Radical Recasting of Tradition: On Abraham Shlonsky's Hegemony in the Hebrew Poetry of the 1930s
This article addresses a conceptual difficulty in recent post-Zionist accounts of the "center" of Hebrew literature in the 1930s. These accounts claim that this "center," often personified by the poet Abraham Shlonsky, pursued a poetics of literary complexity and abundance which...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
The National Association of Professors of Hebrew
2006
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| In: |
Hebrew studies
Year: 2006, Volume: 47, Issue: 1, Pages: 327-341 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article addresses a conceptual difficulty in recent post-Zionist accounts of the "center" of Hebrew literature in the 1930s. These accounts claim that this "center," often personified by the poet Abraham Shlonsky, pursued a poetics of literary complexity and abundance which was linked to a socialist-Zionist outlook. This "center," as these depictions maintain, actively marginalized an alternative poetics of simplicity and directness, a poetics claimed to represent a non-socialist-Zionist outlook., The article proposes that the style of complexity and abundance cannot explain or even adequately describe the literary map of center-periphery of the 1930s. After considering various possible reasons for Shlonsky's centrality, an explanation is provided which focuses on the way his poetry forged a radical, modernist transformation of Jewish tradition. This poetics corresponds to and echoes the Zionist project of the 1930s. Hence, the centrality of Shlonsky's work at that time. |
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| ISSN: | 2158-1681 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hebrew studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/hbr.2006.0027 |