration toward beauty . . . the aspiration toward perfection."12 The conception of the poet as prophet, by which the pre-Statehood

poets continue the Bialikan tradition, sometimes appears in extreme form in the poetry of Greenberg and Shlonsky, with the poetic persona implicit ly taking on a messianic dimension; this accounts for the many allusions in Shlonsky's and Greenberg's poetry to messianic characters such as

Jesus, Shabbetai Zevi, Shlomo Molcho, etc. This phenomenon is rare in American poetry, which upholds, in opposition to the messianic ideal, the more modest ideal of "just poetry," or in Ribalow's words, poetry that

sings about "nature and love, about God and human beings, about hope and despair, and life and death . . . which guards the innocence of emotion and the purity of phrase, which walks the straight path and says what it has to say with modesty, and sometimes even in a whisper."13

Both the revolutionary consciousness and the conception of the poet and of poetry are connected with another major characteristic of pre Statehood poetry: the link with major European modernist movements,

especially the German and Russian, and the clear influence of German

Expressionism, on one hand, and the Symbolist and post-Symbolist Russian schools, such as Futurism and Imagism on the other. The most

obviously Expressionist poet is, of course, Greenberg, but Expressionist elements during this decade also appear in some of Shlonsky's and Lamdan's poetry, and more notably, in the poetry of Talpir and Avigdor Hameiri. The most obvious adherent of the Symbolist tradition is, of

course, Shlonsky, but elements of the Russian Symbolist tradition are

discernible in the poetry of Zusman, Almi, and Penn. In comparison, no

modernist influence, including that of Anglo-American Modernism, is

apparent in the American poetry, which continues the Classical and Romantic traditions.14 As Ribalow puts it: "If there is something that unifies the various poets here, each of whom has his own world and his own expressive tools, it is their adherence to the preserving principle of



218 UZI SHAVIT

Classical poetry."15 Classical poetry here undoubtedly also includes Romantic poetry, which is already perceived, during this period, as

"classical"?not in the narrow historical sense of the literary term "Classi

cal," but in the sense of "the great classics." The "modernity" of the pre-Statehood poetry and the "classicism" of

the American poetry are, of course, connected with the different sources

of direct influence each of these poetic centers encountered. The Russian

poets of the pre-Statehood generation (especially Shlonsky, Almi, Rahel, Elisheva, Penn and Zusman) show signs of having been particularly influenced by the poetry of Blok, Bely, Esenin, Mayakovsky and Akhmatova. The German poets who exerted the greatest influence (on

Greenberg and Temkin) were Rilke and the Expressionist poets published in Kurt Pinthus's 1920 anthology, Menschheitsdaemmerung (The Twilight of

Humanity). The French poetic influence on this generation is mainly through the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, particularly on Shlonsky; and the American influence is of Whitman and Poe, particularly on

Greenberg. The American Hebrew poets, in comparison, are influenced

by Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats of the English Romantics and

Tennyson and Browning of the Victorian poets. And of the American

poets, the Hebrew poets in America are influenced chiefly by Longfellow, and only in small measure (as in Regelson's poetry) by Whitman. We can account for these differences in two ways: as reflecting the different cultural environments?the dominance of Russian and German in one

setting and English in the other, and as reflecting the opposition between

modernity and tradition. Thus, Greenberg takes Whitman and Poe as

exemplary of American poetry ("There is a naked Torah of the body in the

giant-on-the-beach Walt Whitman's biblical psalms of praise, and a burn

ing candle against the terror in Edgar Allen Poe"),16 while the American

poets take as exemplary primarily Longfellow; there are echoes of Shake

speare, Milton, the Romantics and the Victorians in their poetry, but none

of Anglo-American Imagism or of Pound and Eliot. The modernist and revolutionary character of pre-Statehood poetry

of the Expressionist, Futurist and post-Symbolist varieties can be seen in

Greenberg's manifesto Ritmus harahvut ("The Rhythm of Expansive ness")17 and Shlonsky's manifesto Hashir haparu^a ("The Wild Poem").18

Diametrically opposed to these poetic conceptions are the ideals of

frugality and crystallization championed in Palestine by Steinberg (in Hashurah ["The Line"], and his cohorts, and by Moshe Feinstein (in Tsimtsum ["Frugality"])19 in the United States. While Shlonsky proclaims, "If the world is a tattered drunk / I am its wild song / I am the song!"20 and Greenberg continues to champion the ideal of expansiveness in his

essays and verse: "Wide-open verses! Obstacles in verse are like the ways of the Jews in the world!"21 Moshe Feinstein writes a song of praise to the ideal of frugality:




There are magical flames and hidden secrets in frugality, That become strong wine if they touch you Infusing your blood with strength, surging through your veins To assault the fortresses and run the blockade up the mountain.

The secret of life and refuge for thought are in frugality; Fortification, a spark of fire and arrogant flame. And in this small seed all the fruit that will ever be are enfolded, And in this one drop of desire quiver all coming generations.22

Greenberg's attack on "frugality," which is certainly primarily directed against Steinberg and his friends in Palestine, could equally well have been directed to Feinstein and his friends in America:

They live physical and spiritual life of "frugality/7 and create "frugally," and have "frugal" needs, "the good line" etc.?the poverty of their requirements is understandable. If they lived physical and spiritual life open to the

distances, these poets would certainly write to suit the distances; and they would be true to the rhythms of open spaces; and they would not settle for so little if they had the flame in their spirit.23

Modernism, revolutionary fervor and the ideal of expansiveness and "the wild poem" are also the source and justification for an additional characteristic of pre-Statehood poetry: its explicit and fully realized

anticlassicism, which expresses itself through a negation of all classical forms and genres: the sonnet, the idyll, the epic, romantic poems, etc. As

Greenberg puts it:

They could comb my flesh with iron combs and I would not cease to ask: How can a Hebrew poet compose sonnets and idylls? Petrarch?yes. Longfellow?yes. A Hebrew poet?no! We, Jews as we are, and an aesthetic

structure for art's sake, for the sake of any literary objectives, as we continue

to live life?"between-the-pieces". . . in this age of terror . . . can we find an

expression of this in a golden sonnet? Is it not better to look into the Torah, into the Midrash of Comfort for the Bereaved, into the blankest of blank verses. An idyll?idolatory!24

And in actuality, the poetry of Greenberg, Shlonsky, Lamdan, Ham

eiri, Talpir, Almi, Rahel, and E. Raab includes no sonnets, no idylls, no

epics, and no romances. The American poets, though, write myriads of

sonnets, idylls, epics, romances, etc., thus carrying on the classical tradi tion of Tchernichowsky in form and genre.

A tendency toward free rhythms characterizes many pre-Statehood poets, especially Greenberg, E. Raab, G. Talpir, and even the early Shlonsky (e.g., in his first book, Devay [Suffering] and in the cycle Kets Adar [The End of Adar]), the early Lamdan, Temkin, Rimon and others. This tendency marked Western poetry in general at the beginning of the 1920s (e.g., Eliot's The Waste Land, Rilke's Duino Elegies, much of German

Expressionist poetry, Mayakovsky's 250 Million, and Vogel's Before the



220 UZI SHAVIT

Dark Gate). The vast majority of American poets, though, remain faithful to a regular rhythm and meter (with the exception of B. Katzenelson and, to some extent, Regelson). American poets often do write blank verse,

although this phenomenon, to my mind, can be explained by the domi nance of blank verse in English epic and dramatic verse, and it would be

wrong to see it as a transitional stage toward free rhythm. As a result of the encounter with the Hebrew vernacular spoken in

the yishuv, in the course of the twenties all the pre-Statehood poets move from the Ashkenazic pronunciation and accentuation to the Palestinian accent and the Sephardic grammatical accentual system. Zvi Shatz, Y.

Kami, A. Hameiri, Lamdan, Elisheva and Rahel begin this shift in the first

part of the decade and Shlonsky, Greenberg, and Shmuel Bass rapidly follow in the second half. Nevertheless, the Hebrew poets in America continue to write according to the Ashkenazic accent and stress through out this decade, which deepens the split between their poetry and the

reading public in Palestine. Because of both the pre-Statehood poets' demand for a poetry of the

actual, of engagement, and the influence of German Expressionist poetry, pre-Statehood poetry demonstrates the poets' aim of granting reality direct and unmediated expression, of showing the reality of the disin

tegrating Jewish world in Europe and that of the new one in Palestine.

They do this deliberately, without reserve or aesthetic distance, through their perception of the world as both reality and symbol: riots, unemploy

ment, hunger, road construction, etc. As Greenberg puts it in his program matic notes of 1924, Ve'eilu yesodot lemeshorer kan ("These Are the

Principles of a Poet Here"):

The poetry of Expressionism comes without "preparation." When it comes after internal agitation in a person who can see it is necessary, and the outcry is natural and sudden and very well understood, like the honest shout of someone who has been stabbed by a knife. Someone who recommends the

perspective of years?is being deceitful.25

And later, in Klapei tishHm veteishah (To the Ninety-Nine, 1928):

Our human-Jewish essence demands its Hebrew photography, as we are in all situations: at heart and in the marketplace. Our body is very wild. It is a

wandering source of symbols.26

Indeed, the poetry of Greenberg, Shlonsky, Lamdan, Hameiri, Talpir, and Almi does show an Expressionist-actualistic sensibility. For example, Greenberg writes, "I am choked / between Bank Ha-Poalim and the

Anglo-Palestinian Bank" and Shlonsky writes in his cycle BeTel Aviv (In Tel Aviv, 1927), "A merchant yawns over his cash box there / A pack of

porters at the street corner / A car sprays mud. Bicycles. Babies. / An

Arab with a monkey."27




In America, though, the concrete expression of reality, of " American

ness," that Brenner, Yaakov Rabinovitsh and Lamdan demanded fails, for

the most part, to be realized by the American poets.28 " Americanness," as

it were, enters American Hebrew poetry primarily through epics of Indian life, published before or after this decade by Silkiner (Mul ohel Timora ["Before the Tent of Timora," 1910]), Efrat (Vigvamim shotkim

["Silent Wigwams," 1923]), and Lisitsky (Medurot do'akhot ["Flickering Bonfires," 1927]), or through other narrative poems such as Ginzberg's New York, Feinstein's Hem gesher Vilyamsburg bcferev ("The Williamsburg Bridge Is Mute at Dusk"), or Bavli's Mrs. Woods.29 The American Hebrew

poets, though, never meet the challenge of describing the American

Jewish reality from up close, unlike the Yiddish poets in the United States. As Ribalow puts it: "We see ... that even in our new and modern poetry, America, or "Americanness," fails to enter through the present or in

reality, and only emerges through the past or through visions. As I have

said, America enters, but only through the epic or through legends of

yore."30 As a result of the Palestinian objective of giving direct and unmedi

ated expression to reality and the Palestinian poets' reliance on Expres sionist and Futurist poetics, everything is proper, anything is grist for the

poetic mill. There is no suitable or unsuitable material, no "lyrical" or

"unlyrical" words; everything is legitimate, including foreign words and

"unpoetic" concepts, in Hebrew or Latin orthography: a Gothic cloister, a

Roman iambus, dumdum bullets, proletarians, Bank Apak (Greenberg); sirens, gramophones, taxi, the English word "yes," sharmanka, kopeck

(Shlonsky). As Greenberg writes in Klapei tishHm vateishah (To the Ninety Nine, 1928), by way of analogy:

And I think that Whitman should have written Hebrew, since he was forged of the same stuff as the Hebrew prophets . . . But when I think this way, another thought also comes to me: Woe to Whitman, if he had written Hebrew poems in our midst like those he wrote! A traitor of art like him:

thundering in a baritone and not letting us sleep . . .

"Here is the city and I am one of its citizens! What interests others?interests me as well.

Politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools,

The mayor and the councils, banks, tariffs, steamboats, Factories, taxis, warehouses, etc." (I quote this from memory).

The nine muses are red from sorrow and shame because of poetry like this . . . but don't tremble?my primordial Hebrew father tore through the heavens at the sound of the foreign giant on the beach of America.31

On the other hand, American Hebrew poetry operates according to an explicitly opposed principle, that of "linguistic purism," a principle that has something in it of the Haskalah poets' ideal of a pure language;



222 UZI SHAVIT

in this respect, they regress even from the poetics of Bialik, who did not refrain from consciously embedding a non-Hebrew word like "schnorrers" into his poetry. As Ribalow writes:

Our poets here are above all "purists" in their relations to language. The clear

language and transparent style of the Bible are the patrimony of most of the Hebrew poets in America. And this painstaking, respectful attention to the

purity of their Hebrew continued to deepen until it became a more important kind of solicitude?for the content and soul of the poetry. An empathy for the tradition and a relationship with the language and spirit of the Bible were

good angels who guarded this poetry against the stormy winds of those years of emergency. And Hebrew poetry in the feverish United States was among the most quiet and delicate, preserving its innocence and reservoirs of

purity?in content and form.32

One of the outstanding stylistic features that characterizes modernist

pre-Statehood poetry also typifies modernist poetry in general: a frag mented, apparently illogical structure, a lack of connection, as it were, between the parts and details?daring new compositions, based on associative transitions, on metaphorical leaps and on the realization of

poetic figures.33 Those who rejected this poetry in America during the twenties and thirties describe it, as Ribalow does, as "the weird poetry of chaos and formlessness"34 or, as Halkin put it, "agitation, on one hand, emotions and ideas wandering astray and, on the other hand, a murky style."35 In comparison, the most salient characteristic of American

Hebrew poetry is, to use Halkin's description, that "it sings in a human

language, rather than digging for bizarre conceptions and expressions?it fleshes out emotions, crystallizes and refines them, rather than obscuring and befouling them." This description explains the impression of equa nimity and purity of style the poetry evokes, deceptively, in part, as the

young Halkin thought, since these qualities conceal powerful emotions and a deeply rhetorical-Romantic sensibility.

As a result of modernity and a conscious rebellion against the old

poetic norms, or Bialik's nusah, which had taken on an epigonic character in the poetry of the "Bialikan Pleiad" and their followers, the pre Statehood poets, especially Shlonsky, developed the use of new images and daring metaphors, connecting words and concepts from distant and

incompatible semantic fields. Shlonsky, in his article on melitsah ("the florid, quasibiblical style") describes this phenomenon:

Civil marriage, free love between words, without arranged matches of style, without family pedigrees and doweries of associations, and most impor tantly: without the bridal canopy and the marital blessings! Any combination of words?lawless attachments, one-night stands.36

This poetics is foreign to the American poets, who remain faithful,

generally speaking, to "nusah Bialik"; the norms of Bialik's poetics, in fact, can be felt in their every step.




Pre-Statehood poetry, under the influence of Futurist and Expression ist conceptions and in accordance with its own revolutionary character

istics, stresses poetic effect, the conscious desire to surprise, anger, confuse and shock. This is particularly evident in the poetry of Shlonsky and Greenberg, who activate "Mayakovsky's technique" of "a slap on

the cheek of the public taste." As Shlonsky writes: "Stick out your tongue of confusion, / You, the cheat, / And spit on them, / And laugh: / Tears? / Don't pay!"37 This formula is perceived by the American poets and critics as artificial, imitative and dishonest, and no trace of it can be found in the American Hebrew poetry, which remains faithful to tradi tional conceptions of poetry. In Ribalow's words:

The universe is revealed in entirely new images, either in the character of "a desiccated prostitute" or as "a rabid dog," and the sky is given a faded tint, and as if that were not enough, they add: "heaven-dung" and obviously also its "filthy-stupid ass"; in this chaos it is no wonder that the poet becomes the

spittle frothing at the mouth of the rabid dog, which is the image of the universe, and "the word of God?is like shrivelled tits"?only America holds back its contribution to this madness ... the sublime tradition of the poetry of

truth, not convoluted and not forced, which Bialik, Tchernichowsky, Schneour and their friends placed at the base of Hebrew poetry, this was the

poetry that also shed its light on the Hebrew poetry in America.38

Because of the orientation of the leading pre-Statehood poets to

regard the "large" topics?the cardinal issues of the day, such as the

question of Humanity, the World, the Nation, and the Land?as central to

their poetry, they also demonstrate a tendency toward large forms, as

opposed to the ideal of the "small poem." Greenberg in Hagavrut hacolah

(Masculinity Rising) and Klapei tishHm veteishah (To the Ninety-Nine) and

Shlonsky in his articles for Hedim and Ketuvim give programmatic expres sion to these ideals. In this case, though, the "large form" does not mean

classical or epic form?the epic, the romantic poem, or the idyll?but rather new, modern "large forms," with no regard for the distinction between the lyric and epic?forms open and free in shape, as in the post Symbolist and Expressionist long poem, whose most central and preva lent structure was the "poetic cycle." This tendency marks the poetic

practice of Shlonsky, Lamdan, Greenberg, and Talpir. In American Hebrew poetry the traditional distinction between lyric and epic poetry is

preserved, and the lyric ideal of the small, condensed, concentrated poem remains (including the Shakespearean sonnet cycle, such as Halkin's

Beyamim shishah veleylot shivcah [In Six Days and Seven Nights]). The American Hebrew poets continue to use the epic forms common in

Bialik's generation (long poems and idylls), adding to these the long epic poem, in the style of Longfellow's Hiawatha.

In pre-Statehood poetry, myth makes itself felt, primarily through allusions to mythological characters and symbols drawn from various



224 UZI SHAVIT

sources, though mostly from the Jewish and Christian traditions. Thus,

Shlonsky's Devay (Suffering) and Bagalgal (In the Whirlwind) include references to Tubal-Cain, Noah, Job, Moses, Jesus, Elijah, the Messiah,

John the Baptist, Shulamith and Ganges; Greenberg, in his Great Fear and a

Moon and Hagavrut hacolah (Masculinity Rising), refers to Jesus, Spinoza, Levi-Yitshak of Berditchev, Solomon Molcho, Shabbetai Zevi and Ahaswer. Lamdan's Masada makes similar references. This tendency is

also apparent in American Hebrew poetry, but there it manifests itself

differently, in accordance with the Romantic character of American Hebrew poetry. In this case, the congruence of pre-Statehood and Ameri can Hebrew poetry can be traced to their common roots in the attraction to myth: the Romantic tradition of according myth a special importance and forging a new mythology, different in practice from that of medieval and Enlightenment conceptions of mythology, also served Symbolism and its successors.

In pre-Statehood poetry of the twenties, there can be heard in measurable force for the first time in the new Hebrew poetry the feminine voice: Esther Raab, Elisheva, Rahel, Bat-Miriam, and Anda Pinkerfeld.

Undoubtedly there are sociological reasons why women could not create Hebrew poetry before this time.39 The primary factor is connected to the

sociology and traditional educational system of the Eastern European Jewish community, in which young Jewish boys learned the Hebrew

language in the heder and yeshiva, which were off limits to young girls. The appearance of the first Hebrew women poets is related to what Harshav calls "the Jewish revolution," and it is no coincidence that this

phenomenon begins in revolutionary Russia (Elisheva, Rahel, Bat

Miriam, Bat Hama) and in the revolutionary climate of the Third Aliya in Palestine (Rahel, Esther Raab, Elisheva).40 But the real explosion of Hebrew women's poetry could only take place in an environment in which Hebrew was the vernacular, and this can be readily felt in the

Sephardic-Palestinian accentuation, the conversational tone and the dif ferent lexicon that characterizes the poetry of Rahel, Esther Raab and

Elisheva, from the beginning of their Hebrew poetic production. In American Hebrew poetry, the feminine voice is completely lacking, and there are undoubtedly excellent sociological reasons for this, as well.

Another marked characteristic distinguishes pre-Statehood poetry of the twenties: love poems occur solely in women's poetry, and their absence from most of the work of the male poets, especially Shlonsky, Greenberg, Lamdan, Hameiri, Talpir and Almi, is an outstanding genera tional phenomenon. The major poetry is entirely dedicated to topics of

general, collective interest, including that of the fortunes of the solitary Jewish youth in the midst of the national revolution. There is no place for

problems of "universal," "eternal" import such as love, jealousy, and

separation. Apparently, love poetry is regarded as legitimate only in




women's poetry, although this relegates love poetry a priori to minor status. As Greenberg puts it in his essay, "The Addition of Elements and

the Exchange of Concepts in Human Consciousness," the final piece in

Klapei tishHm veteishah (To the Ninety-Nine, 1928):

And when we are at leisure and the hour is one in which we are lyrical subjective, we remember the harp of the romances and the serenade-guitar that once would play outside the windows of the beloved maidens?and the

eyes just flood over ... But generally speaking we have no free time for lyrical seclusion in the world. Our musical instruments are the machines human

beings work with, the ones they use for their creations.41

American Hebrew poetry, in accordance to its Romantic character, is

replete with love poetry. No American poet fails to write love poems, and

these include some of the finest achievements of American Hebrew

poetry of this period, such as Halkin's sonnet cycle Bey amim shishah

veleylot shiv'ah (In Six Days and Seven Nights, 1929) or Regelson's unique and extraordinary Geshem ("Rain").42

As surprising as it may seem, pre-Statehood poetry of the twenties

dedicates very little space to nature or landscape poetry, or even to

descriptions of the natural environment. This phenomenon apparently contradicts the ideology and practice of settling the land that character

izes the Third Aliyah, of which Shlonsky, Lamdan and Greenberg were

the exemplary poets. In this respect their poetry demonstrates the power ful influence of Italian Futurism, with its urban-technological outlook,

which had also been absorbed by German Expressionism and Russian

Futurism and which well suits the revolutionary character of the "work

brigade" and "road builders." "Because man is to such a complete extent the point of departure, the point of departure and the eventual goal of this

poetry," Kurt Pinthus writes in his introduction to the Expressionist anthology Menschheitsdaemmerung, "there is little room for landscape. This poetry never draws or describes landscape, and there are no poems about it unless it is made entirely human."43

As Greenberg puts it in "The Addition of Elements and Exchange of

Concepts in Human Consciousness," in Klapei tishHm veteishah (To the

Ninety-Nine, 1928):

Iron, steam, electricity and concrete?four which have become the beauty and

power of the present... Man becomes of necessity other, completely different from those that came before. Man has ceased to be the passive object... and become the mover and turner of all circuits and gears

. . . For this reason the

concept of the beauty and splendor of dead nature in traditional verse has

passed, and now rests on the workaday products of man's hands and on man

himself, who has become the blueprint of the creative work and the outline of its structure. The beautiful snow-capped Alps in the stillness of dawn, or an

evening like that, and the wonderful days in their moonlit majesty?what are

they compared to the accomplished Londons and Parises and New Yorks etc.



226 UZI SHAVIT

with the rest of their descendants?the towns and what is around the towns:

villages that nourish, in one profane hour from the middle of time?44

For this reason, there are no descriptions of landscape per se in

Greenberg, Shlonsky, Lamdan or their peers, and actual landscape poems in the young pre-Statehood poetry of the twenties can be found primarily in the margins of the system, for example, in the poetry of Esther Raab and Shmuel Bass. In comparison, American Hebrew poetry is replete with descriptions of nature and landscape, both as a continuation of the tradition of the "Revival Poetry" of Bialik, Tchernichowsky and their

followers, and in the tradition of English Romantic poetry, so that the urban and technological realities so characteristic of American life receive

only scant attention. In the previous section I outlined a comparison of the young Hebrew

poetry written in Palestine and in America during the twenties, a compar ison that, by its general nature, necessarily ignores the individual charac ter and unique qualities of each poet, stressing instead the central characteristics of each school and its trend setters. In this section I shall

pose the basic question: Why did modernist poetry flourish during these

years in Palestine, while in America, modernist poetry did not take root until Barukh Katzenelson and Gavriel Preil?

I would like to stress one point: It is clear that even if modernist Hebrew poetry had developed in America in the twenties, it would have been absolutely different from the poetry that developed in Palestine

during these same years, as different as Anglo-American modernism is from the Russian and German varieties. But the significant fact is that in

America, modernist Hebrew poetry did not develop at all during the

twenties, which accounts for the epigonic image this poetry had in the

eyes of its readers and critics abroad.45 The answer needs to be sought, it seems to me, primarily in the

sociological circumstances involved, and in my estimation, primarily in

the different "collective biography" of the two groups of writers, the Palestinian and the American.

The poets who created the young pre-Statehood poetry of the twen ties were, for the most part, born at the beginning of the century (except for Greenberg and Hameiri, who were older) and immigrated to Palestine as pioneers at the beginning or middle of the twenties (Shlonsky, Lamdan, Almi, Rahel, Penn, and Zusman). The formative emotional experiences of their youth were connected to the First World War (Hameiri and Green

berg even served as soldiers), the Revolution and its aftermath, the antisemitic disturbances, and the immigration to Palestine as individuals and as part of the Third Aliyah. From the standpoint of the literary climate, they grew up in two or three national literatures simultaneously: Hebrew and Russian or Hebrew and German, and some of them also in Yiddish. They were educated in the school of the "classical" Hebrew




poetry of Bialik and Tchernichowsky and their young cohorts, as well as

classical Russian or German poetry; but they were also awakened to the

call of the Russian and German poetry of their own time, which they encountered freely and directly as readers. They were influenced and nourished by the climate in which this poetry was created. Both the turbulent and revolutionary social-historical climate in which they

matured and the parallel modernist literary atmosphere they breathed

explain the point of departure of their poetry. The "collective biography" that characterizes the generation of Amer

ican Hebrew poets of the twenties differs considerably. Most of them were

born in Russia or Lithuania in the nineties, immigrated to the United States as young boys, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, before the First

World War, and completed their education in America. They experienced the World War, the Revolution and the disintegration of "the old order" in

Europe on the one hand, and the antisemitic disturbances and the

disintegration of the world of European Jewry on the other, only from a

distance. Thus their formative experiences, during the decisive adolescent

years, were definitively different from those of the pre-Statehood poets. From the cultural standpoint, they were educated, like the pre-Statehood poets, on the knees of the "classical" Hebrew poetry of Bialik and

Tchernichowsky and Schneour and the other poets of that school. Their central encounter with foreign, Western poetry, though, occurred largely in the American schools at the same time that they were acquiring their new language, English, and for that reason they primarily came across the

"classical," "canonical" English literature taught in school (Shakespeare, the Romantics, the Victorians, the American Classical writers). They encountered very little modern literature, which was not taught in

schools, and this includes, to be sure, Walt Whitman as well. As new

comers, with all their attention focused on integration, on absorbing the dominant language and culture, they were naturally gripped by the

classical, canonical culture that was entirely new to them?and they were

not as yet open to absorbing the modernist winds blowing in the young American poetry. This explains the conservative quality of their literary taste.46

But there is more. The pre-Statehood poets were part of a revolution

ary and pioneering movement, for which they regarded themselves the

literary spokespeople. The conciousness of having a mission never weak

ened, even for an instant, in Shlonsky, Lamdan or Greenberg. As Green

berg put it in Tur malka ("King's Column"), in the first issue of Sadan, "Proletarians in Israel called upon me to be their poet, and to send the soft

and pleasant to the devil." Even the loneliness the pre-Statehood poets

frequently express is the loneliness of the individual within the move

ment. The fundamental position of the American poet, however, is exactly the opposite, with the poet feeling alienated, isolated, cut off, without



228 UZI SHAVIT

transmission and without a readership; he is not part of a historical,

dynamic movement but rather an outsider, or at best, a remnant of a

movement. As Halkin puts it:

It is strange that the Hebrew writer in Europe and Palestine feels no anxious concern for the pain his brother, the Hebrew writer in America, suffers, from his enforced isolation, from his distance from any community which might see him as their mouthpiece, from the unhappy feeling that there is no need for his work in his surroundings. Exiled in the heartless environment of the

noisy, bustling Jewish streets dried up inside, in the cheap counterfeit life within them, he creates what he creates and no one pays attention, his loneliness complete. Where are the readers with whom he can come in

contact, in the way the Palestinian writer, for example, comes in contact from time to time with his readers?47

The diametrically opposed character of these two units of poetry, the Palestinian and the American, then, is not coincidental, but rather a

necessary result of a series of sociological-historical-cultural factors. A

proper understanding of these causes can deepen and sharpen our ability to correctly absorb these two groups of poetry in accordance with their distinctive poetics, as they crystallized in their historical and geographical contexts. This understanding can also provide a basis and context for the

specific and separate reading of each work and each poet against the

stylistic background and dominant literary climate of each of these

literary centers.

Tel Aviv University Translated from the Hebrew by Naomi Seidman

NOTES

1. Uzi Shavit, "The Wild Poem: Toward an Outline of Literary Climate and Stylistics in

Pre-Statehood Hebrew Poetry in the Twenties" [Hebrew], Tecudah 5, Studies in Hebrew

Literature, Re'uven Tsur and Uzi Shavit, eds. (Tel Aviv, 1986), pp. 165-83.

2. Shimon Ginzberg, "On the Poetry of the Year" [Hebrew], Hado'ar 42 (1926). 3. Simon Halkin, "Paragons and Epigones in our Literature" in Derakhim vetsidei

derakhim basifrut [Paths and Byways in Literature] (Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 82-94. Originally published in Hado'ar 4: 3 (1925).

4. Uri Zvi Greenberg, Klapei tish'im veteishah [To the Ninety-Nine] (Tel Aviv, 1928), pp. 12-13.

5. Yitshak Norman, "In the Dovecote of Hebrew Literature" [Hebrew], Ketuvim (Oct.

29,1932). 6. Halkin, "Paragons and Epigones." 7. Greenberg, Hagavrut ha'olah [Masculinity Rising] (Tel Aviv, 1926), p. 31.

8. Halkin, "Paragons and Epigones," p. 89.




9. Halkin, "Paragons and Epigones," pp. 93-94. Compare Abraham Epstein, Sofrim Hvrim be1 Amerika I [Hebrew Writers in America J] (Tel Aviv, 1953), p. 12.

10. See, for example, Victor Ehrlich's The Double Image (Baltimore, 1964), and Chone

Shmeruk's "The Call to the Prophet" [Hebrew], Hasifrut 2 (1969): 241-44. 11. Greenberg, Klapei tishHm veteishah, pp. 30-31.

12. Halkin, "Paragons and Epigones," pp. 93-94.

13. Menahem Ribalow, "Hebrew Poetry in America" [Hebrew], introduction to Anto

logiyah shel hashirah hac ivrit beAmerika [Anthology of Hebrew Poetry in America], M. Ribalow, ed.

(New York, 1938), pp. 7-8.

14. Gavriel Preil, "The American Style in Hebrew Poetry" [Hebrew], Metsudah 7

(1954): 502-4. 15. Ribalow, "Hebrew Poetry in America," p. 8.

16. Greenberg, Klapei tishHm veteishah, p. 39.

17. Benjamin Hrushovsky, "The Rhythm of Open Spaces: The Theory and Practice of

Rhythm in the Expressionist Poetry of U. Z. Greenberg" [Hebrew], Hasifrut 1 (1968): 176-205.

18. Shavit, pp. 172-73.

19. Ribalow, "The Bed of Sodom and the Expanses of the Lord" [Hebrew], in Sefer

hayovel shel Hado'ar [The Hado'ar jubilee Book] (New York, 1927), p. 19.

20. Abraham Shlonsky, Bagalgal [In the Whirlwind] (Tel Aviv, 1927), p. 97. 21. Greenberg, Hagavrut ha'olah (Tel Aviv, 1926), p. 31.

22. Moshe Feinstein, Tsimtsum ["Frugality"], in Sefer hayovel shel Hado'ar [The Hado'ar

Jubilee Book], M. Ribalow, ed. (New York, 1927), p. 69.

23. Greenberg, Klapei tisWim veteishah, p. 13.

24. Greenberg, Klapei tishHm veteishah, pp. 6-7.

25. Greenberg, "These Are the Principles of a Poet Here" [Hebrew], Hapo'el hatsaHr

21-22 (1924), p. 18.

26. Greenberg, Klapei tishHm veteishah, p. 6.

27. Greenberg, Kelev Bayit ["House Dog"] (Tel Aviv, 1929) and Shlonsky, BeTel Aviv [in Tel Aviv], Bagalgal, p. 143.

28. Nurit Govrin, "The Demand for Americanness and Its Realization in American

Hebrew Literature" [Hebrew] Migvan: Mehkarim basifrut ha''ivrit ubegiluyehah haAmerikanim

[Variety: Studies in Hebrew Literature and Its American Manifestations], S. Nash, ed. (Lydda, 1988), pp. 81-97.

29. Shimon Ginzberg, Shirim upo'emot [Songs and Narrative Poems] (New York, 1947); Moshe Feinstein, Shirim vesonetot [Poems and Sonnets] (New York, 1935); Hillel Bavli, Mrs.

Woods, Hedim, 5 (1927/28): 1-12.

30. Ribalow, "Hebrew Poetry in America," pp. 10-11.

31. Greenberg, Klapei tishcim veteishah, p. 35.

32. Ribalow, "Hebrew Poetry in America," p. 12.

33. Hrushovski, "The Rhythm of Open Spaces," pp. 189-94.

34. Ribalow, "Hebrew Poetry in America," p. 8.


36. Shlonsky, "Lofty Style" [Hebrew], Hedim (Nisan 1923), pp. 189-90. 37. Shlonsky, Bagalgal [In the Whirlwind], p. 169. 38. Ribalow, "Hebrew Poetry in America," p. 8. Compare Epstein, Sofrim Hvrim

beAmerika 1, pp. 11-12.

39. Dan Miron, Imahot meyasdot, ahayot horgot [Founding Mothers, Stepsisters] (Tel Aviv,

1991). 40. See Miron, 1991 and Benjamin Harshav (Hrushovski), "The Revival of Erets-Yisroel

and the Modern Jewish Revolutions: Thoughts on Picturing a Situation" [Hebrew], Nekudot

tatspit: Tarbut vehevrah be'Erets Israel [Points of View: Culture and Society in Frets Israel], Nurit

Gertz, ed. (Tel Aviv, 1988), pp. 7-31.



230 UZI SHAVIT

41. Greenberg, Klapei tisi?im veteishah, p. 44.

42. Halkin, Beyamim shishah veleylot shiv'ah [In Six Days and Seven Nights] (Tel Aviv,

1929). Regelson's Geshem ["Rain"] is included in the Antologiyah shel hashirah haHvrit

be"Amerika [Anthology of Hebrew Poetry in America], p. 241.

43. In Yorshei hasymbolism bashirah, pp. 100-101.

44. Greenberg, Klapei tish'im veteishah, p. 44.

45. Preil, p. 503.

46. Preil, pp. 503-4.




the new hebrew poetry of the twenties: palestine and america

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