Bialik, the Hebrew Bible and the Literature of Nationalism [1 ed.] 9781003357018, 9781032412474, 9781032412504

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Introduction: Bialik and National Poetry 1789–1914
1 The Jews under Tsarist Rule: Between Hope and Despair
2 Bialik and National Poetry in the Tsarist Empire
3 Bialik, Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible
4 From the Bible to Bialik: Poetry of Zion
5 Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky
6 Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish National Identity
7 Anti-Semitism and Hebrew Poetry: 1881–1948
8 Bialik, Wordsworth and the Romantic Agony
9 Bialik and Freud: Childhood Screen Memories
10 Childlessness and the Waste Land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot
11 The Artist as Nation-Builder: Bialik and Yeats
Conclusion: Damaged Archangels and Charismatic National Poets
Afterword: In Memoriam
Appendix 1: Bialik and Wordsworth: The Poetry of Childhood (Hebrew)
Appendix 2: John Bowlby, Foreword to David Aberbach, Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis
Bibliography
Bialik’s Life and Character
Bialik’s Works
General Index

Citation preview

Bialik, the Hebrew Bible and the Literature of Nationalism

This book explores the life and poetry of Chaim Nachman Bialik (­­1873–​ ­1934) in the context of European national literature between the French Revolution and World War I, showing how he helped create a modern Hebrew national culture, spurring the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language. The author begins with Bialik’s background in the Tsarist Empire, contextualizing Jewish powerlessness in Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century. As European ­anti-​­Semitism grew, Bialik emerged at the vanguard of a modern Hebrew national movement, building on ancient biblical and rabbinic tradition and speaking to Jewish concerns in ­neo-​­prophetic poems, love poems, poems for children, and folk poems. This book makes accessible a broad but representative selection of Bialik’s poetry in translation. Alongside this, a variety of national poets are considered from across Europe, including Solomos in Greece, Mickiewicz in Poland, Shevchenko in Ukraine, Njegoš in Serbia, Petőfi in Hungary, and Yeats in Ireland. Aberbach argues that Bialik as Jewish national poet cannot be understood except in the dual context of ancient Jewish nationalism and modern European nationalism, both political and cultural. Written in clear and accessible prose, this book will interest those studying modern European nationalism, Hebrew literature, Jewish history, and ­anti-​­Semitism. David Aberbach is Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Studies at McGill University, Montreal, and Honorary Visiting Associate at the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford. His books include Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature, and Psychoanalysis (­1989); Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media (­1996); National Poetry, Empires and War (­2016); and Nationalism, War and Jewish Education (­2018).

Routledge Jewish Studies Series Series Editor: Oliver Leaman, University of Kentucky

Jewish Studies, which are interpreted to cover the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, culture, politics, philosophy, theology, religion, as they relate to Jewish affairs. The remit includes texts which have as their primary focus issues, ideas, personalities and events of relevance to Jews, Jewish life and the concepts which have characterised Jewish culture both in the past and today. The series is interested in receiving appropriate scripts or proposals. The Environment and Literature of Moral Dilemmas From Adam to Michael K David Aberbach Postmodern Love in the Contemporary Jewish Imagination Negotiating Spaces and Identities Efraim Sicher Early Israel Cultic Praxis, God, and the Sôd Hypothesis Alex Shalom Kohav Bialik, the Hebrew Bible and the Literature of Nationalism David Aberbach Contemporary Israeli Haredi Society Profiles, Trends and Challenges Edited by Kimmy Caplan and Nissim Leon

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Bialik, the Hebrew Bible and the Literature of Nationalism

David Aberbach

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 David Aberbach The right of David Aberbach to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library ­C ataloguing-­​­­in-​­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress ­C ataloging-­​­­in-​­Publication Data Names: Aberbach, David, 1953– author. Title: Bialik, the Hebrew bible and the literature of nationalism / David Aberbach. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge Jewish studies series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022050896 (print) | LCCN 2022050897 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032412474 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032412504 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003357018 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Bialik, Hayyim Nahman, 1873—1934—Criticism and interpretation. | Nationalism in literature. | Jews in literature. | Bible and literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PJ5053.B52 A64 2023 (print) | LCC PJ5053.B52 (ebook) | DDC 892.41/5—dc23/eng/20230127 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050896 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050897 ISBN: ­978-­​­­1-­​­­032-­​­­41247-​­4 (­hbk) ISBN: ­978-­​­­1-­​­­032-­​­­41250-​­4 (­pbk) ISBN: ­978-­​­­1-­​­­0 03-­​­­35701-​­8 (­ebk) DOI: 10.4324/­9781003357018 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

To Mimi

Contents

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry ­1789–​­1914

1

1 The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair

21

2 Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire

43

3 Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible

54

4 From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion

74

5 Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky94 6 Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity

117

7 ­Anti-​­Semitism and Hebrew poetry: ­1881–​­1948

133

8 Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony

152

9 Bialik and Freud: childhood screen memories

179

10 Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot

185

11 The artist as ­nation-​­builder: Bialik and Yeats

202

Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets

221

viii Contents

Afterword: In memoriam 229 Appendix 1: Bialik and Wordsworth: the poetry of childhood (­Hebrew)­ 234 Appendix 2: John Bowlby, Foreword to David Aberbach, Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis 246 Bibliography 249 Bialik’s Life and Character 259 Bialik’s Works 261 General Index 263

David Aberbach, painting from Bialik’s ‘The Legend of Three and Four’ (Aggadat Shlosha ve-Arba’a, 1929), in And It Came to Pass (Va-Yhi ha-Yom, 1934).

Introduction Bialik and national poetry ­1789–​­1914

Chaim Nachman Bialik (­­1873–​­1934), the most celebrated modern Hebrew poet, was not a fighting man; yet, the rage in his ­poems – ​­particularly those written during the Russian pogroms of ­1903–­​­­06 – ​­stirred his people to fight their a­ nti-​­Semitic persecutors: his voice, resonating with moral force and rhetorical power of a biblical prophet, articulated the growing national spirit of the Jewish people in the early 20th century, ‘­u ne solidarité moral avec les autres juifs’, as Proust put it in À la recherche du temps perdu,1 apropos French ­anti-​­Semitism. Highly influential, culturally and politically, Bialik is in some ways the most strikingly original modern Jewish poet. His folk poems and children’s verse set to music have made him enduringly popular;2 his use of the Hebrew language as a Grand Canyon of civilization revealing every stratum of Jewish history from ancient to modern times has attracted immense scholarship;3 many Israeli cities and towns have streets and schools named for him; he has appeared on Israeli money, a ­much-​ ­coveted prize for Hebrew literature is in his name, and his house in Tel Aviv is the Bialik museum. The linguistic richness of Bialik’s poetry wells up from an immensely rich Jewish civilization, drawing on a series of major cultures: notably in the ancient Near East, in the ­Greco-​­Roman empire, in medieval Islam, and in ­19th-​­century Russian and German literature.4 Yet, viewed alongside other modern national poets in countries undergoing vast change, Bialik’s world is at times painfully discordant, shabby and melancholy, pitiful and vulnerable, outdated, and even repulsive: a Jewish world which no longer ­exists – the ​­ Russian Pale of Settlement with about 5 million Jews by 1900, the largest Jewish community at the time, mostly an impoverished working class, Orthodox, Y ­ iddish-​­speaking, victims of prejudice, humiliation, and violent a­ nti-​­Semitic persecution, and driven to emigration on a large scale. Bialik thundered against this world of galut (­exile) in a new kind of Hebrew poetry, aggressively asserting the link with a glorious biblical past while forging a modern secular national identity. In this creative revolution, Bialik was a disciple of the Yiddish and Hebrew novelist, Mendele Mocher Sefarim, whose ­hard-​­hitting, mordant satires set the rich ancient culture of the Jews against their current material poverty and degradation.5 Until

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-1

2  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 the 20th century, Hebrew writers generally had adult male readers and scholars who knew Hebrew Scripture, the prayerbook, and the legal codes; Bialik was among the first who wrote not just for men but for the entire nation, including women and small children. Though Bialik wrote exclusively for Jews, he was the first modern Hebrew poet to be widely translated and known to n ­ on-​­Jewish readers as well as being the leading poet in a ­w ide-​ r­ anging ­post-​­1881 Hebrew cultural revival, challenging traditional Jewish authority, speaking for the Jewish people in a national voice, for Jewish interests, and implicitly rejecting galut, particularly the ­anti-​­Semitic imperial Russian state, his place of birth. Bialik, at the biblical apex of Hebrew high culture, reaches constantly to the ­often-​­profound and beautiful popular culture of the Eastern European Jews, their Yiddish vernacular, f­aith-​­based stories, songs, legends, superstitions, and melodies, often part of the Hasidic way of life, which, Joseph Roth observed in The Wandering Jews (­1927), prepared them for Bialik’s poetry, with his ‘­w rath of the old prophets and sweetness of the crowing child’.6 Measured not in translation but in the original Hebrew against the biblical standard of the book of Isaiah or of Job, or the Song of Songs, Bialik is a major poet, with undisputed creative power and mastery. Bialik warrants comparison with the great R ­ omantics – ​­with Pushkin, Schiller, and ­Wordsworth  – ​­who more than the Modernists, his contemporaries, represented to him (­as to most of the Russian and Jewish intelligentsia of his time) the ideals of Enlightenment, high culture, and poetic genius.7 Yet Bialik’s poetry also has Modernist elements: particularly in its ironic play of ancient Jewish sources against ­often-​­harsh modern realities; it does for Hebrew what Joyce and Eliot later did for Greek myth in Ulysses and The Waste Land, adapting the ancient world view to a modern sensibility, at times questioning, even denying the sacred authority of the sources but implicitly accepting their imperishable value.8 Bialik’s poetry is riddled with imagery of loss and waste land, representing modern society as he saw it, in its violence and cruelty, and senseless slaughter; and his stark pessimism, his d ­ eath-​­obsession, has echoes with contemporaries, including Mahler, Rilke, and Picasso, and perhaps particularly Joseph Conrad (­also born in the Ukrainian area of the Jewish Pale of Settlement, in Berdichev, not far from Bialik’s birthplace): both disillusioned and despairing even before the cataclysm of World War I, both tormented by human frailty and ­s elf-​­deception, yet longing for a better world.9 In the original Hebrew, Bialik’s poems display thematic versatility and emotional range, with rare power to move, to astonish, and to delight. Though the sentiment and rhetoric of his early and late poems are not to everyone’s taste, most of the poems of his greatest period, in Odessa ­1900–​­11, are instantly recognizable in Hebrew for their sensitivity and toughness, precision, and musicality. These are among the finest, most individual poems in Hebrew, and it is worth learning Hebrew to read them.10

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  3 Yet, Bialik is important for other reasons as well. Bialik was steeped in the entire 3,­000-​­year history of the Jews and Judaism, in its creativity and the vicissitudes of Jewish life, and in the rich development of the Hebrew language and literature through the ages, in many different countries. His poetry is a miniature summing up and recasting of an entire, mostly religious, literary tradition in modern secular form, a kinnus (­ingathering), as he called it, of fragments. It is both linguistically and thematically a poetry of continuity, from the Hebrew Bible, encompassing the rabbinic tradition, the medieval poetic heritage, the Haskalah, with much awareness of modern European literature, particularly in Russian and German.11 It is also a poetry of metamorphosis, from victimization to empowerment, from traditional passive faith to skepticism and political activism, from disillusionment to new hope. Bialik was instrumental in transforming Hebrew poetry from primarily a religious mode of expression and, among a growing minority, a didactic vehicle for the Jewish Enlightenment (­Haskalah) into a powerful instrument of cultural nationalism and artistic ­self-​­expression. His poetry mirrors the demographic transition from the relatively stable and primitive rural village existence of E ­ ast-​­European Jews to the sophistication, opportunities, and anomie of urban life, and it enacts, too, the transformation of Hebrew ­culture – a​­ ‘­portable state’ (­medinah metultelet) in ­exile – in ​­ the return to its roots in the land of Israel.12 Bialik’s poetry angrily disproves the ­anti-​­Semitic notion entrenched in Christianity and Islam, and promoted by the Tsarist state, that Judaism is a superseded religion, Jewish culture is uncreative and unspiritual, corrupt, and useless; that the Jews are dead as a people, nation, and religious group, and their sole viability lies in conversion to the ‘­true faith’. The Russian Jews under Tsarist rule were subjected to such prejudices virtually as policy, with the toxic aiding and abetting of the Russian Orthodox Church. Historically, neither Christianity nor Islam could accept the legitimacy or viability of Jewish nationalism. The theocratic nations of Europe saw themselves as the elect heir to Judaism, now a fossil. The Jews could live on purely as a token of the supremacy of the Church, damned in the eyes of God as murderers of the Savior or deniers of the Prophet, identified with contemptible material existence devoid of spirituality, associated with demonic forces, harmful lusts, conspiracy, and plague, with no redeeming goodness, no original cultural development of their own, subject justly in the eyes of the dominant culture to hatred and persecution. And indeed, as guardians of a crushed religion, the Jews were the most reluctant of European nationalists, among the last to emerge from the world of the Middle Ages and discover their national identity. Russia, openly ­anti-​­Semitic, gave force to Jewish nationalism and the revival of Hebrew. It might seem paradoxical that an a­ nti-​­Semitic country should allow and even to some extent encourage Hebrew culture when its general policy toward ‘­foreign’ cultures in the ­empire – including ​­ Ukrainian, Finnish, and P ­ olish – ​­was that of forced Russification. However, Hebrew

4  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 was not ­anti-­​­­Russian – ​­until the pogroms of 1881 and even after, it was associated with loyal ­patriotism – ​­nor was it conceived as a vehicle for Jewish national awakening but, influenced by the German Haskalah, as a didactic vehicle for assimilation and a counterweight to Jewish Orthodoxy: Hebrew would serve as a bridge to secular culture, as it had done in Germany, and in its patriotism, facilitate ultimate Jewish assimilation in Russia. After 1881, Hebrew was ideologically transformed in the tehiya (­revival) of Jewish nationalism; but as this posed no revolutionary or secessionary threat, as did Polish, Finnish, or Ukrainian, for example, but encouraged Jewish emigration from Russia, the Russian authorities allowed Hebrew to continue, always subject to censorship and bans. Direct Hebrew and Yiddish attacks on the Russian government for its a­ nti-​­Semitic policies, and particularly for allowing and encouraging an escalation of a­ nti-​­Jewish violence after 1881, were ­barred  – ​­but not attacks by Jews on other Jews. Whereas Haskalah criticism focused on Jewish educational failings, p ­ ost-​­1881 Hebrew literature excoriated the Jews as a nation, for passivity, weakness and lack of unity, and even cowardice. The powerful national impact of Jewish s­elf-​ ­criticism, particularly in Bialik’s poetry, was unexpected; yet, as we shall see, national ­self-​­blame is practically the norm in the literature of modern independence movements.13 Bialik’s ­Russian-​­Hebrew predecessors, notably the poet Judah Leib ­Gordon (­­1830–​­92), had had patriotic maskilic hopes of reform and ultimate emancipation, as in Western Europe, but Bialik, in contrast, was driven in his Zionism by ­fi n-­​­­de-​­siècle disillusionment with Russia. As a Hebrew poet speaking with the power of a biblical p ­ rophet – a​­ ‘­new Isaiah’ as the Russian writer Maxim Gorky described h ­ im – Bialik ​­ without mentioning Russia or its government policies condemned persecutors of Jews and denigrators of their religion, history, and culture.14 This is a new, radical development in modern Jewish ­culture – ​­a Hebrew poet speaking for the national identity and hopes of the Jewish people, however scattered and variegated, as ­Solomos speaks for Greeks, Mickiewicz for Poles, or Shevchenko for Ukrainians. No one reading Bialik in Hebrew could possibly believe that Hebrew was a dead language, Jewish culture defunct, Judaism a fossil, and Jewish nationalism without energy and e­ nterprise –​ a­ nd hope. Bialik’s poetry even in its moments of despair radiates hope, energy, and originality, an ­at-​­times overwhelming inspirational vitality, a powerful revival of ancient Jewish national creativity. This was how he was read. Like other modern cultural nationalists such as Johann von Herder of Germany, N.F.S. Grundtvig in Denmark, Ziya Gökalp in Turkey, and Douglas Hyde in Ireland, cultural Zionists such as Bialik looked to the past in search of literature that lived and defined the inalienable character of the nation, stirring the imagination, stretching the range of creativity, with the power to move its readers and listeners and change their lives.15 The fundamental text in the history of European nationalism is the Hebrew Bible in

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  5 translation. As 1­ 9th-​­century nationalism grew, the European Jews began to rediscover their national identity in the original Hebrew text of the Bible. Many national poets were also, like Bialik, educators who understood the vital importance of e­ ducation  – of ​­ language and legend, and folklore and l­aw  – as ​­ a binding force of the nation: for example, Burns in Scotland, Mickiewicz in Poland, Shevchenko in Ukraine, Lönnrot in Finland, ­Verdaguer in Catalonia, Yeats in Ireland.16 To these cultural nationalists, the vernacular, the language of the people, was the bread and salt of nationalism. The smaller and more vulnerable the country, the more vigorously its poets, thinkers, and educators tended to react to threats to its language and its need for protection. Language and culture could shore up weak nations, giving stability amid flux, integration amid chaos, and value amid insecurity. Cultural Zionists, mostly Eastern European, were generally immersed in Judaism and Jewish learning; for them, Jewish nationalism was inseparable from the ancient attachment to the Hebrew language, leshon ­ha-​­kodesh, the sacred tongue, language of the Bible, and the land of ­Israel  – even ​­ when they heretically subverted its traditional theological associations. From Bialik’s viewpoint, the language of Zionism had to be Hebrew as it contains the essence of Jewish identity, the main link of the Jews with their ancestral homeland, the sole language uniting all Jews, in Scripture and prayer. Zionism both political and cultural thrived amid worsening Russian and European a­ nti-​­Semitism, until World War I which, among other things, precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1917 and accelerated the rise of Jewish nationalism. Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’, written during the pogroms of 1­ 903–​­06, stand out in the long history of Jewish literature reacting to and reflecting violent ­anti-​­Semitism and expressing Jewish national solidarity .17 Here are salient examples of ­anti-​­Semitism in the century prior to the rise of Nazism and works written in response: 1840: the Damascus blood libel: Heine’s story ‘­The Rabbi of Bacherach’ 1871: the first pogrom, in Odessa: Mendele’s satire Di Kliatsche (­The Mare) 1881–​­ ­ 82: a wave of pogroms in reaction to the assassination of Tsar ­A lexander II; J.L. Gordon, Ahoti Ruhama (­My Sister, Ruhama); Mendele, ­Be-​­Seter Ra’am (­In the Secret Place of Thunder) ­1894–​­1906: Dreyfus case; Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu ­1903–​­06: second wave of pogroms: Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’ ­1918–​­20: third wave of pogroms, after the Russian Revolution; Tchernichowsky, Zot tehi nikmatenu (­This be our revenge) 1923: ‘­cold pogrom’ policy of Poland; Julian Tuwim, ‘­Zydek’ (­Jewboy) 1929: wave of pogroms against Palestinian Jews; Greenberg, Ezor Magen ­u -​­ Ne’um Ben ­ha-​­Dam (­Defensive Shield and the Word of the Son of Blood) 1933: rise of Hitler; Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh; Stefan Zweig, The Buried Candelabrum

6  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 ­ nti-​­ A Jewish violence grew steadily worse in the century prior to the ­Holocaust, making increasingly viable the idea of Jewish ­self-​­rule, free of the gentile world, and triggering aliyah, immigration of ­mostly-​­Russian Jews to the land of Israel. These were the Jews to whom Bialik spoke most directly, passionately, and influentially. When Jewish life in the newly-created Soviet Union was destroyed after the 1917 revolution, Bialik was driven out, a penniless refugee faithful to a nationalist ideology and religion alien to the new socialist state. He first took shelter in ­war-​­ravaged Berlin, then from 1925, in the tiny ­boom-​­town of Tel Aviv, now under British mandatory rule, where he lived until his death in 1934. Looking back on his childhood in a Ukrainian backwater, Bialik must have felt at times that his early existence, though in some ways paradisal, was virtually medieval: so much had changed, and rapidly.

Bialik: the making of a national poet In the vast scholarship on Bialik, this is the first book to see him in the context of European nationalism in the ­1789–​­1939 period, particularly in the Tsarist Russian empire, and of national poets such as Shevchenko in Ukraine, Mickiewicz in Poland, and Lönnrot in Finland. As is often the case among national poets, Bialik’s private ­g riefs  – ​­childhood trauma in ­particular – intersect ​­ with national griefs so that they become inseparable, and the poet speaks for his orphaned, traumatized nation.18 Bialik is the first Hebrew poet to put c­ hildhood – ​­his own as well as that of the Jewish people, preserved in its foundational texts and ­traditions – ​­at the heart of his poetry, as Wordsworth did in The Prelude.19 Born in 1873 in a Volhynian village near Zhitomir, in Ukraine, then in the Tsarist empire, Bialik lost his father at six and was separated soon after from his mother, unable to support him; he passed into the care of his aged paternal grandparents in Zhitomir. His consequent sense of loss, grief, and exile and search for union with the lost motherland are central in his poetry and resonated with particular force among the Russian Jews, social and political outcasts. He grew up in the Hasidic tradition which (­though he abandoned it) seeded his poetry with religious fervor and mysticism. He went through the main institutions of traditional Jewish learning, the heder (­the ‘­room’, where children were taught mainly the Pentateuch with Rashi’s commentary), the bet midrash (­house of study, for older students), and the yeshiva (­rabbinical seminary, for advanced students of the Talmud). As he mastered Hebrew sources, he absorbed the passion for justice of the biblical prophets and love for scriptural exposition and legends of the Talmud. But he also studied in secret the new, prohibited Hebrew literature of the Haskalah (­the secular Enlightenment), published with Russian government approval with the somewhat paradoxical aim of promoting Jewish assimilation and breaking down rabbinic authority: after the 1881 pogroms, Hebrew was inevitably allied to the Zionist revival. Bialik simultaneously belonged to the majority

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  7 and to a minority within it: the poet of an elite with a strong populist character. By his late teens, he was writing Hebrew poetry and was recognized as having exceptional gifts. At this point, Bialik underwent a crisis of faith; he emerged a national poet. Neither the ­quasi-​­medieval shtetl nor Tsarist Russia offered a viable future for Eastern European Jews. 1881 marked the great turning point in modern Jewish history: Bialik was 8 when Alexander II was murdered by revolutionaries. The pogroms which followed and their ­socio-​­economic and psychological consequences dominated Bialik’s early life: they ended hope of Jewish emancipation and civil rights under Tsarist rule. Though the Zionist political organization was largely a creation of West European J­ews  – ​­assimilated, highly educated, legally emancipated but exposed to social and racial ­prejudice  – ​­the Hebrew cultural revival after 1881 came mostly among the unemancipated Jews of the Russian Pale of ­Settlement  – largely ​­ unassimilated, devoted to their religious beliefs and customs and to their rabbis, preferring Yiddish over other languages, lacking secular education, hesitant to adapt to the modern world, poor and with a high level of unemployment, and exposed to increasingly violent ­state-​­tolerated ­anti-​­Semitism. Violence and discrimination against Jews, who remained confined in the Pale of Settlement until the 1917 revolution, drove them in vast numbers to e­ scape – ​­to America, Ottoman Palestine, or through socialism or revolution. The two waves of Tsarist Russian pogroms, in 1­ 881–​­82 and 1­ 903–​­06, led to the first two waves of modern Jewish aliyah (­immigration) to the Holy Land,20 where Hebrew culture which for centuries had evolved in Europe was restored to its ancient source. Jews from Eastern Europe became part of longstanding Jewish communities in the Land of Israel, particularly in Jerusalem and Jaffa. Hundreds of ­Hebrew-​ s­peaking groups sprang up in Russia, in preparation for a new life in a ­Hebrew-​­speaking world. The ­Russian-​­Hebrew intelligentsia unexpectedly found common cause with the R ­ ussian-​­Jewish lower middle class. The result was a remarkable rise in modern Hebrew journalism and Hebrew readers whose numbers may have reached 100,000 in the 1880s.21 Bialik’s poetry in many ways mirrored these upheavals. Like the biblical prophets, Bialik established his credentials, not through praise but condemnation. In a poem quoting the book of Amos, Hoze, lekh brakh (­Prophet, run away, 1908), the poet declares: My ­axe-​­like word strikes to damn, I never was a yes man.22 The pogroms of ­1903–​­06 drove Bialik to write ‘­poems of wrath’, expressing with immense poetic energy, unmistakably reminiscent of the style and tone of the biblical p ­ rophets – ​­but without visions of r­ edemption – not ​­ only the desperate rage which drove millions of Russian Jews to emigrate in the years 1­ 903–​­14, but the burden of Jewish suffering in history. Davar

8  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 (­The Burden, 1904) is the first of Bialik’s ­neo-​­prophetic poems in free verse, with enormous impact upon its early readers. Its alternating long and short lines occasionally recall the rhythm and sound of the biblical kinah (­lament). Written several weeks after Herzl’s death in 1904, the poem conveys the despair of the Jewish people at the loss of their charismatic leader. (­This loss might also have revived Bialik’s memories of his father’s death.) This was also a period of bitter wrangling within the Zionist movement, particularly over Herzl’s plan to accept a British protectorate for the Jewish people in East Africa, which was eventually defeated in 1905. One of the curious features of the poem is that only m ­ id-​­way (‘­Dig a grave for us’ – in ​­ the Hebrew, the exact middle) does it emerge that the ­poet-​­prophet is being addressed not by God but by his own people. The psychological premise of the poem becomes clearer in the light of other poems. At its heart is the poet’s ambivalence towards his own role. He imagines the wrath of the people at him for his inadequacy and at those who (­like the poet himself?) use national or communal o ­ bjects – the ​­ coal, spark, or a­ ltar – ​­for purely personal ends. This accusation recalls that in ­Be-​­Ir ­ha-​­Haregah (­City of Slaughter, 1903) as well as in Megillat ­ha-​­Esh (­Scroll of Fire, 1905). The Burden Hurl, prophet, from your altar the fiery coal, leave it to the c­ hurls – ​­theirs to roast meat, to heat the pot, to warm their hands. Scatter, prophet, from your flinty heart the ­spark –​­ to light their cigarettes to light up the sneer on their faces, lurking t­ hief-​­like under their moustache, and the malice in their eyes. Here they come, the churls, the prayer you taught them on their lips, ­ ope –​­ they feel your pain, they hope your h they long for your ruined altar; later they’ll swoop to the ruin, poke about, pull out the cracked stones to fit in their house floors, their garden walls and use for tombstones. When they find your heart, charred in the rubble –​­ they’ll kick it to their dogs. Kick in shame at your altar, turn your back on its fire and smoke. Wipe off the spider webs from the harp of your heart strings woven into a song of revival, a vision of s­ alvation – a​­ false ­prophecy –​­ scatter them to the wind, to wander, tattered, pale, in the world’s emptiness

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  9 on a clear day at summer’s end so that no silver string or web will see another again, but perish on the first rainy day; your hammer, your iron hammer, broken from too much use on hearts of stone, break and break again and pound into a shovel, dig a grave for us. Whoever puts the fury of God in your ­mouth –​­ damn him fearlessly. Even if your word is bitter as death, or death i­tself – ​­let us hear it and know. Look how night envelops us, we are crushed by darkness, we grope like the blind. Something has gone wrong, no one knows what. No one sees, no one tells, if the sun has risen for us or ­set –​­ or set forever. And chaos is all around, all around terrible chaos and no escape. As our voices entreating lift into the ­darkness –​­ whose ear will turn? As our raw blasphemy streams to ­heaven –​­ over whose crown will it trickle? Grinding tooth, knuckling ­ire-​­veined ­fists –​­ on whose scalp will the fury drift? All will fall windily down the throat of chaos. No comfort remains, no helping hand, no way ­out –​­ and heaven is dumb, murdering us with dispassionate eyes, bearing its blame in ­blood-​­torn silence. Open your mouth, prophet of doom, if you have anything to ­say – speak! ​­ If it’s bitter as death, or death itself, Speak! Why should we fear ­death –​­ his angel rides on our shoulder, his bridle in our mouths. With a cry of revival and the whoops of players we’ll stagger into the grave.23 In the previous year, in 1903, Bialik was driven by the vicious Kishinev pogrom to write City of Slaughter, the poem which cemented his reputation as national poet. He was barely 30 years old. No other modern Hebrew poem

10  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 has stirred up such a public outcry in the Jewish world, a poem which, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has the ring of prophecy, the Guernica of Jewish sorrow and outrage. The poem condemns Russia as ‘­enemy territory’, as Herzl described Europe.24 Yet for all its outrage at an ­anti-​­Jewish atrocity, the poem is grotesquely dependent for its artistic success upon Bialik’s uniquely personal stress. Moving like a funeral procession, the poem tells, at times with nauseating detail, of a journey into hell, revisiting the scenes of violence, the streets and yards stained with blood, the vandalized houses, the cellars where women were raped and their children murdered. Similar atrocities are described by Armenian poets such as Daniel Varoujan (­­1884–​­1915) and Siamanto (­­1878–​­1915), both killed by the Turks during the Armenian genocide in World War I. Siamanto’s poem ‘­The Dance’ (­1909) recalls grotesque humiliations and massacres of Armenians by the Turks: ‘­O human justice/ I spit at your forehead’.25 Bialik ends City of Slaughter with an explosion of sarcasm and bitterness directed at cowardly parasitical survivors who roused Bialik’s ire for using the pogrom, a national tragedy, to elicit sympathy and funds for themselves. From City of Slaughter Get up and go to the city of slaughter, see with your own eyes, feel with your hands in the courtyards, on trees, stones, walls, the dried blood and brains of the dead. Then go to the ruins, look at the pocked walls, bad enough before, the sledgehammer made them worse, smashed stoves, charred stones and bricks like chronic ­open-​­mouthed wounds, and your legs will sink in feathers, trip over rubble, piles of torn books and ­scrolls –​­ the work of superhuman labor and longing; don’t stand gaping, go to the road, see the beauty of spring, breathe in the fragrance of the acacias in blossom, ­half-​­covered in feathers, smelling of blood, with raging reluctance take in their strange scents, the joy of spring, don’t shirk it; let sunbeams pierce you with sadness, the broken glass sparkle merrily at your calamity for the Lord has brought spring and slaughter ­together –​­ the sun shone, the acacia bloomed, the killers killed. Run away to a courtyard, where one axe decapitated a Jew and his dog, tossed on the same garbage tip, their blood rolled in and poked by ­pigs –​­

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  11 tomorrow’s rain will wash it away and the blood will no longer scream from the slops but sink deep into the earth or quench the thirst of a thorn b ­ ush –​­ and everything will be as nothing, as if nothing had happened… To the graveyard, beggars! Dig up the bones of martyred father and brother, fill your sacks, sling them on backs and hit the road to do business at all the fairs; advertise yourselves at the crossroads so everyone sees, in the sunshine on filthy rags spread the bones and sing your hoarse beggar song, beg the decency of the world! Beg the pity of goyim! Eternal beggars!26 Bialik’s chastisement, while it makes for extraordinary p ­ oetry – and ​­ shook the Jewish people in a way they needed at the time27 – does ​­ not do justice to the historical facts. Bialik had been sent to Kishinev by Jews in Odessa to find out exactly what happened, and to write a report. He knew at first hand, therefore, that the pogrom was as severe as it was precisely because some Jews did take up arms and defend themselves; yet in the poem there is no mention of this. The opportunists who so infuriated Bialik were a minority, and their unheroic conduct did not warrant the emphasis which Bialik gives it. An explanation of these distortions is that Bialik, perhaps unconsciously, identified himself with these schnorrers as he does elsewhere: his indignation with them for using national tragedy for personal aims might partly have been a displaced form of ­self-​­chastisement for doing the same thing. In an early poem, God chooses the poet to be a schnorrer-​­prophet: Go door to door, knapsack on shoulder, go to the doors of generous men, bend down for a scrap of bread.28 City of Slaughter had a volcanic impact on Jewish nationalism. The poet condemns his people not as an ethnic group living in Russia but as a nation with an ancient history, with its own magnificent language. Bialik’s Hebrew plays against the ugliness and despair it portrays. His majestic prophetic diatribe catches the spirit of a nation that in its long, scattered exile has never forgotten a millennium of statehood prior to 70 CE or its continuous sense

12  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 of nationhood thereafter: this nation, in despair at persecution and hatred, has no choice but to march to a different drummer. The prophetic voice of City of Slaughter attacks the Jewish people for their alleged cowardice and fatalism, an implicit call for action, for freedom from d ­ anger – ‘­​­If faut fuir, Israel, toutes ces fausses patries’, the French poet André Spire wrote in his response to the pogroms, ‘­Exode’  – ​­for an end to powerlessness.29 Some Russian Jews were driven by the violence against them to socialism and revolution. In ‘­The Story of My Dovecot’, Isaac Babel portrays the 1905 Odessa pogrom, which Bialik lived through, as motive for revolution. A typical a­ nti-​­Semitic remark during the pogrom, ‘­Their spawn must be wiped out’, and an attack on an innocent child, the a­ uthor – ‘­ ​­My world was tiny and it was awful’ – ​­captures the entrapment of Russian Jews and their longing for a better world, just and fair. Some Russian Jews despaired utterly of Russia and the gentile world: they sought justice in Jewish national identity, in the hope that they might overcome Jewish powerlessness and victimization. Though it may be that Bialik’s most authentic poetic voice is that of the private lyric poet, he came to be associated with the need for action, both personal and national. City of Slaughter, in the original Hebrew as well as in Yiddish and Russian, was read by many Jews who then began to learn the use of firearms to fight their attackers, from l­ate-​­1903, in the first instances of organized Jewish military resistance since the B ­ ar-​­Kokhba revolt against the Roman empire (­­132–​­35 CE).

National poetry and the Hebrew Bible In finding a modern national voice in Hebrew, Bialik did what many other poets have done, via vernacular translations of the Bible.30 Biblical influence was central in the German poetry of Klopstock (­notably The Messiah, ­1748–​ 7­ 3), whose conception of the poet was that of prophet, teacher, and patriot. Goethe saw the Hebrew Bible not just as the book of one nation but also as the archetype for all nations. In England, William Blake found his voice in prophetic poems, inspired by visions of Isaiah and Jeremiah. In Hungary, translations of the Psalms and Karolyi’s Bible translation ‘­influenced the development of Hungarian literary language for centuries’.31 Biblical language of the emergence from slavery, prophetic denunciations of the wicked and hopes for freedom not only for Hungary but for the world are frequent in Petőfi’s poetry. In 1848, the year of revolution, Petőfi called on Hungarians to set out en masse from Egyptian bondage to the Promised Land, with poets such as himself pillars of fire to guide the way through the wilderness.32 Walt Whitman was in thrall to the free verse of the Bible, its passion for justice and universal scope. The Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko revered the Bible and found similarities between Jews and Ukrainians.33 He translated biblical passages which he felt applied to modern Ukraine under Russian rule. Biblical influences are plentiful, too, in the poetry of Adam Mickiewicz, whose Polish nationalism has likewise been described as

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  13 ‘­Judaic’: ‘­that of a conquered, humiliated and oppressed nation dreaming of resurrection’.34 In a world of evolving ­nation-​­states in which secular culture had not yet taken full hold and the Book was still the Bible (­and Church attendance was usually mandatory), such influences were perhaps inevitable, and found among poets diverse as Lord Byron and Henrik Ibsen as well as Bialik. Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala (­1835), based on oral Finnish tradition, has biblical echoes, from Genesis, the book of Job and Judges.35 Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘­Chorus of Hebrew Slaves’ (­Va pensiero) in the opera Nabucco (­1842), written two decades before Italy’s independence, is a patchwork of biblical texts.36 This song of freedom of Israelite slaves in Egypt became Italy’s unofficial national anthem: Sing again songs of our homeland,    of the past. We have drunk the cup of sorrow, and repented in bitter tears. Give us courage, O Lord, to endure to the end. As biblical prophets found, so do modern cultural nationalists, cultural victory can be snatched from political defeat. Modern nationalist works such as Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz follow the Hebrew Bible as cultural ‘­v ictories’ over a hated oppressor, ensuring the literary survival of a destroyed world and the hope of its restoration. In the struggle for independence, national poets often rage not only against external oppressors but also against the nation itself and its traitors.37 Mickiewicz echoes the prophets in his attacks on Poles who assimilated into foreign cultures, neglecting their own.38 Shevchenko, steeped in the Bible, castigates the cruel, indifferent Ukrainian landlords and the elite.39 The religious establishment is a common target for national poets from the Hebrew Bible onwards, for it allegedly betrays the moral integrity of the Nation. In the Bible, prophetic attacks on the Temple priesthood and the religion of mere ritual anticipate modern national ­poetry – ​­of Botev, Gibran or Judah Leib Gordon, for ­example – ​­which condemns clergy who allegedly fail the people.40 Instead of leading them in revolt, the clergy defend the corrupt status quo. The ideology of ­self-​­sacrifice adopted by some modern nationalists can be traced to the Hebrew Bible. Modern national ­poets – ​­Petőfi, Botev, Marti, Plunkett, and Pearse, among ­others – ​­proclaimed in martyrdom the moral integrity of the Nation.

Bialik: protean artist Bialik’s image as poet, prophet, scholar, editor, and public figure poet is complex, often enigmatic and paradoxical: a secular poet in a religious literary tradition; an artist bereaved in childhood; a public figure with intensely private concerns; a prophet who felt himself to be corrupt; a charismatic

14  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 icon who exposed the sham of his public image; a sensitive love poet plaintively bewailing the love he never knew; a national poet of a people who for 2,000 years had rejected political nationalism; a poet who wrote of despair with such confidence and power that he instilled in his people a sense of purpose and hope; and a critic of the national cause which he ably represented, setting, for the first time in Hebrew, the poet above the religious figure as defender of national culture.41 The striking contrasts in Bialik’s varied styles and emotional ­range – ​­the thundering prophet and the c­ hild-​­like mystic, for e­ xample – ​­point to deep inner conflict. Bialik was a master of the craft of poetry, of rhyme and meter, diction and nuance. He had a superb ear for the sound of the Hebrew language. He, as much as any Hebrew poet, reminds the reader that the Hebrew for ‘­poetry’ is ‘­song’, shira, and his lyrics are often set to music. Bialik returned Hebrew poetry to free verse after over a 1,000 years of meter and rhyme. He never abandoned formal poetics, but in 1­ 897 – ​­the year of the First Zionist ­Congress – ​­he turned for the first time to free verse. It may be that nationalism triggered in him poetic emancipation, a rejection of n ­ on-​ J­ ewish European (­ultimately Arabic) poetic forms, and a return to the rough and tumble of the biblical prophetic style. His poetry is shaped by a raw and wild gift disciplined, masculine power and feminine sensitivity harmonized, despair and hope, rage and silence, skepticism and c­ hild-​­like wonder, fragments made whole, fierce individualism harnessed to the national cause. Time has increased the irony that the Jewish national poet should in fact be an unrecognized poet of the Ukrainian landscape which he loved. In contrast, when Bialik writes of Zion, he does not know what he is describing but draws on ancient literary constructs deriving to a large extent from aggadah (­Jewish legend). Bialik’s poetry is a living reminder that Jewish nationalism was based to an unusual extent on the literary imagination, on the power of the word. Bialik’s poetry is part of the history of Russia and America as well as Israel. Bialik belonged to a deeply split generation of Russian Jews who, as socialists and revolutionaries, had disproportionate influence on the course of the Russian Revolution and the formation of the early Soviet state. As emigrants, the Russian Jews made up the bulk of the American Jewish ­community – ​­about two million by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Most importantly in the context of Bialik’s emergence as a Jewish national poet is the fact that the Russian Jews comprised the vast majority of the first three aliyot (­mass emigrations to Palestine), in ­1881–​­1900, ­1903–​­14, and ­1917–​­21, a total of about 100,000 people, each aliyah coinciding with a wave of Russian pogroms. Russian Jews were instrumental in creating the Jewish state and its distinctive culture.42 The three key historical events of Bialik’s formative years were the first two waves of Russian pogroms, in ­1881–​­82 and 1­ 903–​­06, and the establishment of the World Zionist Organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897. The moral vision based on a revival of history and culture which Bialik articulated in his

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  15 poetry and in his program of kinnus (‘­ingathering’ of Jewish culture through the ages into a unified whole) gave direction to radical political activism.43 Bialik’s poetry, in its striving and turbulence, its passion and despair, its rage and hope, is a mirror of the age. It makes clearer than any other body of creative writing the emotional forces driving about a third of the R ­ ussian-​ J­ ewish population of nearly five million to emigrate in the years ­1881–​­1914. At the same time, although class warfare is not a theme in Bialik’s works, the revolutionary character of his poetry in Hebrew and in Jabotinsky’s Russian translations was an inspiration to socialists and part of the Russian Zeitgeist in the years prior to the Russian Revolution. Bialik wrote exclusively for Jews, but his poetry is universalist in its struggle for personal and national fulfillment. Bialik was a leader of an elite group of Jewish intellectuals cut off by their secular education (­usually ­self-​­achieved and incomplete) from the orthodox Jewish tradition into which they had been born, but equally alienated by ­anti-​­Semitism from gentile society. Traditional bastions of Jewish identity described by Bialik, such as the bet midrash and yeshiva, were seen as retrograde, futile retreats into the past, irrelevant, even dangerous in the face of the massive need for action and change confronting Russian Jewry under Tsarist rule. After 1881, the idea of assimilation or ‘­Russification’ under the banner of Enlightenment was no longer viable. Russian Jewry after 1881 underwent a severe crisis of identity and ­self-​­definition in reaction to the pogroms and the ­anti-​­Semitic legislation (­the ­so-​­called ‘­May Laws’ of May 1882) which blamed the Jews for provoking the pogroms. Wounded and lacking an outlet for intellectual gifts refined by one of the most exacting of educational traditions, a small but decisive number of Russian Jews turned to nationalism and to Hebrew culture as a new basis for crumbling Jewish solidarity. This almost totally unexpected turn from the universal ideals of the Enlightenment to more narrow, aggressive aims of nationalism was general in ­19th-​­century Europe. Virtually unique, though, was the revival and secularization of an ancient culture and language in a land which most Jews had never seen. The feeling of national exile in Bialik’s poems was given added poignancy and conviction by Bialik’s sense of personal exile as a child orphaned of his father at six and separated soon after from his mother. Bialik constantly returned in his poetry to these traumas, which could be interpreted or misinterpreted as expressions of longing for reunion with the motherland. In a career lasting over 40 years, Bialik’s poetic output was relatively ­small –​ a­ fter 1911 he hardly wrote poetry except for ­children – ​­yet practically every poem of his, especially in the years ­1900–​­11, has a distinct character and contributes both to the psychological map of the poet and the spirit of the age. A number of personal and national themes recur in Bialik’s poems. A sign of the relative poverty of Hebrew literature of the late 19th century is that his earliest published poetry, in the 1890s, when he was still in his teens,

16  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 though relatively weak and derivative, immediately established him as a leading Hebrew poet. After the death of Judah Leib Gordon in 1892, Bialik had the field virtually to himself. Bialik took a great risk in writing Hebrew as part of a movement that might easily have failed. He persisted in his total commitment to Jewish cultural nationalism, supported by an outstanding literary circle in Odessa, led by Ahad Ha’am and Mendele Mocher Sefarim, and by an elite and exceptionally discerning readership.44 Each poem he wrote was pored over by some of the sharpest, most critical readers in Tsarist Russia, many of whom had spent years intensely studying and arguing over sacred texts. These readers were highly sensitive to the conflicts inherent in Bialik’s poetry between a powerful Jewish religious tradition and the call of a new, untried, attractive, and frightening secular world. They responded to the subtleties of his language, its play and allusiveness, its often shocking use of sacred texts in a profane context, the radical break with the past while deriving power from it. Bialik’s closest intellectual and emotional affinity was with this class of uprooted, disillusioned Jewish intellectuals who spread his fame, especially after City of Slaughter during the pogroms of ­1903–​­06. At the other extreme, in some cases contemporaneously, Bialik wrote delicate love lyrics and s­ emi-​­mystical poetry such as The Pool (­­Ha-​­Brekha, 1904), which are as quiet and private as the others are loud and public. Bialik made much use of aggadah, Jewish myth and legend, in his poetry, notably Scroll of Fire (­1905), a landmark of modern Hebrew literature. His folk poems, frequently set to music, have delighted generations of children as well as their parents, though the poems for children and ­g rown-​­ups are closely related. The jouissance in his lighter poetry, though often in a minor key, is that of a child alone in a toy shop: the poetry is not work but play and song. Bialik’s poetry combines Hasidic spirituality and love of Nature associated both with the Haskalah and Romanticism. The poet portrays his childhood self in solitary meditation ‘­like a small pool hidden in the thick of the forest, seen by the whole world silently, differently’.45 ‘­The Pool’ is not unlike a Hasidic fable, of seeking spiritual direction in a forest, an Eden after the fall: From The Pool I sat by the pool’s lip, gazing at the riddle of two worlds, twins, not knowing which was first, head bowed by the blessing of ancient trees giving light and shadow and song and resin as ­one –​­ and I felt something flow clear and silent into my soul, new, fresh, generous, and my heart thirsty for holy mystery filled with quiet longing, as if

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  17 demanding more and more, and expecting the imminent revelation of the Shechinah or of Elijah, and as my ear strained with hope and in sacred desire my heart shuddered and ­died –​­ the echo of a God in hiding exploded in the stillness: ‘­W here are you!?’46 Bialik’s poetry can be read or sung and appeals to a wide variety of readers, but ideally it should also be studied. For in common with his readers, Bialik was born into a world in which Hebrew literature mainly meant the Bible, the Talmud and the siddur, the prayer book, and it was still possible for one person to read everything of value in Hebrew. His mastery of Hebrew in all its strata was reinforced by his scholarly work on talmudic and midrashic aggadah and on the Mishnah (­edited c. 200 CE in Galilee) as well as on modern editions of the medieval Hebrew poets, Solomon ibn Gabirol and Moses ibn Ezra. Bialik, unusually among modern Jewish poets, was a rabbinic scholar and, among other things, an expert in talmudic agricultural law: he wrote a commentary on Zera’im (­Seeds), the Order in the Mishnah dealing with agriculture in the land of Israel. Jewish and European traditions combined to give richness and power to Bialik’s poetry and to the poet’s conviction of the moral purpose of ­literature  – ​­to change people and societies. In this aim, Bialik succeeded as much as any national poet: a decade and a half after his death, the people whom he lambasted and lamented, who at the time of his birth had no territory of their own nor a political organization to achieve one, created an independent state. Bialik’s legacy is not just the militancy that restored Jewish statehood but also the thriving national culture that could not have survived anywhere else.

Notes 1 Proust (­1992: iv 104). 2 Bialik’s children’s poems are collected in his Shirim ­u -​­Fizmonot ­li-​­L adim (­Poems and Songs for Children, 1934). 3 For the standard edition of Bialik’s Collected Poems, see Dan Miron et al. (­eds.), Shirat Bialik. Dvir & Katz Research Institute for Hebrew Literature: Tel Aviv University, Vol. I: 1983, Vol. II: 1990, Vol. III: 2000; for a convenient ­1-​­volume edition, see Bialik (­1958); and for an outstandingly printed edition, see Bialik (­1923). For a bilingual anthology to accompany the present work, see David Aberbach (­ed. & transl.), C.N. Bialik: Selected Poems, New York and London: Overlook/­Duckworth, 2004. For biographies, see in Hebrew, Lachower (­1955); in English, Feinstein (­2005) and Holtzman (­2017). For a selection of bibliography on Bialik until 1960, see Ungerfeld (­1960); for selections since then, see Aberbach (­1988) and Holtzman (­2017). 4 On the continuity of Hebrew poetry of Zion from the Bible to Bialik, see ­Chapter 4 below.

18  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 5 Mendele Mocher Sefarim (‘­ Mendele the Bookpeddler’, pen name of S.Y. Abramowitz (­1835?–​­1917) was the most important writer of Hebrew prose fiction prior to the Second World War. See Miron (­1973) and Aberbach (­1993a). 6 Roth (­2001: 7­ 8–​­9). In the novel, Job (­1930), Roth illustrates the leap from popular Jewish culture to European high culture in his sensitive portrayal of the mute cripple, Menuchim, born in a tiny Russian shtetl, to becomes a leading musician, playing for the Russian tsar and in major concert halls in Europe and America. Roth was similarly t­ransformed  – as ​­ was B ­ ialik  – from ​­ immersion in his native p ­ re-​­1914 Orthodox folk culture of E ­ ast-​­European Jews, to become a leading German novelist. 7 On Bialik and Wordsworth, see C ­ hapter 8 below; and, in Hebrew, Appendix 1, pp. 2­ 34–245 in this volume. 8 For a comparison of the waste land motif in Bialik and Eliot, see ­Chapter 10 below. 9 A notable parallel between Conrad and Bialik is that both belonged to oppressed minorities in the Tsarist ­empire – ​­Conrad, a Pole, and Bialik, a Jew; both hated the empire and exposed in their writing social and psychological conditions leading to violent revolution. Both plumb the underlying futility of human endeavor, Conrad, ‘­the horror’ in Heart of Darkness; Bialik, ‘­the void’ (­blimah) in Hetzitz ­va-​­Met (­He looked and died, 1915). See p. 201, note 57 below. 10 Writing of aggadah, Jewish legend and folklore, Bialik alludes to the kind of poetry he evidently aimed for: each poem, and the emotion animating it, should have one truth, one way alone to reach that truth, the right word, the right syntax, in the right order, nothing arbitrary, totally individual, speaking to every person on their level (­Bialik 1935: ii 50, 54). On Bialik and aggadah, see C ­ hapter 6 below. 11 Haskalah = the Jewish Enlightenment (­in German, Aufklärung), using Hebrew to bring secular education to the largely Orthodox European Jews. Bialik’s sense of the continuous development of the Hebrew language and literature, an essential element in his artistic and educational work, parallels the new historic consciousness of Jewish national identity associated above all with Heinrich Graetz’s massive ­12-​­volume History of the Jews (­completed 1871), which, likewise, shows an unbroken national link of the Jews with their ancient biblical history. Other pairings of poet and historian in modern national movements based in part upon a belief (­dubious at times) in the continuity of national identity from ancient to modern times include: Shakespeare and Holinshed (­England, Scotland, Wales), Solomos and Paparrigopoulos (­Greece), Eminescu and Iorga (­Romania), and Botev and Zlatarski (­Bulgaria); the antecedent for all these is the Hebrew Bible with its combination of history from the Creation to the p ­ ost-​­exilic period (­late 6th century BCE) and poetry. See Aberbach (­2023). Bialik’s activity in the ingathering (­kinnus) of Jewish culture from the past was an essential part of his role as national poet. In the richness of the Jewish tradition and the extent to which it had been preserved over the centuries, Bialik and his fellow Hebrew poets were fortunate. Just as in religious history, the Hebrew Bible is the basis for most later Jewish festivals, laws, and practices, so also linguistically, the Hebrew Bible is the basis for all later periods in the development of Hebrew (­­Sáenz-​­Badillos, 1993: 50). 12 On the return of Hebrew from exile to the land of Israel, see Bialik (­1935: i 2­ 25–​­6). 13 On s­ elf-​­criticism in national poetry, see pp. 13, 107 below. 14 There are Jewish national elements in Haskalah poetry, particularly Gordon’s (­see Kedourie 1960: ­100–​­1), but the Haskalah movement aimed to integrate Jews in their countries of residence, not create a separate national culture and independence movement. 15 On modern nationalism, see Hutchinson (­ 1987), Hobsbawm (­ 1990), Walker (­1994), Aberbach (­2003), Smith (­2008), among others. For a comparison between Bialik and Yeats as cultural nationalists, see Hutchinson and Aberbach (­1999).

Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914  19 16 On ­ 19th-​­ century cultural nationalism and scholarship, see Van Hulle and ­Leerssen (­2008). 17 On responses of Hebrew poets, including Bialik, to the rise of modern a­ nti-​ ­ emitism, see C ­ hapter 7 below. On catastrophe in Hebrew literature from bibliS cal to modern times, see Mintz (­1984). 18 Poets traumatized in childhood who were later committed to national revival include: Burns, Solomos, Byron, Shevchenko, Kölcsey, Leopardi, Fikret, Prešeren, Pascoli, Shawqi, Bharati, and Neruda. See Aberbach (­2015). On Byron, see pp. ­51, 222; and on Shevchenko, see p. 48. On loss and grief in Bialik’s writings, see Chapter 8 below. On traumatic childhood memories in Bialik and Freud, see ­Chapter 9 below. 19 Mendele Mocher Sefarim was Bialik’s main Hebrew influence in the depiction of childhood, as in much else. See Aberbach (­1988: ­52–​­3) and p. 128 below. 20 ‘… spontaneously in almost every town of any size societies were founded for the colonization of Palestine’ (­Frankel 1981: 49). 21 On Hebrew literature and 1­ 9th-​­century Jewish nationalism, see Shaked (­1977), Patterson (­1985), Alter (­1988), and Aberbach (­1997). On the rapid expansion of Hebrew journalism and the number of Hebrew readers in the late 19th century, see Miron (­1987). The readership of Hebrew literary journals, of which ­Ha- ​­Shiloah, founded by Ahad Ha’am in 1896 and edited at one time by Bialik, was the most prominent, was proportionally greater than that of most literary journals in other languages in the period 1­ 881–​­1939; at its height, ­Ha- ​­Shiloah had more subscribers than the Criterion, the leading English literary journal of the interwar period, edited by T.S. Eliot. Russian Jews were strongly attached to their writers. A benefit evening for the Hebrew children’s writer, Yehudah Steinberg, filled the Odessa Theater, with a capacity of over 1,500 (­Manya Bialik 1963: ­23–​­4); when Mendele Mocher Sefarim died in Odessa in 1917 an estimated 50,000 came to the funeral. Jews tended to have a higher literacy level than the general population, and a greater immersion in culture, and their national identity was, unusually, based on literary culture rather than territory or statehood. 22 Bialik (­2004: 132). 23 All translations from the Hebrew in the present volume are by David Aberbach. 24 Pawel (­1989: 183). 25 Hovanessian and Margossian (­1978: 144). To Armenians, as to Jews, poetry is part of the struggle for national survival. see p. 44 below. 26 The passage from City of Slaughter is translated by David Aberbach (­Bialik 2004: 80f.). 27 A chief reason the German Jews stayed in Germany even after Hitler came to power in 1933 was that, unlike Eastern European Jews, they were not subjected to pogroms. To Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem confided on 13 April 1933 that the German Jews would benefit from a pogrom (­Scholem 1989: 39): as in Russia, the violence might free Jews of the illusion that they had a future in their ­hate-​­fi lled country. 28 Hirhure Laifa (­Night Meditations, 1894). Another early poem, unpublished in the poet’s lifetime, anticipates City of Slaughter: ‘­We’re just a ­beggar-​­band/­the earth beneath us rumbling/­the iron sky above us crumbling’ (­Bialik 1971: 93). 29 Spire (­1959: 56). 30 On the Hebrew Bible and nationalism, see ­Chapter 3 below. 31 Szakaly (­1990: 94). 32 See Petőfi (­1973: 340 and 1974: 203). From the time of the Turkish conquest of Hungary in the 16th century, the Hungarians had taken comfort from the divine salvation of ancient Israel: ‘­Just as He had liberated the Jews from their Hungarian and Egyptian captivities, He would certainly free the Hungarians from the

20  Introduction: Bialik and national poetry 1789–1914 Turkish yoke’ (­Szakaly 1990: 94). Hungarian poetry might also have taken from the Bible a tendency to national ­self-​­blame: for example, the early ­19th-​­century poet, Ferenc Kölcsey, blamed ­fellow-​­Hungarians for ‘­our crimes’ which brought the ‘­Turkish yoke’ (­K irkconnell 1947: 26), recalling prophetic attacks on the ‘­g uilt of Samaria’ and ‘­sins of Jerusalem’ in the Bible. On s­ elf-​­blame in national literature, see pp. 13, 80, 107 below. 33 Shevchenko (­1964: l). 34 Talmon (­1967: 96). 35 See Aberbach (­2015: 68 note 24). 36 Biblical references in Va Pensiero include: Psalms 48: 5, 137: ­2 –​­3; Isaiah 22: 4, 51: 17; and Song of Songs 8: 14. The British national anthem is similarly indebted to the Bible. For example, ‘­God save the King’ is found for the first time as a salute to Saul, first king of Israel (­I Samuel 10: 24) and ‘­O Lord our God arise/­Scatter his/­her enemies’ comes from Numbers (­10: 35). 37 On attacks against ‘­traitors’ in national poetry, see pp. 47, 48, 80 below. 38 Pan Tadeusz ix ­133–​­6. 39 Shevchenko (­1964: 255). 40 On attacks on the allegedly corrupt clergy in national poetry, see Aberbach (2023: 138, 153–4, 262). 41 Until the 19th century, even secular poetry in Hebrew was invariably written in a theocratic social structure, within boundaries of normative Judaism. Though Bialik admired the rabbinic tradition, his poetry at times represents revolt against this tradition, questioning and undermining it, notably in Al ­ha- ​­Shehitah (­On the Slaughter, 1903); see p. 97 below. Still, Bialik belonged to the rabbinic elite, and much of his authority as national poet derived from his unquestionable rabbinic scholarship, particularly his mastery of the Hebrew language, making him a natural leader in the revival of both literary and spoken Hebrew.Further perspectives on Bialik as a modern poet appear in Aberbach (­1989, 1996, 2015), on loss and separation, charisma, and national poetry, respectively. 42 On the social and historical background to Bialik’s poetry, see for example Frankel (­1981), Löwe (­1993), Klier (­1995), Nathans (­2002), Slezkine (­2004), and Aberbach (­2013). On Eastern European ­anti-​­Semitism, particularly in Russia, and its role in Zionism, both political and cultural, see Wistrich (­2010) and Löwe (­2010). 43 Kinnus came, in part, from the traditional idea of kinnus galuyot (­the ingathering of the diaspora), the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. The idea of kinnus is most fully expounded in Bialik’s essay on ­Ha-​­Sefer ­ha-​­Ivri (­Hebrew literature through the ages, 1913). Kinnus has many parallels in modern national cultures: for example, the Albanian poet de Rada adopted a similar program in the ­m id-​­19th century, by which the restoration of folk fragments to unity would unify ‘­the dispersed nation’ (­Pipa 1978: 23). 44 Ahad Ha’am (‘­One of the people’, pen name of Asher Ginsberg, ­1856–​­1927) was the leading theoretician of Jewish nationalism; on Mendele, see p. 18, note 5 above. Bialik treated both writers with utmost reverence and, indeed, filial love. 45 Bialik (­1937: i 162). 46 Bialik (­2004: 122). The quote, ‘­W here are you?’ is God’s response to Adam after Adam eats from the tree of knowledge (­Genesis 3: 9). On Bialik, Hasidism and the return to Nature, see Aberbach (­2021: ­144–​­5).

1 The Jews under Tsarist rule Between hope and despair

… as your flesh drips blood between the teeth of your destroyers you’ll feed them your soul. Bialik (­1904)

Most Russian Jews under Tsarist rule were drawn neither to assimilation within Russia nor to Jewish political nationalism. Prior to the three partitions of Poland (­1772, 1793, 1795), Jews were generally banned from Russia. The partitions brought most of Polish Jewry into the Russian empire, confining them by law to territories they inhabited in the Pale of Settlement. Though the Polish Catholic Church had persecuted Jews, Russian rule was far worse. With the doubtful exception of Alexander II, every Tsar until the fall of the Romanovs in 1917 was an autocratic oppressor of the Jews. Most Russian Jews lived in conditions of severe poverty and degradation, as did the vast majority of n ­ on-​­Jews in Russia, a large part of whom before emancipation in 1861 were serfs. During a period of about 120 years, approximately 140 discriminatory laws were passed against the Jews by the Russian government.1 These laws were rarely eased and never removed. There were many attempts to force Jews to assimilate, convert to Christianity, or emigrate. The Jew was granted full legal equality as soon as he changed his religion. Yet, of over 80,000 Jewish conversions to Christianity in ­19th-​­century Russia, most were under some form of coercion.2 Particularly vulnerable were Jews conscripted into the Russian army, though their army service tended to encourage patriotism, despite persecution.3 Many Jewish conscripts in the time of Nicholas I were children, some as young as 8 or 9. Russian education, too, was an instrument both of patriotism and of ­Tsarist oppression. As in Western Europe, education gave some Russian Jews hope that their lives might be improved, and educational reform was badly needed. Yet, the government saw education in terms of state interests overriding Jewish religious needs and distancing Jewish youth from Judaism. Throughout the 19th century, the Russian ­government  – ​­always suspected by Jews of having their conversion to Christianity as its ultimate ­goal – ​­made determined efforts to close traditional Jewish schools, replace them with Russian schools, or at least Russify the curriculum of the heder

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-2

22  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair and yeshivah. Yet, ­Jew-​­hatred in Russia was practically ineradicable, regardless of what Jews did. Mutual distrust and hatred among Jews and Russians meant that Russian Jews were slower in gaining and using educational opportunities than Western and Central European Jews. By the late 19th century, Jews in the West were mostly urban minorities, largely secularized, professionally trained, and indistinguishable from ­non-​­Jews. Though linked to Tsarist oppression, secular education and assimilation attracted a growing minority of Jews and, as elsewhere, fostered patriotism. The first book written by a Jew in Russian, Judah Leib Nevakhovich’s plea for Jewish civil rights, The Lament of the Daughter of Judah (­1803), anticipated the patriotic strain in ­Russian-​­Jewish literature, declaring fierce love for the Tsar and the Russian Fatherland, and admiration for the Russian army at a time of war with France, while lamenting the Russian rejection of Jews.4 The embattled minority of Jewish intellectuals (­maskilim = ‘­enlightened ones’, exponents of Haskalah = Enlightenment) who read secular literature in Hebrew, Russian, and German, saw education as a tool for overcoming this rejection. They found common ground with the minority of enlightened Russians who, taking their lead from Western Europe, hoped for Jewish emancipation and civil rights as part of the general process of ­much-​­needed state reform. They struggled to expand Jewish secular education, despite massive resistance among the Russian Jews, who were almost totally Orthodox. Early maskilim tended to see the Tsar as an enlightened despot and even a messianic figure whose loving aim was to improve the lives of his Jewish subjects.5 Many maskilim – ​­dazzled by Western culture, ashamed of Jewish backwardness, overwhelmed by government p ­ ower – fell ​­ in with the official view that emancipation was not an inalienable right, but that the Jews had to earn it by educating and ‘­Russifying’ themselves and by making themselves useful to Russia. Maskilim, fully aware of endemic ­anti-​­Semitism even among enlightened Russians, were privately appalled by the recruitment laws of 1827, by the scandal of Jewish children dragged from their mothers to serve in the army of Tsar Nicholas I.6 Yet, they kept faith that Russia at root was a good state. The Jewish Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment, based in St. Petersburg, representing the numerically insignificant but influential, wealthy, and privileged R ­ ussian-​­Jewish minority, was uncompromisingly patriotic. The Society ‘­took at face value the official assertion that Jewish civic emancipation was contingent upon cultural and educational reform’.7 Publications commissioned by the Society, such as Solomon Mandelkern’s history of Russia and the Jews, were expected to voice patriotism.8 Hebrew Haskalah poets became agents of Russian patriotism. At every ­opportunity – ​­an accession to the throne, marriage, birth or coming of age of a crown prince, or the death of a ­Tsar  – ​­they composed with the alacrity of a poet laureate verses that showered the monarch and his family with flattery. In some cases, their patent insincerity might even be accounted a virtue. The most distinguished of these poets was Abraham Dov Lebensohn (­c. ­1794–​­1878),

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  23 whose Shirei Sefat Kodesh (­1842) – ​­a collection of mediocre Hebrew poems (­translated into Russian, presumably by learned Jewish converts to Christianity), which impressed his contemporaries and bored later g­ enerations –​ e­ xtols ­non-​­existent virtues of the imperial family, including the tyrannical reigning Tsar, Nicholas I: Peter the Great did wonderful things, Catherine the same. Alexander was best of kings, But ­Nicholas – ​­yours the greatest name.9 Lebensohn, in naïve hope of improving R ­ ussian-​­Jewish conditions, composed a patriotic prayer to God for the Tsar: ‘­bless the Tsar with your goodness, guide him in long life upon his throne … grant all his wishes… bring him success’.10 His poetry proved useless in persuading Russian rulers to treat their loyal Jewish subjects more humanely. Lebensohn’s patriotism was echoed by the maskil Osip Rabinowich, who in 1861 exhorted the Russian Jews to learn Russian (­as late as 1897 only 1.35 per cent of the Russian Jews spoke Russian, Ukrainian, or Belorussian as their mother tongue): ‘­Our homeland is ­Russia  – ​­just as its air is ours, so its language must become ours’.11 The young Bialik, writing in the age of pogroms, was immersed in Haskalah literature and admired its poets, particularly Judah Leib Gordon, but he bitterly condemned and mocked Jewish patriotism for violently ­anti-​ S ­ emitic countries.12

Hebrew in Tsarist Russia The educational basis of modern Hebrew literature was established mostly in the ­quarter-​­century prior to 1881. The liberalizing rule of Tsar Alexander II (­­1855–​­81) had promised civil equality to ‘­useful’ J­ ews – the ​­ tiny minority who were wealthy or professionally trained. Hebrew culture was used to promote Haskalah aims among ­Jews – ​­secular education and enlightenment which, it was hoped, would improve their lives, acculturate them within Russian society, and free them of the stigma of parasitism. However, Alexander’s liberal program, whose most radical act was the freeing of the serfs in 1861, also threatened the autocratic basis of the imperial state. The Haskalah was based on belief in the rationality of the state, its steady modernization, and the integration and ultimate emancipation of the Russian Jews. Heightened Russian nationalism and a­ nti-​­Semitism after the failed Polish revolt of 1863 and the ­Russian-​­Turkish war of ­1877–​­78 undermined the Haskalah. The assassination of Alexander II in 1881 triggered a wave of pogroms ending hopes for emancipation under Tsarist rule. The pogroms gave urgency to Jewish nationalism, triggering the first aliyah, organized by the Hibbat Zion (­Love of Zion) movement in Odessa, which brought an estimated 25,000 Jews, mostly from Russia, to Palestine by 1900. It is

24  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair estimated that from 1881 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, nearly ­one-​­third of the Russian Jews emigrated, mostly to America; relatively large numbers of Jews joined Russian socialist and revolutionary group; and when in 1897, Theodor Herzl (­­1860–​­1904) created the World Zionist Organisation, Russian Jews were among his most committed followers. From 1903, when the second wave of Russian pogroms began, and 1914, another 35,­000 – ​­the second aliyah – came ​­ to Palestine. Amid these upheavals, Hebrew literature changed from being primarily a didactic Haskalah tool to a highly creative vehicle of Jewish nationalism, forging an alliance between the disillusioned Russian Jewish intelligentsia and the Jewish lower middle classes. Bialik became their national poet. Modern Jewish nationalism took two forms: (­1) political, embodied by Herzl, aiming not at political independence but a mass return of Jews to the Land of Israel as a place of asylum from persecution and (­2) cultural, with Ahad Ha’am as chief ideologue, directed at spiritual reformation of the community, the recreation of Jewish identity along secular nationalist lines.13 The main leaders of political Zionism were westernized educated European Jews, their nationalism triggered by ­anti-​­Semitism, and relatively unconcerned what the language of the movement would be, or even the location of the Jewish ‘­asylum’. (­Herzl, for example, not knowing Hebrew, favored German as the language of Jewish nationalism; and, for a Jewish national territory, any place where Jews could live free of persecution, including Africa or South America.) Rabbinic opposition to political Zionism was widespread, among the Orthodox majority for whom the return to Zion could only be in the messianic age; and among Reform rabbis, as Zionism allegedly undermined emancipation. In reality, Jews were largely at the mercy of uncontrollable forces: ­anti-​­Semitism destroyed their hope of acceptance and drove political Zionism forward, regardless of Jewish opposition. In Russia, as elsewhere, internal and external c­ risis – the ​­ war with Japan in 1­ 904–​­05, social revolutionary unrest in the cities, and nationalist insurgence among the ­non-​­Russian ­populations – ​­provoked ­Jew-​­hatred.

Recognition of ­anti-​­Semitism as ‘­psychic aberration’ Warnings of the l­ong-​­term threat of a­ nti-​­Semitism came long before World War I from prominent Jewish writers and in European literature, including works in German, Yiddish, and Hebrew. As early as the 1830s, the poet Heinrich Heine wrote that if the demonic a­ nti-​­Jewish elements prevailed ‘­there will break over the heads of the poor Jews a storm of persecution, which will far surpass even their previous sufferings’.14 In the early 1860s, the socialist and Zionist Moses Hess predicted that Judaeophobia, particularly among Germans, would lead to a catastrophic ‘­blow from without’ against the Jews.15 Prior to the pogroms of 1903, the persecuted Russian Jews, unlike most other minorities under Tsarist rule, did not fight back. Their pacifist rabbinic

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  25 culture made them an easy target for ­Jew-​­haters, though their communal way of life gave them some protection. Though Russian Jews came to be associated with violent revolution, until the pogroms of 1881 they produced virtually no revolutionaries. In the world of p ­ roto-​­revolutionary Russian nihilists portrayed by Dostoyevsky in The Devils (­1873), there are no Jews. The revolution sought by progressive Jews was internal: maskilim sought to modernize the Jewish community, making available secular education to facilitate adaptation to the modern world, and promoting Russian patriotism. The Haskalah did not aim to adapt the a­ ge-​­old religious bond with the land of Israel into a political movement seeking the emigration of the Russian Jews; nor did it envisage a Hebrew national poet such as Bialik, ­affirming –​ a­ s, for example, Mickiewicz did for Poland, Shevchenko for Ukraine, or Lönnrot for F ­ inland – the ​­ separate national identity of the Jews. The reforms of Alexander II after the Crimean ­War – ​­the abolition of juvenile conscription and the admission of wealthy and professionally trained Jews into the Russian interior, as well as the optimistic spirit of the ­p eriod –​ e­ ncouraged Jewish patriotism and hope that emancipation was imminent. The ­above-​­mentioned Judah Leib Gordon (­­1831–​­92), ­largely-​­forgotten now but the leading 19th century Hebrew poet, responded to the freeing of the Russian serfs in 1861 with the classic expression of Haskalah delusions, a Hebrew poem urging Jews to join ‘­enlightened’ Russia, ‘­this Eden’, and to speak, not Hebrew but Russian: Lift your head, straighten your back, with love set your sight. To wisdom open your heart: speak their tongue, seek the light.16 The reforms of Alexander II were driven less by liberal idealism than by increasing demands, reluctantly granted, during and after the disastrous Crimean War, for social and political change. The reforms reflected the Tsar’s justified fear that hard resistance to the current of the times might weaken the empire and bring revolutionary turmoil, as happened in much of Europe in ­1848–​­49. Many Russian Jews, politically unsophisticated, saw the Tsar as their benefactor. Pathetically eager to bridge the gap separating them from the Russians, they ‘­interpreted a friendly gesture on the part of ­non-​­Jews as evidence of a complete change of heart’.17 The Odessa pogrom in 1871 was a tipping point, following a long history of peaceful relations between Odessa Jewry and the local authorities. In his Yiddish satiric novel, The Mare (­1873), Mendele warned at the time that ­Jew-​­haters would ‘­w ipe you out and tear the soul from your body!’18 After this pogrom, the Hebrew writer and pioneer of Zionism, Peretz Smolenskin (­­1842–​­85), identified a recurrent cycle in Jewish history of attempted assimilation followed by violence against Jews (­Hilaire Belloc claimed ­similarly –​ b ­ ut with sinister i­ntent – ​­that the Jews were locked in a cycle moving from

26  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair welcome to massacre.)­19 From then on, maskilim had reason to doubt their former optimism regarding Russian policies in the promotion of Jewish modernity: in an age of pogroms, they could see Russian Judaeophobia as a ‘­psychic aberration’ reflecting ‘­c enturies upon centuries of hatred’.20 A minority of Russian Jews, increasingly angry and disillusioned, began to assert Jewish national identity, in an instinct of ­self-​­protection, divorcing themselves from the empire. Bialik’s birth in 1873 coincided with the decline of Haskalah optimism and the start of increasing Jewish national assertiveness as ­anti-​­Semitism grew.

The pogroms of ­1881–​­82 and ­1903–​­06 The estimated 169 pogroms, mostly in southern Russia, after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, ended hopes that the Tsarist government would grant the Russian Jews emancipation and civil rights and made Haskalah patriotism seem naïve. The scale and consequences of the pogroms were staggering in their time:21 about 40 killed, hundreds injured, 20,000 homes destroyed, ­9 –​­10 million roubles in damages, 100,000 Jews directly affected by the violence and vandalism. In many cases, the police did nothing or collaborated, especially when there was Jewish resistance. Few rioters were punished. The Russian government neither protected the Jews, nor did it condemn the pogroms. On the contrary, in the ­so-​­called May Laws of May 1882, it blamed the ‘­parasitical’ Jews for inciting the peasants and bringing the pogroms upon their own heads. The Russian Minister of the Interior, Ignatiev, instructed provincial commissions dealing with the ‘­Jewish problem’ to ‘­seek means of preventing the continued “­exploitation” of the Russian people’.22 The commissions set out to blame but were shocked by their ­first-​­hand observation of the broken state of the Russian Jews: widespread poverty, hunger and unemployment, a high birth rate, and poor living conditions. The commissions recommended a more liberal policy, even the abolition of the Pale, but the Russian government did not aim to improve the lives of the Russian Jews. A million and a half Jews living in rural areas were herded into the cities of the Pale. Konstantin Pobedonostsev (­­1827–​­1907), head of the Russian Holy Synod, a former Moscow university professor and tutor of the future Tsar Nicholas II, famously predicted a Russia without Jews: ­one-​­third would emigrate, ­one-​­third would convert, and ­one-​­third would starve to death.23 This prediction was not far off the mark. By the time Nicholas II came to the throne in 1894, an estimated 40 per cent of the Russian Jews were living on charity. The second wave of Russian pogroms, in 1­ 903–​­06, was far more violent than the first, and more ­sinister – ​­for the first time, a modern government sanctioned a­ nti-​­Jewish violence. The Tsar supported an ­anti-​­Semitic organization, the ­so-​­called Black Hundreds. As racial a­ nti-​­Semitism grew, with its imagery of Jewish ‘­disease’, influential Jewish leaders and thinkers, including Adolf Fischof, Joseph

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  27 Samuel Bloch, Heinrich Graetz, and Leon Pinsker, began to warn that ­anti-​ S ­ emitism was itself a form of chronic social pathology leading to bloodshed. Between 1881 and 1914, mass emigration of Russian Jews reached its height, and Zionism and nationalist Hebrew culture began to take root among the traumatized Jews, becoming to a large extent the springboard for the revival of Hebrew as a modern language.24 The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment became by the 1890s ‘­a major force for the proliferation of Jewish nationalism’.25

Warnings of catastrophe Fears grew after the ­1881–​­82 pogroms that this violence was a prelude to slaughters to come, not just in Russia but elsewhere in Europe too. Jewish intellectuals such as Smolenskin and Pinsker who otherwise might have been content to assimilate into European culture turned to Zionism. To Smolenskin, Zionism was the only response to ­anti-​­Jewish violence, which would not cease.26 Pinsker, in his pamphlet Autoemancipation (­1882), warned similarly that the lack of a Jewish homeland inevitably attracted violence against the Jews: ‘­Though you prove yourselves patriots a thousand times, you will still be reminded at every opportunity of your Semitic descent’.27 In a poem published after the pogroms, the Hebrew poet Naphtali Herz Imber (­author of the ‘­Hatikvah’, the Jewish national anthem), urged the Jews to escape the coming disaster, to the ‘­mountain’ – ​­i.e. the Land of Israel: Quick, to the mountain, escape. For the day may come … where will you go? Round you the storm will grow. My helpless people, from catastrophe run, escape to the mountain!28 Theodor Herzl, already in his student days at the University of Vienna in the early 1880s, recognized that racial ­anti-​­Semitism could lead to catastrophe. Previously, he had been a typically ardent Austrian patriot and admirer of German Kultur – ​­including the music of Wagner. In his view, Dühring’s call for the extermination of the Jews was a declaration of war. It was not as a Zionist that in his diary on 9 February 1882, Herzl condemned Dühring and the other racial ­anti-​­Semites in imagery reminiscent of medieval times and prophetic of the Holocaust. Old Christian ­Jew-​­hatred was weakening; racial ­anti-​­Semitism was a more efficient ‘­modern fuel’ (­modernes Petroleum) for making a cheerful fire to incinerate the Jews, and sending up the ‘­sweet smell of crackling ­Jew-​­fat’.29 By June 1902, when Herzl, now the head of the World Zionist Organization, met Lord Nathaniel Rothschild in London, he had no doubt that the Jews must ‘­die or get out’ (­sterben oder weg müssen).30 It was against these ominous signs that Ahad Ha’am and Bialik warned of the danger of Jewish assimilation within a­ nti-​­Semitic countries: Jewish

28  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair identification with European culture was an aberration, their grotesque patriotism a sign of weakness and insecurity.31 Other warnings throughout Europe, but especially in Russia, contribute to our understanding of Bialik’s poetry. Chaim Weizmann at age 11 contrasted Continental Europe with England: ‘… why should we look to the Kings of Europe for compassion?  … In vain! All have decided the Jews must die…’32 Herzl’s colleague, Max Nordau, wrote in 1897 that in some places a­ nti-​­Semitism threatened the Jews with extermination (­Vernichtung); bad as it was, it ‘­would get worse, much worse’.33 In the following year, Georges Clemenceau, publisher of Zola’s J’Accuse in L’Aurore, published a collection of short stories, Au Pied du Sinai, about the Jews of Galicia in which sympathy is not unmixed with dangerous stereotypes: ‘­I l suffira d’amender les chrétiens, encore maître du monde, pour n’avoir pas besoin d’exterminer les juifs’ (‘­it is enough to improve the Christians, still masters of the world, to avoid the need to exterminate the Jews …’).34 Also in 1898, in response to the rise of violent ­anti-​­Semitism at the time of the Dreyfus affair, the Jewish Socialist Workers Organization in Paris published an open letter to the Parti Socialiste Français expressing fear of ‘­a new trend to exterminate a race’.35 At the same time, the Russian Hebrew writer J.H. Brenner warned of imminent catastrophe. In 1900, he wrote to his friend and fellow Hebrew writer U.N. Gnessin, ‘­Don’t you know that our people is going to die?’36 The French Jewish Zionist poet, André Spire, shocked by the Russian pogroms of 1­ 903–​­06, denounced ­anti-​­Semitic countries such as Russia and France as ‘­false homelands’ ( ­fausses patries) and called for mass emigration.37 Bialik’s similar view of galut (­exile) is expressed more powerfully in Hebrew.38

Jewish alienation from Russia In a Hebrew story telling of the 1881 pogroms, Mendele Mocher Sefarim describes the alienation from Russia felt by many Jews, contributing to their desire to leave Russia: Everything I saw looked strange: the forests, the fields, had all changed utterly. As if they had stopped living in peace with me and were whispering, ‘­Not for you, Reb Yid, not for you the trees sway, the grasses glisten, the valleys wrap themselves in grain, the earth gives up its yield; not for you the sound of the ­turtle-​­dove, the sweet song of birds; and hills of spices give their aroma, but not for you!’ And even the sun, oy, did not warm as before.39 A parallel tone of alienation, both from Russia and from Judaism, among the younger generation of increasingly assimilated Russian Jews appears in the childhood memories of the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (­­1891–​­1938) from St. Petersburg around 1900:

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  29 But what had I to do with the Guard’s festivals, the monotonous prettiness of the host of the infantry and its steeds, the s­ tone-​­faced battalions flowing with hollow tread down the Millionnaya, gray with marble and granite? All the elegant mirage of Petersburg was merely a dream, a brilliant covering thrown over the abyss, while round about there sprawled the chaos of J­ udaism – ​­not a motherland, not a house, not a hearth, but precisely a chaos, the unknown womb world whence I had issued, which I feared, about which I made vague conjectures and fled, always fled.40 Loss of faith in emancipation was reflected in the decline of the Haskalah movement and rise of Hebrew as a living creative national language and literature, a declaration of inner Jewish independence. Russian Jewish thinkers attacked the assimilationist ideals of emancipation with a vehemence and, at times, contempt generally lacking among Westernized Jews, who were inhibited from agitating specifically for Jewish interests. Even before the pogroms of ­1881–​­82, Smolenskin found his passion for Zionism both in the attraction of European nationalism and disgust at a­ nti-​­Semitism. In the belief that emancipation was a dangerous illusion, assimilation a dead end and a form of Jewish national suicide, and Hebrew the true fortress of Jewish national consciousness and identity, Smolenskin founded the Hebrew monthly ­Ha-​­Shachar in Vienna in 1868. The pogroms of 1­ 881–​­82 convinced him that settlement in the land of Israel was vital for the survival of the Jews. In Autoemancipation, Pinsker reached similar conclusions. He diagnosed Judaeophobia as ‘­an inherited aberration of the human mind’, the result of Jewish homelessness. The Jews wrongly assumed that the forces governing them were necessarily good: ‘­Instead of realizing their own position and adopting a rational line of conduct, the Jews appeal to eternal justice, and fondly imagine that the appeal will have some effect’.41 The sole cure was for Jews to emancipate themselves on their own territory. Pinsker was one of the founders of the Zionist organization, Hoveve Zion (­Lovers of Zion), in Odessa. Ahad Ha’am, a member of Hoveve Zion, shared many of Pinsker’s views. In his Hebrew essay written in 1891 on the 100th anniversary of the emancipation of the French Jews, Ahad Ha’am dismisses Jewish rights in France as hollow. He prefers Russian servitude to French emancipation. Unlike French Jews, he has not sold his soul for rights: he remains free to love the Jewish people and Jewish culture without being accused of lack of patriotism.42 Zionists, including Bialik, generally read the fiction of Mendele Mocher Sefarim as proof that Jewish life in a­ nti-​­Semitic Russia was degrading and futile. Bialik was devoted to Mendele, the person as well as the writer: critical, yet empathetic in depicting the Russian Jews, alienated from Russia, a land of pogroms. City of Slaughter echoes Mendele in its scathing irony: here is slaughter in a season of rebirth.43 The poem is set, as were many pogroms, in spring amid trees in blossom and sparkling blue skies, with

30  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair blood stains everywhere, broken glass and pillow feathers, and other signs of violence: … the Lord has brought spring and slaughter ­together –​­ The sun shone, the acacia bloomed, the killers killed… The irony of murder in scenes of immense natural beauty became disturbingly familiar in Hebrew literature as ­anti-​­Jewish violence spread.44 Still, Russian a­ nti-​­Semitism did not totally destroy the hope of Russian Jewry that it had a future in Russia. Though Mendele’s writings could be read as a case for Jewish emigration from Russia, Mendele was at root a Russian patriot who believed even after the pogroms that the future of the Russian Jews lay in Russia.45 This was essentially the Haskalah position. In a Hebrew poem responding to the 1881 pogroms, Judah Leib Gordon expresses similar hope, for he could not imagine a catastrophe killing tens of thousands, let alone millions, of Jews: Fear not, Jacob, nor despair, We’ve seen tears, and we’ll see laughter, Tens of thousands will not be slaughtered … Where we lived before, we’ll live after …46 This assessment was in its time essentially correct, for the Tsarist empire was ‘­very far removed from the moral worlds of Hitler and Stalin, in which secular totalitarian ideologues could justify, even demand, the extermination of peoples “­standing in history’s path”’.47 The pogroms pointed to a troubled future for the Russian Jews, which even the overthrow of the Tsarist regime would not fundamentally change As early as the 1890s, Ahad Ha’am predicted that although a Russian revolution might bring emancipation and civil rights, the small print familiar in Tsarist legislation would reappear: ‘­except for the Jews’.48 The pogroms of ­1903–​­06 convinced Ahad Ha’am that this would be the case. If in liberal states such as France and Germany, which had granted Jewish emancipation, the Jews who tried to assimilate were rejected and driven back to their Jewish identity, this would certainly happen in Russia, where the Jews were not emancipated and were persecuted by an a­ nti-​­Semitic autocracy. Ahad Ha’am attacked Russian Jews who identified with the progressive parties and trusted in the Russian ­c onstitution – a​­ dead letter in the shadow of Tsarist a­ utocracy – ​­or in the coming revolution. Democratic reform or revolutionary change would not undo the massive injustices done to the Russian Jews, nor would the ­s elf-​­interested ­non-​­Jewish democrats and revolutionaries solve the Jewish problem. Yet, Ahad Ha’am observed Jews were perversely ready to abandon Jewish national interests, ignore the suffering of their people, and throw themselves

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  31 into the cause of liberating the oppressed peoples of ­Russia – ​­all except their own. This was the contemptible mentality of slaves whose national dignity and pride were atrophied and who did everything for their masters, nothing for themselves. Ahad Ha’am’s censure of Jewish patriotism for ­anti-​­Semitic countries was taken up by Bialik in his poetry.49 For Jews were involved in every European national or liberation movement: for Napoleon in France, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rymanov; for Germany’s Jung Deutschland, Micha Joseph Lebensohn; for Serbian nationalism, Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai; for Hungarian nationalism represented by Leon Kossuth, Rabbi Solomon ­Schiller-​­Szinessy; for the ­Mazzini-​­led Italian Risorgimento, Moses Hess (­and, later, for Mussolini’s ambition to restore Italy’s ancient glory, Jabotinsky); for Hungarian and Slovakian nationalism, Peretz Smolenskin; for the ­Pan-​­Slavism stirred up by the ­Russo-​­Turkish war of ­1877–​­78, Eliezer ­Ben-​­Yehuda; for Bismarck’s German nationalism, Herzl. Ahad Ha’am’s call for Jews to cease sterile assimilation and follow fruitful national interests echoes George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (­1876: ch. 42): ‘­Is it rational to drain away the sap of special kindred that makes the families of men rich in interchanged wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the cedar and the palm?’ Bialik in late 1904 condemned Jewish devotion to cold, hostile Motherlands as slavery and s­ elf-​­harm. Drawing on talmudic legend, the poet savagely attacked Jews who ignored their own Jewish heritage while devoting themselves, body and soul, to countries that hated and tried to destroy them: This too is the sweeping scourge… This too is the sweeping scourge     of the Lord’s chastisement –​­ though you deny it to your heart. So you’ll scatter your sacred tear across all oceans, string it to each false ray of light, pour your spirit into all the marble of foreign lands, sink your life into the bosom of alien stone, and as your flesh drips blood between the teeth       of your destroyers –​­ you’ll feed them your soul. You’ll raise Pithom and Rameses for your oppressors, using your children as bricks. When their cry lifts from the wood and the stone –​­ it will die as it reaches your ears. If an eagle rises among your sons and grows wings –​­ you’ll send him away forever. When he soars, sun-​­thirsty, powerful, above –​­ not to you will he bring down the luminaries. When he splits the clouds with his pinions

32  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair paving a path for the beam of light –​­ not on you will it fall. Far away, on some craggy peak, he’ll cry out but the echo won’t reach you. One by one will you lose your dear sons and be childless. Your home will be stripped of its splendor, your tent put to ruin. Sickening desolation will creep in, threshold untouched by God’s grace, window unshaken by the joyful knock of salvation. Your prayer will stifle in the cracks. You’ll search fruitlessly for tears of compassion. The heart will choke, like a cluster of squeezed grapes thrust into the corner of the vat, yielding not a drop to revive the soul that overflows with longing. You will grope in the furnace of the ruin –​­ and find its stones cold, a shrieking cat in the chill of its ash. You will sit solitary, mourning, torrents in the world, dust and ashes in the heart. You’ll stare at the dead flies on the windows and the spiders in empty corners, and poverty will wail at you in the chimney, the walls of the ruin will tremble with cold –​­50 Ahad Ha’am attacked the Helsingfors platform of 1906, in which the Russian Zionists watered down their national struggle to create a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel by joining it with the struggle for political autonomy in the Diaspora, as a betrayal of the Jewish national movement. He mocked the ­so-​­called ‘­synthetic Zionism’ requiring Jews to liberate Russia before they create a Jewish homeland.51 It was a ‘­principle of faith’, he declared, that even if Russia were liberated, Jews would still be victims.52 Ahad Ha’am believed Russian ­anti-​­Semitism could be fought only through Jewish nationalism and the creation of a Jewish cultural center in the Land of Israel. He was proved incorrect in attributing a ‘­mentality of slaves’ to Russian Jewry who went on to defy the patriotism of much of world Jewry prior to World War ­I – including ​­ that of their own l­eaders – ​­and prepared the ground for Zionism as a political response to ­anti-​­Semitism: by 1918, the Russian Zionist movement included about 1,200 local groups, with 300,000 members.53 Yet, political Zionism from its inception in 1897 until the Holocaust remained a less attractive alternative to the hopes and incentives of emancipation: most Jews preferred civic patriotic loyalty (­if not full national identification) to

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  33 their countries of citizenship rather than a serious commitment to Jewish nationalism. L ­ arge-​­scale Jewish emigration from Russia in the years prior to World War I is the smoking gun of their despair.

Babel and the 1905 Odessa pogrom Isaac Babel’s ­post-​­revolution ‘­The Story of My Dovecot’ (­1925) shows with great dramatic force, through the eyes of a child, how the pogroms destroyed the high hopes of Russian Jews for civil rights and integration within Russia under the tsars. A gifted ­9-­​­­year-​­old Jewish child in Nikolaev, near Odessa, is held back by a quota in his local secondary school: in an enrolment of 40, two Jewish boys can be admitted. Babel’s description of his examination, set in 1905, exposes a prejudicial system in which the examiners are forced, fleetingly, to examine themselves: About Peter the Great I knew things by heart from Putsykovitch’s book and Pushkin’s verses. Sobbing, I recited these verses, while the faces before me suddenly turned upside down, were shuffled as a pack of cards is shuffled. This ­card-​­shuffling went on, and meanwhile, shivering, jerking my back straight, galloping headlong, I was shouting Pushkin’s stanzas at the top of my voice. On and on I yelled them, and no one broke into my crazy mouthings. Through a crimson blindness, through the sense of absolute freedom that had filled me, I was aware of nothing but Pyatnitsky’s old face with its ­silver-​­touched beard bent toward me. He didn’t interrupt me, and merely said to Karavayev, who was rejoicing for my sake and Pushkin’s: ‘­W hat a people,’ the old man whispered, ‘­those little Jews of yours! There’s a devil in them!’54 The ­anti-​­Semitic examiners (­unlike those in Mendele’s The Mare) are forced to concede the boy’s brilliance and let him pass. His Hebrew teacher rejoices: ‘­just as I had triumphed over Goliath, so too would our people by the strength of their intellect conquer the foes who had encircled us and were thirsting for our blood’.55 As a reward, his parents allow him to keep pigeons, which he goes to buy on the day in October 1905 when the pogrom broke out in response to the Tsar’s announcement that he was granting a constitution. Bialik was in Odessa at this time and describes it to his friend ­Ben-​­Ami: Everything written in the newspapers outside the Pale about what is going on here is nothing compared to the reality. Today they finish burying the d ­ ead  – ​­over 300 Jews killed. Over 600 of the hooligans were killed. Much wanton destruction. About 20,000 homeless. The Moldovanka [an Odessa slum where most of the Jewish poor lived] has been completely decimated. The army and the police joined the hooligans in the riots and murder. If not for our courageous defenders, we’d all have been murdered.56

34  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair In ‘­The Story of my Dovecot’, Babel describes the boy caught in the violence and looting, seeking help from the m ­ uch-​­loved crippled c­ igarette-​ s­ eller, Makarenko, and his wife Kate. But Kate is adamant that ‘[the Jewish] spawn must be wiped out’, and the cripple is furious at being unable to loot. He punches the boy from his wheelchair, and the boy lies on the ground, covered with the blood and guts of his pigeons: … they flowed down my cheek, winding this way and that, splashing, blinding me. The tender ­pigeon-​­guts slid down over my forehead, and I closed my solitary ­unstopped-​­up eye so as not to see the world that spread out before me. This world was tiny and it was awful.57 The awfulness of this world was, however, not a reason to emigrate but rather to work for a revolution to make a better Russia. Babel’s faith in a socialist Russia overcame his awareness that the revolution did not eliminate ­Jew-​­hatred, or the Russian ‘­evil heart’. Like most Russian Jews, Babel stayed in Russia; and he died in a concentration camp in 1940, as did thousands of other Jewish and n ­ on-​­Jewish Bolsheviks whom Stalin distrusted and eliminated without mercy. Bialik’s own response to the Odessa pogrom was the poem, Yadati ­be-​­lel arafel (­1906). In one unbroken sentence (­from ‘­Oh, if only your grief’), the poet prophesies that the murder of his people would become a stigma on the conscience of the world. He foresees violence to the end of time: I know on a foggy night I know on a foggy night      I’ll go out like a star and no star will know my burial place, but my fury will smoke after me like a volcano after the eruption, to be with you while the Wheel still thunders round and the ocean rages. Oh, if only your grief too were kept alive in the world’s wide heart, infusing it with life so that the sky and the earth, the stars and grass would drink its pain, grow old and be renewed in it, die and flower again, without name, shape, homeland a witness of your torture to the last generation, silently crying out to hell and heaven stopping the world’s redemption, for when at the end of time the sun shines its righteous deceit

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  35 over the graves of your slain, and the banner of ­heaven-​­mocking hypocrisy stained with your blood, waves over the heads of your murderers, and God’s forged seal, engraved on the banner, pierces the eye of the sun, and the dance of arrogant foot,     the trumpet of the feast of deceit, shake your holy bones in the g­ rave –​­ and the sky’s radiance trembles,          darkens in your grief, and the sun is a stain of your innocent blood, a mark of Cain on the world’s forehead, a sign that the broken arm of God failed, star to star will whisper: See the horrible lie! Look at the awful grief! Then the God of Vengeance, with injured heart             will rise and ­ roar –​­ and storm out with his sword.58

The Russian Jews and the left Jewish liberals and socialists found hope amid the pogroms, in the 1905 ­Russian constitution as Russia seemed about to become a constitutional democratic monarchy. Soon all persecuted minorities in the empire, including the Jews, would be liberated and granted legal equality. Among increasingly educated Jews such as the lawyer Henrik Sliozberg (­­1863–​­1937), a member of the Liberal Constitutional Democratic Party (­Cadets) who defended Jews in cases involving a­ nti-​­Semitism, it made sense to be a Russian patriot. Bialik, too, could feel hope in Russia, if only in the growth of a distinctive modern Jewish culture. When after the 1905 pogroms a number of Russian Jewish writers, including Sholom Aleichem, left Russia, Bialik, despite his experience of Kishinev and the recent Odessa pogrom, wrote to Sholom Aleichem that ‘­No country is as good as Russia and no city as good as Odessa’.59 As German Jews believed in Goethe, Russian Jews found hope in Tolstoy.60 By the early 20th century, socialist and liberal Jews who believed in the future of the Russian Jews in a modernized Russia were politically active in numbers far beyond their proportional representation in Russia’s population. Jews at this time comprised about 4 per cent of the Russian population; yet, the General Jewish Labor Bund, founded in 1897, comprised the majority of the Russian ­Social-​­Democratic Party. In 1903, of 50,000 organized workers in Russia, about 30,000 were Jews.61 More than half of those sentenced for political offences in Russia were Jews. Yet, Jews active on the

36  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair left were never more than a small number of the Russian Jewish population, and totally unrepresentative of their fundamental conservatism, their religious and social cohesion, and devotion to their ancestral traditions. Jews who joined or sympathized with parties of the radical left, particularly the intellectual and political leadership, were mostly alienated from religious and national Jewish identity. They hated Zionism, including labor Zionism, and looked forward to the revolution that would end the misery in the world, including ­anti-​­Semitism. (­Trotsky, although an extreme example, was not uncharacteristic.) Their outlook is summed up by S. Ansky, the Yiddish writer and ethnographer best known as the author of the Yiddish play The Dybbuk, in the a­ nti-​­Zionist hymn, ‘­To the Bund’ (­1902): Messiah and J­ udaism – both ​­ have died, Another Messiah has come: The Jewish Worker (­the rich man’s victim) Raises the flag of freedom.62 The Russian left tended to overlook or even justify the a­ nti-​­Semitism that had long polluted the Russian revolutionary movement, including the ‘­Decembrists’ who carried out the unsuccessful rising in December 1825, and the Narodnaya Volya (­People’s Will), known as the Narodniki, who assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881; as well as many Bolsheviks and, to a much lesser extent, some of the Mensheviks. No Russian revolutionary ­leader – not ​­ even progressives such as Pyotr Lavrov (­­1823–​­1900) and Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (­­1856–​­1918), who were sympathetic to the plight of the Russian J­ ews – ​­denounced the pogroms on moral grounds. If Jewish blood greased the wheels of the revolution, well and good. Lenin’s view, influenced by Marx, was that J­ ew-​­hatred was a reaction to capitalist exploitation: the only solution was assimilation and, ultimately, the disappearance of Judaism; as for Zionism, it was more dangerous than ­anti-​­Semitism. This was the official line of Iskra, the ideological mouthpiece of the Russian ­Social-​­Democratic Party, which Lenin edited until 1903. Some Jewish revolutionaries, notably Julius Martov (­­1873–​­1923), accepted the justification of the pogroms as an expression of rebellion against exploitation. Russian revolutionaries became less Judaeophobic when they realized that the pogroms were bad for the revolution as they diverted popular anger and discontent from the oppressing c­ lasses – the ​­ Tsarist autocracy, the landed aristocracy, and the capitalist b ­ ourgeoisie – and ​­ strengthened Tsarist reactionaries who convinced the peasants that the revolutionary agitation was the work of the zhids. Even so, socialists tended to condemn the pogroms not in isolation but in connection with other persecuted minorities, glossing over the fact that Jewish suffering was infinitely worse. In its coverage of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, Iskra suppressed the fact that it was Russian railway workers who started the ­anti-​­Jewish riots. Such ‘­lack of solidarity’ on the part of Russian workers was contrary to the prevailing theory and could not be

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  37 mentioned. Jews could be defended only in the interests of the Revolution. Liberal organizations refusing to be intimidated by the Tsarist authorities occasionally passed resolutions supporting Jewish rights.63 Yet, even during the pogroms, most liberals were silent. The Cadets, created in 1905 when a constitutional government was established, was hampered by the accusation that it was ‘­the party of the zhids’. It tended to ignore or postpone Jewish issues and in any case lacked real power. In the Pale of Settlement, as in Western and Central Europe, Russian liberalism was often conflated with being ‘­Jewish’. The Russian Orthodox clergy and the nobles in the Pale had only to say that the parties of the left were Jewish for the peasants to vote solidly for the reactionary right. In the Russian interior, in contrast, where Jews were mostly banned from residence, the ­p easants –​ ­although exposed to similar ­anti-​­Jewish ­propaganda – ​­had fewer inhibitions in voting for liberals. Also, as in Western and Central Europe, even the democrats and revolutionaries in Russia were tainted with a­ nti-​­Semitism. Jewish involvement in ­anti-​­Tsarist agitation was resented by the left. The Jews, they c­ omplained – ​­as did their colleagues in Germany, France, Austria, and ­elsewhere – ​­were too prominent and vociferous in the movement, opening it to attack by their reactionary enemies. In this a­ nti-​­Semitic environment, Zionism grew and found deep roots in Jewish history and ancient literature, and Bialik found his voice as national poet.

Gnessin and ­Russian-​­Jewish assimilation Even as ­anti-​­Semitism became increasingly violent, young Russian Jews became increasingly identified with Russian culture, which they s­ aw – as ​­ many German Jews saw ­Goethe  – ​­as a signpost to liberalism. Bialik’s Hebrew contemporary, Uri Nissan Gnessin (­­1879–​­1913), born in Ukraine, depicts a new class of educated Jews, whose identification with the Jewish community and its religious culture weakened as their cosmopolitan ideology grew. Their reference group came not from the yeshivot, as in the past, but from the young Russian radical idealists, Narodniki, socialists, and revolutionaries, for whom religion was a corrupt means of social control and Judaism was equivalent to capitalism because Marx said so. Like the deracinated habitués of the ­Tari-​­bari restaurant in Paris in Joseph Roth’s novel Confessions of a Murderer, they play at being ‘­real Russians’. Although not as extreme as the Jewish socialist students at Kiev U ­ niversity – who ​­ actually welcomed the 1881 pogroms as they ‘­belonged to the Russian people, were educated on its tunes, and grew up on its literature’64 – ​­Gnessin’s students tend to ignore the ­anti-​­Semitism around them or see it as a passing phase. Gnessin’s story Hatzidah (­On the Edge, 1905) gives no hint, in fact, that it was published at the time of the worst pogroms since the 17th century. The main character in this story is a Hebrew writer working on the history of the Hebrew Enlightenment (­Haskalah) who, however, shows no affinity with Zionism. Instead, he acts out the role of a Russian type, a m ­ ini-​­Chekhov

38  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair struggling with his art, oblivious to the incongruity of being a ‘­citizen of the world’ while living in a totalitarian ­anti-​­Semitic regime in which Jews had no rights and mass emigration of more than 100,000 annually was underway. Gnessin’s friend and ideological opponent, the Zionist Hebrew writer J.H. Brenner (­­1881–​­1921), could not understand Gnessin’s failure to confront the reality of the Jewish condition in Russia. Yet, Gnessin was not unlike Jewish writers elsewhere in Europe, who believed that culture was a world of its own, sacred and secure against the mad violence of history. Bialik did not share this view: Hebrew literature remained what it always ­was – ​­a moral force expressing the soul of the Jewish people and inspiring change.

The persistence of Russian ­anti-​­Semitism Bialik’s pessimism proved justified, though the 1917 revolution at first roused immense hopes among the Russian Jews. It gave them equality and civil rights; ­ anti-​­ Semitism was officially declared counterrevolutionary; and during the civil war (­­1918–​­21) while the White Army committed ­anti-​ ­Jewish atrocities the Red Army (­w ith the exception of Semion Bubionny’s Cossacks) did not. Large numbers of Jews from the former Pale streamed into Soviet cities where, unusually literate and loyal, and untainted by association with the Tsarist regime, they became the ‘­backbone of the new Soviet bureaucracy’: Lenin believed that the Revolution succeeded because of the Jews.65 Isaac Babel expressed in his stories the new sense of freedom the Revolution gave Jews, ‘­that warm, passionate state of mind that can only be spawned by this wondrous land …’.66 By 1922, Jews reached their maximum representation in the Bolshevik party, 15 per cent, second only to ethnic Russians at 65 per cent; as late as 1931, Stalin referred to ­anti-​ S ­ emitism as ‘­cannibalism’.67 Yet, as Ahad Ha’am predicted, Jewish assimilation in revolutionary Russia was wrecked on the reef of ­anti-​­Semitism. In 1920, Hebrew was banned in Russia, and Hebrew writers, including Bialik and Tchernichowsky, were forced to leave. By this time, Bialik had come to the conclusion that ‘­There is no salvation for the Jews except the land of Israel. Their conditions throughout are awful now and will get worse’.68 On the Jewish New Year in 1921, Judaism was put on trial in the same courtroom in Kiev where in 1913, Mendel Beilis had been tried on the charge of ritual murder; by 1925 an estimated 800 synagogues were closed. In the following year, Stalin’s ­anti-​­Trotsky vilification became openly ­anti-​­Semitic as he claimed that the opposition to Communism was led by Jews, alien to Russia. On 4 March 1926, Trotsky wrote incredulously to Bukharin: ‘­is it true, is it possible that in our party, IN MOSCOW, in WORKER’S CELLS, ­anti-​­Semitic agitation should be carried out with impunity?’69 By this time, Jewish culture in Russia was dying; the center of Hebrew had moved, with Bialik, to Tel Aviv. Despite persistent ­anti-​­Semitism in a state that had banned ­anti-​­Semitism, many Jews continued to be drawn to Russian identity partly, as was the

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  39 case with assimilated Jews in other countries, because they experienced their Jewishness as a handicap and curse. Soviet Jewish literature reflects this crisis of identity. Ilya Ehrenburg, in his satiric picaresque novel, The Stormy Life of Laz Roitshvantz (­1928), parodies the ‘­Zionism’ of the Russian and other Jews; and Boris Pasternak in his novel, Dr. Zhivago (­1958), uses Misha Gordon as a mouthpiece for questioning the point of being Jewish: ‘­W hat did it mean to be a Jew? What was the purpose of it? What was the reward or the justification of this unarmed challenge which brought nothing but grief?’70 Yuri Zhivago, similarly, attacks the ‘­national idea’ of the Jews that, he claims, has chained them for centuries to ‘­voluntary martyrdom’, an army forever fighting and being massacred for no reason: ‘­That’s enough, stop now. Don’t hold on to your identity, don’t all get together in a crowd. Disperse. Be with all the rest’.71 Pasternak knew this anguish of Jewish identity in Russia, as Isaiah Berlin discovered when he met him in 1945: ‘­He longed to be considered an authentic Russian patriot and to have his work accepted as the true voice of the Russian people: yet, as a Jew, he was never allowed to feel authentically Russian’.72 Bialik, who knew Pasternak as a ­child  – ​­he was a friend of his father, the painter Leonid ­Pasternak – ​­gave anguished expression in his poetry to his outrage at this Jewish cultural schizophrenia.73 Most other national minorities in Russia, both Tsarist and Soviet, had hopes of independence: why not the Jews?

Notes 1 Goldenweiser (­1966: ­85–​­6). 2 ­Mendes-​­Flohr and Reinharz (­1995: 715). 3 Of about 70,000 Jewish recruits to the Tsarist army during the reign of Nicholas I, ­two-​­thirds were cantonists, with ­far-​­reaching consequences in Russian Jewish life: ‘­the Jewish identity of the cantonists prefigures the nationalization of Judaism’ (­Litvak 2006: 4, 146). The reforms of Alexander II encouraged increasing patriotism among Russian Jews, which to some extent survived undiminished Russian ­anti-​­Semitism. Among notable guides for Jewish soldiers, Maḥaneh Yisra’el (­1881), by Israel Meir Hacohen (­also known as the Chofetz Chaim, ­1838–​ 1­ 933), accepts the necessity for Jewish army service and seeks ways by which duty could be fulfilled without infringement of Jewish law. 4 Fishman (­1995: ­94–​­5). 5 Zalkin (­2000: 133). 6 Ibid., 134. 7 Zipperstein (­1985: 84). 8 Mandelkern’s glorification of Russia illustrates the ‘­maskilic tendency toward Feiner 2002: 216). Haskalah ­ patriotism  – ​­ even for ­ anti-​­ Semitic patriotism’ (­ ­countries – made ​­ the Haskalah odious to many p ­ ost-​­1881 enlightened Jews, who responded to ­anti-​­Semitism with increasing empathy for Zionism, and used Hebrew as a national language. 9 Lebensohn (­1895: 72). Translated by David Aberbach. 10 Ibid., 75. 11 ­Mendes-​­Flohr and Reinharz (­1995: 400). 12 On Bialik’s opposition to Russian Jewish patriotism, see pp. 31–3, 124; on the historical background to Jewish rejection of patriotism, see 96, 133, 137 below.

40  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair 13 Bialik’s first poetic responses to Herzl in 1897 (­probably influenced by Ahad Ha’am) were skepticism and satiric mockery (­­Bi-​­K hrake Yam, Rabbi Zarach), though he quickly realized that Herzl was a genuine visionary leader, not another false messiah. Even so, his responses to Zionism at every stage were filled with pessimism and despair. see below, pp. 213; 220, note 30. 14 Tabak (­1948: 197). 15 Hess (­1995: ­177–​­8). 16 Gordon (­1973: 4). 17 Greenberg (­1965: 84). 18 In Neugroschel (­1978: 255). Bialik, a protégé of Mendele, adopts similar language to depict the failure of Jewish assimilation. See p. 31 below. 19 Smolenskin (­1925: 60); Belloc (­1922: ­11–​­12). 20 Zipperstein (­1985: 127, 141). 21 On the pogroms, see Klier and Lambrosa (­1992) and Avrutin and Bemporad (­2021). 22 Gartner (­2001: 241). 23 Baron (­1964: 59). Similar predictions of a Jewish catastrophe were made in Germany in the late 19th century. Nietzsche broke with Wagner in 1876 partly over the ­anti-​­Semitism of the Wagner circle, which was ‘­leading the Jews to the slaughterhouse’ as scapegoats for Germany’s misfortunes (­Santaniello 1997: 30). Jewish university students were among those most aware of these frightening developments. In a manifesto published in Breslau in 1886 that led to the founding of the first ­German-​­Jewish university fraternity (­­Kartell-​­Convent deutscher Studenten jüdischen Glaubens), a group of Jewish students predicted the possibility that ‘­racial hatred will become a tradition and will increase from one generation to the next. The tension accumulated in this way may one day explode with elemental force over our heads’ (­Asch and Philippson 1958: 122). 24 On the revival of Hebrew in the historic context of Jewish cultural nationalism from the time of the Bible, see Aberbach (­2008). 25 Horowitz (­2009: 8). 26 Elkoshi (­1952: 189, 193). 27 Chazan and Raphael (­1974: 169). 28 Himmalet ­ha-​­Harah (­Escape to the Mountain), Imber (­1950: ­50–​­1). 29 Herzl (­­1983–​­93: i 614). 30 Ibid., iii 407. 31 See Akhen gam zeh musar Elohim (­This too is the sweeping scourge, 1904), quoted below, pp. 31–2. 32 Weizmann (­1968: i 37). 33 Elon (­1975: 325). 34 Clemenceau (­1898: 108); Poliakov (­­1965–​­85: iv 64). 35 Marrus (­1980: 245). 36 In Shoffman (­1952: iv 141). 37 On Spire, see p. 12 above. 38 Bialik portrayed a­ nti-​­Semitic nations in which Jews sought to assimilate as vampires. See p. 31 below. 39 ­Bi-​­Yme ­ha-​­ra’ash (­Earthquake Days, 1894). Mendele Mocher Sefarim (­1947: 406). 40 Mandelstam (­1986: 6). 41 In Chazan and Raphael (­1974: 167). 42 Avdut ­be-​­tokh Herut (­Slavery Amidst Freedom, 1991), (­A had Ha’am 1953: ­68–​­9). 43 The incendiary role of the Church at Easter was a major historical factor in the many outbreaks of a­ nti-​­Semitic violence in the Spring, including those in ­1903–​­06, described by Bialik in his poetry. Russian ­a nti-​­Semitism and the

The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair  41 pogroms account for the alienation from Russia in Jewish literature. However, in other poems and in his aggadic autobiography, Safiah (­A ftergrowth), Bialik depicts the Ukrainian landscape in which he spent his early years as a paradise of the imagination. See p. 122 below. Affection for the lands of exile ( ­golus) is not forgotten. Bialik, for example, exults in the Russian seasons, Tchernichowsky delights in the beauty of southern Russia, and Greenberg acknowledges the reluctance of Polish Jews, despite murderous ­a nti-​­Semitism, to renounce the charming land of their childhood and of their ancestors. See Aberbach (2013: 101–02). 44 On the depiction of rising ­anti-​­Semitism in Hebrew literature, ­1881–​­1948, see ­Chapter 7 below. 45 On Mendele’s loyalty to Russia, see Aberbach (­1993). 46 ­Bi-​­Ne’arenu uviZkenenu Nelekh (­With Our Youths and Our Old People We Will Go, 1881), Gordon (­1973: 11). 47 Lieven (­2002: 277). 48 Ahad Ha’am (­1953: ­85–​­6). 49 On European Jewish patriotism, see Aberbach (­2013). 50 Akhen gam zeh musar Elohim (­T his too is the sweeping scourge, 1904), Bialik (­2004: 104). Pithom and Rameses = cities built by the enslaved Israelites in Egypt (­Exodus 1: 11); using your children as bricks: The use of children as bricks appears in a number of aggadot, such as the one on Exodus 2: 24, ‘­A nd God heard their groaning’: ‘­Pharaoh’s butchers would use the Israelites as mortar in the ­walls – ​­and the Holy One, blessed be He, would hear their cries’. In another midrash, the angels in heaven try to persuade God not to drown the Egyptians in the sea. The angel Gabriel fetches a brick with a baby sunken into it and declares to God that this was the way the Egyptians treated the Israelites. On Bialik’s use of aggadah (­legend) in his poetry, see C ­ hapter 6. The imagery in Bialik’s poem might also allude to the blood libel at a time when such calumnies still occurred, except that in reality Jews were the victims, and the accusations against them were based on lies. At the time of the blood libel against Mendel Beilis in 1­ 911–​­13, the respected Russian Duma deputy, Nikolai Markov, gave a speech accusing the Jews of ritual murder and predicting mass killing of Jews. 51 Ahad Ha’am (­1953: 386). 52 Ibid., 296. 53 Baron (­1964: 208). 54 Babel (­1974: 222). 55 Ibid., 225. 56 Bialik (­1938: ii 1). 57 Ibid., 230. 58 The line ‘­A nd no star will know my burial place’ alludes to the final paragraph in the Five Books of Moses, describing Moses’ death. The substitution of ‘­no star’ for ‘­no man’ might be taken to undercut the authority of the G ­ od-­​­­in-​­hiding whose control over the world is no more dependable than predictions through the stars. At the same time, the poet expresses a death wish that comes increasingly to dominate his poetry until his shtika (­silence) which began in 1911. See pp. 154–​­8 below. 59 Bialik (­1938: ii 9). 60 Veidlinger (­2009: ­96–​­7). 61 Gartner (­2001: 245). 62 Ansky (­2002: xvii). The pogroms, however, turned Ansky into a Zionist; Bialik translated his play, The Dybbuk, into Hebrew (­1918), and this became a staple of Habimah, the first modern Hebrew theatrical company, first in Moscow then,

42  The Jews under Tsarist rule: between hope and despair from 1926, in Tel Aviv. For Ansky’s correspondence with Bialik, see Ungerfeld (­1974: 24, 30). 63 Among Russian groups supporting Jewish rights were the medical association in St. Petersburg and the Society for Popular Education in Poltava in 1904. See Veidlinger (­2009). 64 Frankel (­1981: 52). 65 Slezkine (­2004: 224). 66 Babel (­2002: 671) 67 Rayfield (­2004: 74, 423). 68 Speech in Kovno, 1920 (­Bialik 1935: i 157). 69 Deutscher (­1959: 258). 70 Pasternak (­2002: 22). 71 Ibid., p­p. ­117–​­8. 72 Ignatieff (­2000: 147). 73 On Bialik’s condemnation of Russian Jewish cultural assimilationists, see p. 31 above.

2 Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire

O architect, with your marvellous creation… beware of me! (­P ushkin, ‘­The Bronze Horseman’)

Bialik became a Jewish national poet in a m ­ ulti-​­ethnic Tsarist Russian empire in which the Jews were among a group of subjugated p ­ eoples – Poles, ​­ Ukrainians, Finns, Armenians, Slavs, among ­others – each ​­ with a separate history and identity, language, and literature and each hoping for independence. The empire sought unity through the force of its army, the largest in Europe, through its state religion, Russian Orthodoxy, and its policy of Russification. This policy conflicted with the spirit of the age. National literatures flourished in the Tsarist empire after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars which spurred national cultures and vernacular languages throughout Europe, and frequent revolts.1 From the time of Nicholas I until the 1917 revolution, the Russian army kept separatism in check. All, including the Jews, came under pressure of Russification, and all resisted, in the case of the Poles, violently, erupting in two revolts, in 1830 and 1863. In an empire consisting mostly of illiterate peasants, the Jews stood out in their ancient tradition of literacy, mostly in Yiddish and Hebrew, which strengthened their resistance to Russification. National poets in the Tsarist empire were major figures in their respective countries. Among those most closely associated with independence struggles are: Adam Mickiewicz (­­1798–​­1855) in Poland, Elias Lönnrot (­­1802–​­84) in Finland, Taras Shevchenko (­­1814–​­61) in Ukraine, Hovannes Toumanian (­­1869–​­1923) in Armenia, and Yanka Kupala (­­1882–​­1942) in Belarussia; the Slavs, scattered in the empire, had the p ­ an-​­Slavic poet Jan Kollar (­­1793–​­1852). Like Bialik, they have been widely taught in school curricula, studied and sung, remembered and honored in buildings and streets, statues and money, and in many other ways. Celebrities at home, in foreign lands they are, like Bialik, largely unknown, neglected even in the scholarship on nationalism. Under Tsarist rule, Bialik became a Jewish national poet in historical conditions identical or parallel to those of many other national poets: in an

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-3

44  Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire authoritarian empire beset with growing violent upheaval and struggling, with only limited success, to adapt to massive change while preserving its unity.2 National poets in the Tsarist empire were immersed in the history, myth, and legend of their people; they were committed to education as essential to national growth, and to the revival of their national language; they often found fault with their own people, in quest of moral reform; for each, the national struggle was hard: none lived to see independence. Though singled out for persecution, the Russian Jews could not help but share the suffering of all minorities subjugated under Tsarist rule. Toumanian’s ‘­The Armenian Grief’ defining to many Armenians the survival of national identity under oppressive foreign rule, has many echoes in Bialik’s poetry: Armenian grief is an endless sea a great dark sea of ­pain –​­ and my soul travels that black sea with no aim.3 As Lönnrot did with Finnish myth in The Kalevala (­translated into Hebrew by Bialik’s contemporary, Saul Tchernichowsky), Bialik adapted Jewish myths and legends in the creation of a modern vernacular national culture: notably in poems such as Dead of the Desert (­1902) and Scroll of Fire (­1905) and also in his retellings of rabbinic stories about King David and King Solomon (­And It Came to Pass, 1934). Shevchenko, provocatively resisting Russification, asserted the sacredness of the Ukrainian language as Bialik did with Hebrew: Learn, brothers! Think, read, to neighbours’ gifts pay h ­ eed –​­ but don’t neglect your own: for he who forgets his mother is punished by God alone.4 Like Bialik, too, Shevchenko and other national poets in the Tsarist empire, including Kollar, were devoted to the Bible as an archetypal national document of their people, in their language. The Bible was venerated even in the remotest parts of the Tsarist empire. Bialik, though, knew the Bible in the original Hebrew.5 Alongside Hebrew, the languages of national poetry in the Tsarist empire, including Russian, were striplings: they went back no further than the arrival of Christianity in the Middle Ages, at least a 1,000 years after the books of Isaiah and Job and the Psalms were written. Bialik was working in a Hebrew poetic tradition with a continuous growth over a 3,000 year ­period  – ​­long before the emergence of Christianity (­1st and 2nd century CE) and Islam (­7th century CE) – ​­including over a 1,000 years of statehood and Hebrew creative growth in the land of Israel prior to the Roman destruction of the Jewish state in 70 CE.6 Bialik and his poetry are

Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire  45 a living link with all previous epochs of Hebrew literature; and his mastery was such that he could write in the style of each.7 Poets under Tsarist rule did their part in the ultimate fall of the empire in 1917. Spurred by the egalitarian ideology of the French Revolution, poets proclaimed in their different languages and traditions that their nations, tired of imperial rule, were set on freedom. Poets rediscovered (­or invented) and taught their national history, language, and education. Asserting cultural independence, their poetry was political, its originality a mark of national distinction. They sought freedom in history and myth, in revivals of ­long-​­disparaged or neglected languages. They asserted as elsewhere the cultural and psychological independence of separate national groups, anticipating political independence. The dissident poet was often a leader and figurehead in national independence struggles and, not infrequently, deeply involved in the political, religious and educational life of the country. Some poetic works, such as Lönnrot’s The Kalevala (­1835), or Shevchenko’s The Kobzar (­1840), are practically declarations of independence, from the Tsarist empire, as are Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’.8

Antecedents: national poetry in Tsarist Russia The origins of Hebrew national literature may be found in oral traditions, in ancient Israel, and in ­post-​­biblical legal and homiletic traditions; national poetry in the Tsarist empire after 1789 has more recent antecedents. Much oral poetry and song, including eastern European epic poetry, has medieval origins, in longstanding local border and religious d ­ isputes – the ​­ Orthodox Christian empire of Tsarist Russia versus the declining Muslim Ottoman empire. From the 14th to the 17th century, Ottoman conquests threatened Christian Europe, triggering much vernacular poetry of emerging nationalism: for example, in epics by Ivan Gundulic (­­1588–​­1638) in Croatia, Nicholas Zrinyi (­­1616–​­64) in Hungary, Waclaw Potocki (­­1625–​­94) in Poland, and Mikhail Lomonosov (­­1711–​­65) in Russia. Gundulic’s epic poem Osman (­1626), set against the battle of Khotin (­1621) in which the P ­ olish-​­Lithuanian army drove back the invading Turks, glorifies the struggle of Christianity against Islam.9 The millennium of Muslim efforts to conquer Europe, and its control at various times of many parts of Europe, threatening the rest, is the background to the rise of much European n ­ ationalism – ​­and Jewish nationalism, t­oo – particularly ​­ in Spain, Judah Halevi’s Hebrew poems of ­Zion – was ​­ triggered by this conflict.10 From the French revolutionary era onward, Balkan poets hoped for Russian military intervention in support of independence from the Ottoman empire, but nations subjugated by the Tsarist empire had little hope of breaking away.

Hebrew under Tsarist rule Hebrew under Tsarist rule had a status different from that of other national languages as it had historic roots not in territory ruled by the Tsars but

46  Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire in the ancient land of Israel. In opposing Russification and asserting national distinctiveness in their own languages, national poets in lands ruled by the Tsars, in Poland, Finland, Ukraine, and elsewhere sought independence from Russian rule; they were inherently and at times openly subversive. Hebrew posed no such threat: in the Haskalah era from the 1820s to 1881, Russian authorities saw Hebrew more as a tool of secular education promoting Russification than a potential spur to Jewish nationalism. Only after the pogroms of 1881 did Hebrew became an integral part of Jewish nationalism. Until 1881, as we have seen, Hebrew poets spoke for Russian patriotism, despite Russian ­anti-​­Semitism.11 Yet, the Haskalah for all its assimilationist aims, did at times communicate Jewish national longings: in Hebrew, this was perhaps inevitable, and the ­often-​­slavish dependence of Haskalah literature on biblical sources could not help but call up ancient national associations. Judah Leib Gordon in particular introduced in his poetry Jewish nationalist elements such as alienation and violent revolt against authority and r­estraints  – ​­typical of national movements.12 At a time of increased conscription during the Polish revolt of 1863, Gordon attacked his people as unfit for military service: ‘­You’re ruined, Israel:/­you did not learn the art of war’.13 To Gordon, Jews were d ­ uty-​­bound to assimilate in Tsarist Russia; yet his use of Hebrew and attacks on his people inadvertently gave his poetry a national character and contributed to the rise of Jewish nationalism. To Bialik, Gordon was a giant of Hebrew literature.14

Mickiewicz and Polish nationalism The exemplar of modern Polish nationalism was Mickiewicz, a Lithuanian Pole born under Russian occupation during the Napoleonic era. Mickiewicz never forgot the stirring sight of Napoleon’s army marching in 1812 on the road to Moscow, bringing freedom, so it seemed, to the Poles and other oppressed peoples. He set his epic Pan Tadeusz in ­1811–​­12 to fix permanently in Polish culture this moment, when the invasion of Russia was joined by tens of thousands of Poles who saw Napoleon as their messiah: ‘­We shall be Poles once more!…./­our Land will be restored!’15 After the French defeat, the poet went on to study at the University of Vilnius and taught in Kovno, where he published his first book of poems. Banished to Russia for membership in a secret Polish nationalist group, Mickiewicz fled to France in 1829, after publication of Konrad Wallenrod, a thinly disguised allegory of Poland’s struggle with Russia which made his reputation as Poland’s national poet.16 Wallenrod is a 14th century Lithuanian kidnapped with Halban, a bard, by Teutonic Knights at war with Lithuania. Halban’s song revives Wallenrod’s national hopes, as Mickiewicz hoped his poetry would do among the Poles. Wallenrod becomes Grand Master of the ­K nights – ​­and leads them to defeat. Tormented by guilt at his treachery, Wallenrod kills himself.17 Halban preserves Wallenrod’s heroic tale in song. In the Polish rising of November

Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire  47 1830, the poem’s political implications were clear: ‘­Every class, women and youths, the army and civilians drank in this great and patriotic poem with boundless enthusiasm’.18 Mickiewicz arrived from France to take part in the revolt to find that it had already been crushed. He then returned to the West and wrote Pan Tadeusz in Paris, with a hopelessly melodramatic prediction of Poland surfeited with slaughter, drenched in the blood of its dead foes.19 Pan Tadeusz can be read as a literary ‘­v ictory’ over Russia. Ending before Napoleon’s defeat, it freezes the moment of hope together with all that makes Polish identity.20 The poem was music to the ears of thousands of Polish expatriates who, like Mickiewicz, found refuge in Paris after the failed 1830 revolt, and whose national existence was suspended. In the Epilogue of Pan Tadeusz, Poland is described as dead and buried: the poem will resurrect it. In future, knights in a free Poland will recall its former glory in song; in the meantime, there is the poem. Mickiewicz attacks Poles who degrade the nation by assimilating into foreign cultures, neglecting their own. In Book IX, he satirizes the Polish traitor Major Plut who, like other Poles, has changed his name and become both Russified and a Russian lackey, joining the Russian army to be comically exposed in his cowardice by the fighting Poles. Pan Tadeusz, published in Paris, out of reach of the Russian censor and set in a remote Polish ­estate – ​­‘­the center of our Polish ways’21 – ​­is practically a handbook of Polish types and customs and instruction on how to be a Pole and a Polish Romantic: how to dress, eat, behave socially, to court, duel, hunt, fight, dance the p ­ olonaise – ​­even how to gather mushrooms and make Polish coffee. The poem ends with a magnificent banquet which follows instructions in a book on medieval Polish customs, ‘­W hen Poland still knew happiness and power’.22 This book, like the poem itself, will continue to guide Poles who value their traditions. Pan Tadeusz gives a marvelously detailed, psychologically rich and often comic portrait of a whole, harmonious Polish society about to be crushed by Russia. The poem has a strong ­anti-​­Russian undercurrent. Tadeusz, the young man of the title, is born at the time of the 1794 Polish revolt and named after Kosciusco, leader of the revolt. The bear hunt in Book IV, like a similar scene in The Kalevala, is an implied attack on ­bear-​­Russia.23 Feuding among Poles stops with the prospect of war with Russia: ‘­The Polish Commonwealth will bloom again’.24 Even the assassination of the Tsar is imagined.25 Pan Tadeusz reaches its absurd climax when a garrison of Russian soldiers hiding in a collapsing cheese house is chivalrously routed by Polish patriots.26 This ­morale-​­boosting vision of military victory had no basis in political reality, and perhaps this is why Mickiewicz and his poem meant so much to Poland.

Lönnrot and Finnish nationalism In 1835, the year after Pan Tadeusz came out, the Finnish ethnographer Lönnrot published The Kalevala.27 Finland, annexed by Russia in 1809,

48  Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire remained under Russian rule until 1917. The Kalevala more than anything else in Finnish culture gave national pride and ­self-​­esteem as Finland’s ‘­book of independence’.28 The poem describes the exploits of Finnish heroes in a mythological world of magic, witches, song, stirring conflict, and adventure. The Kalevala radiates a distinctive Finnish character and outlook and had enormous political importance. Elements of national d ­ istinctiveness –​ F ­ innish myths and legends, the Finnish language and c­ ulture – combined ​­ to assert Finland’s cultural independence both from Russia and from Sweden, Finland’s ruler from the 12th century until 1809, whose culture still dominated Finland. The Kalevala was written at a time when Finnish was generally regarded as inferior to Swedish or Russian.29 When Tsarist Russia collapsed in 1917, Finland declared political independence, but The Kalevala was, in a deeper sense, its true declaration of independence. Finland celebrates Kalevala Day on 28 February, the date of Lönnrot’s 1835 Preface to the first edition of The Kalevala.

Shevchenko and Ukrainian nationalism From the 1830s, Shevchenko’s poetry roused Ukrainian national consciousness and promoted unity and moral regeneration in the struggle for independence from Russia. Ukraine, Shevchenko believed, must look inwardly for strength to break its chains: independence was not enough, it needed to create a just society.30 Somewhat incongruously, the poet elevates the Cossacks as models of Ukrainian heroism. He rages against t­ raitors – ​­particularly Ukrainian ­landlords – ​­who ‘­crucify the mother’ and suck her blood, as well as cultural ‘­traitors’ who abandon the sacred Ukrainian mother tongue.31 Shevchenko’s mockery of the Tsar and his wife and his championship of Ukrainian cultural independence led to his exile to Siberia and consequent elevation as Ukraine’s national poet. As Russia had cruelly subjugated Ukraine, Ukrainian nationalists such as Shevchenko did not always acknowledge the positive role of Russians in promoting Ukrainian culture. Shevchenko attacks Russians such as the critic Belinsky who mocked Ukrainians as uncultured and Ukrainian as a dead language;32 but in fact, many Russians were fascinated by the ‘­wild frontier’ of Ukraine, by its history and folklore.33 The leading promoter of early 19th century Ukrainian literature was a Russian, Izmail Sreznevsky. Russian journals published Ukrainian literature. Shevchenko himself had crucial support from ­Russians in his metamorphosis from serf to distinguished poet and artist.34 Still, Russians were generally unwilling to accept the legitimacy of Ukrainian nationalism and the justice of Ukrainian independence, and their support for Ukrainian literature was seen as ‘­an enrichment of general Russian culture’.35 Shevchenko pointedly dedicated several of his poems to prominent Ukrainian writers, including Kotliarevsky, Hrebinka, and Osnovianenko, with the aim of encouraging Ukrainian against encroaching Russification.

Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire  49

Kollar and ­pan-​­Slavic national poetry Shevchenko’s dismissal of p ­ an-​­Slavic nationalism36 was not unjustified. This nationalism had no ­agreed-​­upon past or, it seems, future, though individual Slavic countries eventually gained independence. Jan Kollar, pastor of the Slovak Lutheran community in early 19th century Budapest and chief poet of ­pan-​­Slavism, sang of a glorious future for the Slavs and hoped futilely for Slav independence from Russia.37 Even so, ­pan-​­Slavic poetry helped undermine Russian imperial rule. As a student at the University of Jena, Kollar was enthused by the French Revolution and German Romanticism, by Herder and Hegel. Kollar’s work was part of a revival of Slavic cultural and national ­self-​­awareness in the 19th century, under the impact of the Revolution.38 Hebrew nationalists such as Bialik had palpable advantages over Slavophile nationalists such as Kollar. Slav nationalists such as Kollar admired the strengths of B ­ ible-​­based Jewish nationalism. Kollar regarded Judaic influence via the Bible as integral to Slav identity. The ‘­humanitarianism’ of the Slavs was, in Kollar’s view, ‘­a spiritual superiority which naturally dictated a messianic role to them’.39 Some Slavophiles, suspecting that their existing culture was not strong enough, determined to forge the nation, in every sense, using all means available. In ­1817 – ​­much as Macpherson did the ‘­poems of Ossian’ – the ​­ poet Vaclav Hanka, archivist in the Museum of Bohemia, ‘­discovered’ first an ancient manuscript of Slavonic poems (­the ‘­K ralovedorsky Manuscript’), and in the following year, a Czech epic of the 13th century, The Judgment of Libusa (­the ‘­Zelenohorsky Manuscript’, 1818).40 These forgeries of a heroic national identity and a bogus fight for freedom were a popular and scholarly success and made Hanka a national hero. The Czech historian and political leader Frantisek Palacky (­­1798–​ 1­ 876) wrote of his joy and national pride at reading the Zelenohorsky Manuscript after its ‘­discovery’. History became a branch of Slavic myth. In his historical writings, Palacky identified a continuous Slavic identity from the medieval to the modern period and traced modern progressive and liberal Western culture to Slavic influence. In 1823, the Borisov brothers founded a Society of United Slavs in Ukraine. The term ‘­Panslavism’ was coined by the Slovak scholar Jan Herkel in 1826. Around 1840, the Brotherhood of Cyril and Methodius, a society with a similar aim of Slav unity was set up by Vassily Bilozerski and Mikola Kostomarov in Kiev, capital of ancient Rus. Both Kollar and the poet and scholar Pavel Josef Safarik published collections of Slovak national songs: Safarik in 1823 and 1827, Kollar in 1834 and 1835. To Slav nationalists such as Kollar these nationalist stirrings presaged ­pan-​­Slavic unity. Kollar, living in Austria and Hungary, roused some Slavic national awareness and a sense of cultural community. His sonnets, Daughter of Slava (­1824), written mostly in Czech, are poems of hope for unification of all S ­ lavs – Bulgarians, ​­ Croatians, Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Russians,

50  Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire Slovenians, and U ­ krainians  – and ​­ an end of oppressive German influence. Kollar’s aim of cultural unity recalls Bialik’s idea of kinnus  – ​­the ‘­ingathering’ of Jewish diaspora cultural fragments into one national unity. Kollar shared with Bialik a deep ­p essimism – ​­Slavic lands and the Jewish diaspora alike are the graveyard of national ­hopes – ​­but whereas Zionism unexpectedly thrived, ­pan-​­Slavism was indeed wrecked by reality. Kollar’s Lutheran background meant that he belonged to a minority immersed in biblical Czech, a literary language in which the majority, Catholic Slovaks who spoke the vernacular, had no interest.41 He knew national resurrection was unlikely. His hope that ­Slavic – the ​­ speech of ­slaves – would ​­ be a major language of science and the arts, spoken even by enemies of the Slavs, was a pipe dream. Kollar was hesitant to express openly in his poems national Slav identity. Toward the end of his life, as a professor at the University of Vienna, he supported the ­Austro-​­Hungarian monarchy.42 Kollar believed, nevertheless, that the Slavic revival was p ­ ossible – ​­but only if he led it. This was a fundamental difference between Bialik and Kollar: Bialik shunned the idea of being a national l­ eader – yet ​­ paradoxically was far more effective in this role.

Jewish nationalism in the Tsarist empire Jewish n ­ ationalism – the ​­ most ancient European nationalism and the last to find political direction in the 19th ­c entury – ​­emerged in a political and cultural no man’s land between the Tsarist and Ottoman empires, with about 65,000 mostly Russian Jews emigrating to Ottoman Palestine in the period ­1881–​­1914. The strengths of early Zionism came partly from the weaknesses of the Tsarist empire: growing popular discontent in Russia after the serfs were freed in 1861; violent a­ nti-​­Semitism and Jewish disillusionment with Russification and Haskalah ideals after the assassination of the Tsar in 1881. In tandem with the Western political Zionist Organization, founded by Herzl in 1897, cultural Zionism took root in Russia, particularly in Hebrew literature. The instability of the Tsarist empire is memorably expressed by Bialik in a series of poems written during the pogroms of 1­ 903–​­06, instigated in part by the government to divert widespread popular discontent against the Jews: … chaos is all around, all around terrible chaos and no escape.43 Until the 1881 pogroms, the Russian Jews had been quiescent, seemingly oblivious to independence movements in the Tsarist empire. Nationalist stirrings in the empire, particularly in Poland, and Balkan nationalism under Ottoman rule, impressed early Zionists; one of these was Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, of Semlin, Serbia, whose Zionist tract Goral l’Adonai (­1857) anticipated Herzl’s Judenstaat (­1896) (­Herzl’s paternal grandfather Simon was

Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire  51 a disciple of Alkalai’s) and Eliezer ­Ben-​­Yehuda, author of the first modern Hebrew dictionary, who came to Zionism during the period of nationalist fervor created by the R ­ ussian-​­Turkish war of 1­ 877–​­78. The Tsars proved no match for poets of their fragmenting empire, who helped demolish it. Indeed, throughout 19th century Europe, poets with their national sympathies tended to come into conflict with empires. Byron was a model to 1­ 9th-​­century nationalists, and his death fighting the Turks for Greek independence in Missolonghi in 1824 inspired poets such as Petőfi in Hungary, Mameli in Italy, Botev in Bulgaria, and Marti in Cuba, in s­ elf-​ s­ acrifice for the Nation. After the pogroms of 1881, the example of fighting nations began to attract the persecuted Russian Jews, especially young men. The Greeks in particular, both ancient and modern, encouraged the Jewish fighting spirit and poets such as Tchernichowsky, translator of Homer into Hebrew.44 Tchernichowsky, a doctor by profession, found in Greek mythology an antidote to the alleged sicknesses of Judaism.45 The primary literary influence on European national ­cultures  – ​­the ­Bible  – ​­began to reinflame Jewish nationalism. By the time the Russian empire collapsed, poets and their followers had shaped their national cultures into a new, distinctive force with political independence achieved or on the horizon. Jewish nationalism followed in their wake, reawakening the memory of Jewish statehood in the Hebrew Bible, and reviving spoken Hebrew and a dynamic Hebrew literature.

Notes 1 On the Tsarist empire, see Lieven (­2000). On nationalism in countries in the Tsarist empire, see Kedourie (­1960), Hobsbawm (­1990), Gellner (­1983), Hourani (­1991), Breuilly (­1993), Hutchinson (­1994), Cleveland (­1994), Lewis (­1995), Crampton (­ ­ 1997), Mazower (­ 2000), Stavrianos (­ 2000), Smith (­ 2001), Clogg (­2002), and Todorova (­2009). 2 On empires and national poetry, see Aberbach (­2015). 3 Revised from Tolegian (­1979: 159). 4 Revised from Shevchenko (­1961: 256). 5 ‘­A men’ is the same in all languages, but in his poetry Bialik uses the word in the Hebrew of the Pentateuch, the prophets, and psalms: ‘­the forest echoed Amen’. ­Mi-​­Shire ­ha-​­Horef (­Winter Songs, 1904). 6 On Hebrew poetry as a continuum from ancient to modern times, see ­Chapter 4 below. 7 For examples of Bialik’s o ­ ften-​­astonishing versatility, see his Shire Za’am (­Poems of Wrath, ­1903–​­06, e.g. Davar) for the prophetic mode; Megillat ­ha-​­Esh (­Scroll of Fire, 1905) for the midrashic/­aggadic style; Alef Batzlut ­ve-​­Aluf Shum ( Knight of Onions and Knight of Garlic, 1923, 1927), for the style of the medieval Arabic maquama, in which a story is told in rhyme; El ­ha-​­Arye ­ha-​­Met (­To the Dead Lion, 1892) for the Haskalah style with its rhetoric and close attention to rhyme and meter; Shire Am (­Folk Poems) and Shirim ­u -​­Fizmonot ­li-​­L adim (­Poems and Songs for Children, 1933), for a popular style, especially for children’s songs. 8 Russia had national poets of its own, Pushkin above all, expressing yearnings of subjugated peasant peoples with cultures alien to the ruling elite. To be a poet in an autocratic empire often meant to be a progressive and a rebel: Kondraty

52  Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire Ryleyev was hanged in 1826 for his part in the abortive Decembrist uprising against Tsar Nicholas I, Pushkin was exiled. In the Soviet dictatorship, poets were equally vulnerable: many, including Osip Mandelstam, were executed by Stalin. 9 Gundulic’s main Croatian poetic predecessor Marko Marulik (­­1450–​­1524) is similarly concerned with the Islamic threat, notably in his allegorical epic poem Judith (­w ritten 1501, published 1524). 10 On Islam and European nationalism, see Aberbach (­2012). On Judah Halevi, the outstanding Hebrew poet prior to Bialik, see pp. 68, 88–​­9 below. 11 On Jewish patriotism in Russia and elsewhere in Europe, see Aberbach (­2013). 12 On Judah Leib Gordon as national poet, see Kedourie (­1960: 1­ 00–​­1). 13 Gordon (­1973: 109). Mendele makes a similar point satirically in The Travels of Benjamin the Third, first published at the time of the ­Russian-​­Turkish war of 1­ 877–​­78. Yet, Mendele slyly finds an heroic element in Benjamin’s ability to speak eloquently of this alleged disability. 14 On Bialik’s admiration for Gordon, see his poem at the time of Gordon’s death, El ­ha-​­Aryeh ­ha-​­Met (­To the Dead Lion, 1892), and his speech 20 years later (­Bialik 1935: ii 171). Though Gordon’s achievement is indeed impressive, his reputation has been tainted by association with the Haskalah movement, its ­Russian patriotism, and assimilationism. 15 Pan Tadeusz VI 246, 256; (­Mickiewicz 1962: 179). 16 Other ­well-​­known Polish poets in Mickiewicz’s time were Julius Slowacki (­­1809–​ ­49) and Sigismund Krasinski (­­1812–​­59). 17 Bialik’s poem City of Slaughter (­1903), similarly a poem of suicidal despair set in the p ­ ast – ostensibly ​­ during the Cossack massacres of Polish Jews in the seventeenth century but actually referring to the Kishinev pogrom in ­1903 – ​­was also interpreted (­or misinterpreted) by its readers as a poem of national reawakening under Tsarist rule. Both poems, set in the past, evaded Tsarist censorship. 18 Koropeckyj (­2008: 95). 19 On Mickiewicz’s portrait of a triumphant Poland, see pp. 46–​­7 above. Unlike the Greek War of Independence, the Polish revolt of 1830 brought no Great Power intervention and was crushed. 20 Jewish literature has striking precedents for the literary preservation of national victories (­or ‘­v ictories’): over the Assyrians in the books of Kings, Chronicles, and Isaiah; over Babylonia in Jeremiah and Second Isaiah; and over the Syrian Greeks in the Book of Maccabees. 21 Pan Tadeusz VII 453. 22 Ibid., XII 270. 23 Shevchenko, in ‘­A Dream’ (­1844) mocks Tsar Nicholas I as a dissipated bear. Pushkin might be alluding, similarly, to the Tsarist regime in Tatiana’s nightmare of the frightening bear in Eugene Onegin (­Book 5). 24 Pan Tadeusz VII 375. 25 Ibid., 250f. 26 On the Polish ‘­v ictory’ over the Russians, see p. 46 above. 27 On The Kalevala in the context of national mythmaking, see Aberbach (­2015: ­Chapter 2). 28 Wilson (­1976: x). 29 As A.I. Arwidsson put it: ‘­We are not Swedes, we will not become Russians, and so we must be Finns’ (­Preminger 1975: 277). 30 Shevchenko (­1964: ­249–​­50). 31 Ibid., 255, 256. For attacks against ‘­traitors’ in national poetry, see pp. 13, 47 above. 32 On Shevchenko’s call to Ukrainians to revere their own language, see p. 44 above. 33 On Shevchenko in the context of Ukrainian history, see Subtelny (­1988).

Bialik and national poetry in the Tsarist empire  53 34 V.A. Zhukhovsky (­­1783–​­1852), a Russian poet, painter, and a tutor of future Tsar Alexander I, allowed a portrait made of him by K. Briullov to be sold at the court and the proceeds used to free Shevchenko from serfdom, on 22 April 1838. Shevchenko dedicated his poem, Katerina, to Zhukhovsky later that year. 35 Subtelny (­1988: 232). 36 Shevchenko opposed the widespread Czech Slavophil Movement of Enlightenment led by Jan Kollar, who promoted not the revival of Ukrainian culture but spread ‘every Slavic language but your own’ (Shevchenko 1961: 253). 37 On Kollar in the context of independence struggles, see pp. 43–​­4 above. 38 Kirschbaum (­1995: ch. 5). 39 Zamoyski (­1999: 316). 40 Although Jews have no need to fabricate an ancient t­ radition – Judaism ​­ is indeed ­ancient – it ​­ is possible to find Jewish parallels to false attributions of ­18th-​­and ­19th-​­century nationalism in biblical works which attribute authorship to people who cannot be the a­ uthors – ​­for example, many of the Psalms of David date from a period centuries after David; and many chapters in the book of Isaiah clearly date from the l­ ate-​­6th century BCE, long after Isaiah’s death. 41 Ireland, too, had a minority Protestant nationalism, whose greatest poet was Yeats, much to the chagrin of the Catholic majority. See below, pp. 213–​­14. 42 In a similar irony, Macpherson, though a Scottish patriot, became an employee and supporter of the Hanoverian monarchy. 43 For the full poem, see pp. ­8 –9 earlier. 44 See Leoussi and Aberbach (­2002). Abraham Stern, founder of the Stern, the ­Jewish terrorist underground group in Mandatory Palestine, was a trained ­classical scholar. See p. 114, note 9 below. 45 See, for example, Tchernichowsky’s poem to Apollo, quoted p. 109 below.

3 Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible

… and nations shall walk by thy light Isaiah 60: 3

The Hebrew prophets were in many ways forerunners of modern national ­poets – Solomos ​­ in Greece, Mickiewicz in Poland, Shevchenko in Ukraine, Lönnrot in Finland, Yeats in Ireland, and Bialik too. Yet, few poets in literary history, not even Milton or Blake, have been so immersed in the language of the Bible, so decisively influenced and changed by it, and used it so well as Bialik.1 Biblical influence is mostly in translation; Bialik writes in Hebrew, with rare mastery of its vocabulary, poetics, forms, historical associations, and nuances, his strengths in his ‘­prophetic’ poetry, in his poetry of nature and of love. For Bialik, biblical Hebrew is the core of Jewish national identity, his natural home; yet, his individual style is stamped on all his writings. Poets often sought roots of their national identity in the translated Bible; and European national cultures, themselves B ­ ible-​­based, spurred Jews to rediscover the ­Bible  – and ​­ its martial e­ lements  – in ​­ the original Hebrew.2 The Bible as an edited work also anticipates the o ­ ften-​­crucial role of editors of modern national cultures as well as the many scholars and writers re-​­ write, translate, annotate, preserve, publish, and publiwho collect, ­ cize o ­ therwise-​­forgotten national treasures: for example, Thomas Percy in England, Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in Germany, Mikhail Chulkov in Russia, Micah Josef Berdichevsky in p ­ re-​­State Israel, and Eoin MacNéill in Ireland. These might be seen as literary descendants of the anonymous editors of the Hebrew Bible. Bialik’s concept of kinnus (­cultural ingathering) by which fragments of Jewish culture from many ages and lands of exile might be ‘­gathered in’ and unified as a modern secular national culture recalls similar programs by other cultural nationalists: to the Albanian poet Jeronim de Rada, for example, the restoration of folk fragments to unity would unite ‘­the dispersed nation’.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-4

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  55 Why is the Hebrew ­Bible – ​­a Jewish text of the 1st millennium BCE, the basis of the survival of Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Hebrew language, written, edited, sanctified, and preserved entirely by J­ ews – ​­crucially important in the ­much-​­later history of European nationalism? What is it about this ancient text that has spoken to modern national poets? This chapter considers a few major points of intersection between the Bible and modern nationalism, particularly the stress on spiritual survival after defeat.

The Bible and nationalism As a dominant driving force in civilization and the main root of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the Hebrew Bible has authored and nourished national identity and ­religious-​­cultural nationalism: in the belief in the chosenness of the nation and its necessarily moral foundations; unity across divisions of class, geographic dislocation, and cultural assimilation; fierce criticism of and grievance against its enemies, internal as well as external; acceptance of guilt for national failings and defeats and ­grief-​­ridden penitence leading to moral reform; hopes for freedom, regeneration, and the ingathering of exiles; longing for a messianic age of peace among nations; vengeful hatred of oppressors, and readiness to fight and die for the nation, even in a losing battle; interconnection of the personal life with that of the nation.4 The Hebrew Bible foreshadows conflict in national ­identity – between ​­ the individual and the group, chosenness and egalitarianism, the narrowly national and the ­universal – ​­and dangers of ­nationalism – ​­the abuse of power, interminable conflict, undermining of faith. But it also has a dual conception of the nation, with potential for creativity and destruction, good and evil, rebirth and corruption, the ideal and the reality. The Hebrew Bible has the first recorded instances in history of poets speaking truth to power and risking their lives for an ideal. Amos was expelled from Samaria, Jeremiah was imprisoned, and Isaiah ben Amotz, according to legend, was executed, as were many other prophets whose moral teachings challenged the existing order. The Hebrew Bible is the great model of the Nation pickled, as it were, in literature and preserved to survive defeat, failure, and exile. Its vivid stories, characters, ­down-­​­­to-​­earth imagery, rhythmic excitement, and extraordinary range of emotion became an artistic yardstick for Western literature, particularly in English and German translation. The fabulous tale of slaves who rebelled, won freedom, accepted their own laws and sacred scripture and themselves as a new nation, and established their own state has had decisive influence on modern nationalism. In translation, the Psalms and the 15 prophetic books, with their extremes of universal ideals and militant chauvinism, of liberty and violence, of justice and vengeance, are the most influential poetry in cultural history: these sacred texts made the leap from Synagogue to Church and Mosque but also left their mark on secular culture.5

56  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible

Defeat and biblical nationalism The power of the Hebrew Bible was in inverse proportion to the political and military weakness of the people who created it, whose history was one of inner discord, conflict with imperial powers, defeat, and exile. Spanning a period of at least 600 years (­­8th–​­2nd centuries BCE), the Hebrew Bible evolved with the crushing defeat and exile of the two monotheist kingdoms, Israel in 721 BCE and Judah in 587 BCE. Much modern cultural nationalism, too, comes from the experience of defeat and humiliation.6 Jewish survival after defeat was an inspiration to later national movements as was the implied lesson that a national religious culture could be stronger than political and military force. Consequently, many modern nations have learned to preserve memories of heroic cultural struggle after military conquest, strengthening national unity, resolve, and distinctiveness. The Hebrew prophets were, perhaps, the first to recognize that a weak nation can survive by remembering its defeats. The memory of defeat can be a more powerful stimulant of nationalism than victory. The experience of defeat, persecution, weakness, and chaos can teach a nation to treasure their opposites as ideals, to be achieved, if not through politics then through apocalypse. Defeat can steel national identity among peoples who treat the Hebrew Bible as their true heritage, their license of chosenness as the ‘­new Israel’: the Armenians, Hungarians, Irish, Poles, Romanians, Scots, Ukrainians, as well as many Black Africans and Latin Americans, their national identity forged by conquest, slavery, colonization, and/­or exile. The Hebrew Bible infused dissident national literature with great sympathy for the defeated and downtrodden and faith in an ethical power beyond the temporal, giving consolation and hope in a world dominated by ­often-​­cruel, rapacious empires. In the biblical world, however, defeated ­p eoples – ​­even great empires such as Assyria and B ­ abylonia  – were ​­ mostly decimated or destroyed, or they assimilated and died. Their culture was lost or swallowed by other cultures. The Hebrew Bible, unusually, proclaims itself the creation of a defeated people, aristocrats of the spirit, knowing the bitter taste of exile, poverty, and oppression. Defeat is both climax of the biblical narrative and motive for the reunion of the divided kingdom. Defeat meant not extinction but rebirth as a ‘­chosen people’ with a distinct national identity and divine mission, with a covenant stamped in Scripture. In extant ancient near eastern documents, defeat is usually passed over in silence; victory is trumpeted. It seems no ancient people reacted to defeat as the Jews did, as a call to moral renewal. Most unusual was the perspective in exile of a defeated kingdom, Judah, whose people witnessed the fall of ​­ and Babylonia. the two greatest empires the world had yet ­seen – Assyria This does not mean the Jews would not have preferred victory. The first six books of the Hebrew Bible recount Israel’s exodus from slavery in Egypt and the conquest of Canaan. Public readings of Scripture from the time of

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  57 Nehemiah were ritual reminders of victorious struggle against the odds: if ancient Israel could emerge from slavery in Egypt and achieve statehood, why not the exiled, enslaved Jews? The Jews who survived the ­6th-​­century Babylonian exile are the first known example in history of an exiled diaspora community refusing to die. Other ancient p ­ eoples – the ​­ Assyrians, Babylonians, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and Elamites, for e­ xample – ​­believed that if they were conquered so were their gods. These peoples faded from history. In the Bible, though, national defeat is not the defeat of the God of the universe: exile is not the exile of God; conquest by one’s enemies is not the end of the nation but a warning to be heeded, a lesson to be learned, a punishment to be expiated, a defeat given meaning by hope of moral revival and return from exile. Empires fall; nations that keep divine Scripture survive. As a defeated people, the Jews underwent a variety of metamorphoses until modern times but preserved their national identity in sacred texts and memory. Judaism evolved as an ­anti-​­triumphalist religion in which defeat was divine judgment and a challenge to moral renewal. Meanwhile, missionary Christianity brought the Bible to Africa and South America, grafting it on to local cultures in the process of establishing colonial rule. The cultural imperialism represented by the Bible called up deep ambivalence in Third World countries struggling for independence. The Christianity of the empires was often felt as an imposition: ‘­The Church in the colonies is the white people’s Church, the foreigner’s Church’.7 In a famous witticism, ‘­W hen the white man came to our country he had the Bible and we had the land. Then the white man said “­let us pray”. After the prayer, the white man had the land and we had the Bible’. Yet, the bargain was not quite as unfair as that by which native Indians traded Manhattan for a few worthless baubles. The Bible was not just a tool of colonization but also empowered the colonized. The story of the escape of African slaves from bondage and their struggle for independence in the Promised Land was a clarion for liberation, inspiring colonized peoples to do likewise. Many defeated and suppressed peoples embraced this culture not out of identification with the empires that ruled them but, as in the case of European peoples struggling for freedom, with ancient Israel breaking out of slavery. The adoption of biblical faith was a political act: it meant acceptance of a system in which divine rule and messianic hopes are above temporal rule, and every human being, created in God’s image, is equal in the eyes of God.8 In the struggle for independence, imperial colonies and ­ex-​­colonies could draw on biblical authority in asserting cultural distinctiveness and universality, national ­self-​­awareness and s­ elf-​­criticism, and resistance to the oppressor, transforming the legacy of slavery, suffering and hate, as Israel did, into a source of proud collective identity, divine discontent and hope for a better future. The hope, ultimately fulfilled to the astonishment of the ancient Israelites, for the fall of tyrannical empires has evidently left its mark on modern nationalism. Apart from ancient Egypt, the hated, persecutory

58  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible ‘­Other’ in the Hebrew Bible is Mesopotamia, home of the great idolatrous empires of Assyria and Babylonia. Vengeful rage similar to that of the prophet Nahum against Assyria, or Jeremiah against Babylonia, appears in the national culture of defeated peoples such as the Irish, the Scots, the Greeks, the Poles, and the Ukrainians, under the heel of powerful, often ruthless, empires. Outstanding in the expression of rage at oppression is Bialik’s poetry, its volcanic outbursts worthy of the Hebrew prophets: … my fury will smoke after me like a volcano after the eruption…9

The paradox of nationalism and universalism The Hebrew Bible exemplifies the tension, familiar in modern nationalism, between national identity and universal humanity, the sense of being chosen and special on the one hand and being like everyone else and aiming for similar worldwide goals on the other. Biblical poetry is the poetry of one nation but also the poetry of many nations. In particular, several dozen sections of biblical prophecy are addressed to ‘­the nations’.10 By implication, the message of ethical monotheism applies even to those who do not believe in God. Max Weber underlines the universal significance of the Hebrew prophets in suggesting that in some ways, they prepared the ground not just for modern Jewish national identity but in general for the modern world.11 The universality of prophetic poetry is apparent in its emphasis on internal, abstract reality in metaphors and religious concepts, the prophets’ intense social conscience, its violent opposition to magic and superstition, and its criticism of the status quo, which have no parallel in other surviving ancient near eastern texts.12 The prophets were hostile to national distinction as expressed in existing power structures, in monarchy and cultic ritual. In their view, national aspirations are meaningless unless directed by moral ideals based on monotheist faith. Though this faith derives from the land of Israel and the Temple on Mount Zion, it draws the believer away from the confines of the national to look at the world in terms of humanity as a whole. A person’s value rests not on his or her being a member of a nation or tribe but on being human. The messianic ideal of the prophet Isaiah (­2: 4), of weapons transformed by all nations into instruments of peaceful cooperation and productivity, is not the assertion but the dissolution of national separation. It is the harmonizing of the babel of conflicting nations and their unity in common humanity and faith.13 The Hebrew Bible backs radical change, social reform, and transformation of an imperfect world through moral ideals and the imitatio dei. Political and religious movements which teach social justice and compassion, oppose materialism and the unjust distribution of wealth, object to ritual at the expense of spirituality and to the emphasis on the letter of the law rather

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  59 than its spirit, belong to a tradition pioneered by the biblical prophets. ‘­If there is ­justice – ​­let it come now!’ thunders Bialik in ‘­On the Slaughter’, in response to ­anti-​­Semitic violence, theft, rape, and murder, with the full force of ancient prophetic moral imperatives behind him.

The Hebrew Bible, morality, and the nation How did national themes in biblical poetry influence European national cultures? The Hebrew Bible gives moral character and purpose to national identity.14 The prophetic view of the nation, based on a conception of human beings as ‘­little lower than the angels’ (­Psalms 8:5), is subverted by modern forms of exclusive racial nationalism. Israel’s survival is predicated on conduct. Its identity as a chosen people depends on a conviction of moral inferiority, certainly to the divine ideal and at times to other nations. The blunt humble acceptance of shameful imperfection and incompleteness (­which can lead to defeat and exile) can give a nation a moral aim, a basis for community and a reason for survival impossible if it believed arrogantly in its perfection and power. The book of Amos contains some of the earliest written literature to define a concept of national i­dentity – not ​­ just of Israel but of all ‘­chosen’ ­p eoples – ​­in purely moral terms. Amos lived in the last days of the Israelite monarchy, shortly before the Assyrian exile in 721 BCE. To Amos, Israel’s chosenness depends on moral stature. Otherwise, it is no different from other nations: … Are you different from the Ethiopians, children of Israel? For though I took Israel from Egypt I did the same for the Philistines from Cyprus   and Aram from Kir!15 To keep its side of the divine covenant and survive as a nation, Israel must paradoxically transcend nationalism and reach for universal values to fulfill its responsibilities to the poor and the helpless. Israel’s chosenness is defined by the privilege of being aware of its failings: You alone have I known among the families of men: Therefore I will punish you for your sins!16 The prophets regard the individual and the Nation as equally responsible before God. The value of a person and of a nation, and the justification for their continued existence, are measured not by military and political power but by Godly conduct.17 What does the Lord want of you? Only to do justice, to love kindness, to go humbly with your God …18

60  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible The prophets condemn their own people for moral backsliding, materialism, arrogance, and insufficient regard for the sacred values of justice and truth, and for bringing disaster upon the nation. The principle associated with the Magna Carta, of the limitation of the power of rulers, has authority in Scripture: the king was required to write his own copy of Scripture, to ensure he knew the law and obeyed it all the days of his life.19 Prophets attack kings: Nathan condemns David; Elijah denounces Ahab; and Jeremiah lashes out at Jehoiachin for betraying the faith (­the king’s punishment: to be deported by Nebuchadrezzar to Babylonia).20 These examples encouraged national identity based on the belief that, unlike human power, truth and justice are absolute, however humble their origins. Though idolatry could inspire virtue, its gods had human weaknesses. Monotheism, with its impossible divine standard, could drive human beings to imagine and try to create a better world.

War poetry in the Hebrew Bible At the same time, the Hebrew Bible accepts war as part of the human condition. The Bible is the main inspiration to the modern notion that Jews attacked as Jews should fight back as Jews. It is also the chief Hebrew precedent to the militancy of modern poets such as Bialik and Tchernichowsky. Violence is at the climax of the archetypal image of the nation emerging to f­ reedom – ​­the exodus from Egypt. The victory of the escaping slaves glorifies not war but faith. The return to the ancestral homeland in the Hebrew Bible (­as in The Odyssey) is accompanied by violence. The entire history of the monotheist kingdoms is stained with internecine war and war with neighboring kingdoms, ending in defeat and exile. War transforms a tribal society to a militant nation kingdom, with its tribal/­national god. War unites the nation in the age of the Judges: The kings came and fought, the kings of Canaan fought at Ta’anach by the waters of M ­ egiddo –​­ no silver spoil for them! The heavens fought, the stars fought Sisera in their orbits, the river Kishon swept them away, ancient river, river Kishon.   Tread valiantly, my soul! The pounding of horses’ heels went galloping galloping on.21 Even Isaiah, who paints a roseate picture of a world of peace and harmony, of a messianic future when the wolf will live with the lamb, also imagines the annihilation of Israel’s enemies.22 To the great Mesopotamian empires, war was a way of life; much biblical poetry is a record of imperial conquest.

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  61 Unlike other extant ancient literature, the Hebrew Bible does not censor defeat. Rather, it treats defeat as a divine message delivered by the ­enemy –​ ­mainly Assyria and B ­ abylonia  – ​­as the ‘­rod’ of God’s wrath. Uniquely in ancient literature, as we have seen, defeat in the Hebrew Bible galvanizes national consciousness. The destruction of the kingdom of Judah (­early 6th century BCE) is traditionally believed to be the background to the Hebrew book of Lamentations, unflinching in its picture of national humiliation and ­self-​­blame, of guilt at having ‘­abandoned’ God and of desolation at being ‘­abandoned’ by God: On the waste of Mount Zion jackals prowl. But you, Lord, reign forever! Why do you forever forget us? Why do you abandon us? Return us, O God, to you. Let us be restored, as we were …23 Yet, defeat cannot always be faced calmly, as the will of God. Memories of defeat and humiliation in biblical poetry are sometimes filled with lust for revenge. The prophets took comfort in an apocalyptic day of judgment and punishment, not only of Israel but also of its hated enemies.24

Hope of restoration The biblical hope for renewal of national political identity and the return of the ‘­saving remnant’ to their land has had incalculable influence on modern nationalism. In the Book of Hosea, the negation of nationhood [‘­­Not-­​­­my-​­nation’ (­­Lo-​­Ammi)] will be put right when Israel abandons her idolatrous promiscuity to become again ‘­­My-​­nation’ (­Ammi).25 Only then will God abolish war and make a new covenant with all living things. Here again, national realization is possible only in a dream of a future time. For the time being, the prophets of the surviving monarchy of Judah were sharply aware that political power does not last. They had the example not just of the fall of the kingdom of Israel and many other small nations but also the destruction of the Assyrian empire (­the most powerful up to that time) in the late 7th century BCE. The total eradication of Assyria from history taught the prophets the need to strengthen national identity to outlast defeat and exile. A small defeated nation could be ­resurrected – ​­its ‘­dry bones’ could ­live – ​­if it based its survival on moral ideals. After the fall of Judah and the exile of most of its inhabitants to Babylonia in the early 6th century BCE, Ezekiel predicted national rebirth: Son of Man! These bones are the people of Israel. Some say our bones are dry,

62  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible our hope is lost we’re clean cut off. Prophesy! Tell them: I will open your graves and bring you to life. I will bring you back to the land of Israel!26 After the Persian conquest of Babylonia in 539 BCE, the Judean exiles were allowed to return to their homeland and rebuild it. At the time, national revival could be linked to messianic hopes and to apocalyptic visions of Jerusalem not just as a national capital but as a universal one.27

The sociology of biblical nationalism What is the sociological basis of biblical literature as ‘­national’? The Bible is evidently the first literature aimed not at an elite, nor even just at the nation, including its illiterates and those as yet unborn, but also at all nations.28 No extant literature from the ancient world placed more importance upon social welfare and the responsibility of the ­better-​­off toward the poor. The concept of tzedakah (­meaning both righteousness and charity), which originates in the Hebrew Bible, encouraged national consciousness, though it also pointed Judaism in a universalist direction. Israel’s centrality in the ancient trade routes and exile among ­non-​­Jews inclined Judaism to cosmopolitanism and the application of abstract ideals such as liberty, love, justice, and faith to all nations. The idea of mission, of reaching out to ­non-​­believers and their conversion, evidently begins in the Hebrew Bible.29 Much biblical literature was sung or spoken, and biblical poets included Jeremiah, a priest, and Amos, who describes himself as ‘­a shepherd and a dresser of sycamore trees’.30 As biblical works were regarded as sacred long before the canon was fixed, by the beginning of the 2nd century CE, ordinary people (­including, presumably, some women) were familiar with them, either in public recitals or speeches or as part of Temple and, later, synagogue service.31 Much of the Hebrew Bible can be understood by children and recited aloud by illiterates. Even when it was still a Jewish sect, ancient Christianity had little room for narrow nationalism. While the core of the Hebrew Bible is the birth of a nation, the core of the Greek Bible is the expectation of universal messianic redemption. The authors of the Greek Bible, written mostly by the start of the 2nd century CE, believed in the imminent Second Coming. The prophecies in the Hebrew Bible would be fulfilled. The messianic age was at hand. Nations would soon be one family of mankind united in faith, as in Isaiah’s prophecy. When this did not happen, messianic hopes faded and Christian dogma forced a split with Judaism. The Hebrew Bible, in contrast, does not

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  63 assume that the world is about to end. Rather, we must make do with this world, the world of peoples or nations (­amim). As new nations grew and converted to Christianity, the Hebrew Bible (­the ‘­Old Testament’) rose in importance. It satisfied the instinct for ­this-​­worldly national assertion. It expressed the conflict many nations experience between national particularity and a universal ideology of moral values. Above all, it gave the masses a ­ready-​­made portable culture whose beauty, as much as its moral and national content, had ensured its preservation by the Jews and led to its eventual adoption as sacred, even in translation, by a large part of the world’s population. The Church already in the early Christian era took on the identity of the ‘­true Israel’. Ancient Israel became the model for the evolving n ­ ation-​­state in European culture. The survival of ancient nations that translated the Bible into the vernacular (­notably Armenia and Ethiopia around the 5th century CE) underscored the power of biblical nationalism among ­non-​­Jews. The return to the Hebrew Bible in the Renaissance might be seen as the start of modern nationalism.32 Bible translation into the vernacular throughout Europe in the century after the invention of printing by Gutenberg in the 1450s (­translation into German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish, among others) became the chief tool of nation building. ‘­Of all the works published, translations of the Bible were the most important, not only in the history of the Reformation but also in the history of languages’.33 When the Bible was published in the language of the people, a crucial step was taken in the creation of the modern world of nations. It encouraged literacy in a broad c­ ross-​­section of society, reaching, as Erasmus enthused, ‘­the farmer, the tailor, the stonemason, prostitutes, pimps, and Turks’.34 The ancient Jewish intoxication with vernacular Scripture could now be shared by the European masses. The German translation of Luther, a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of Wittenberg, ran into 377 editions by the time of his death in 1546!35 In contrast with the Bible in translation among many European nationalities, the Hebrew Bible was never censored among the Jews. The translation and publication of the Bible in the vernacular was at first an act of heresy, a crime like witchcraft punishable by death. Why? One answer is that translation, by making the content of the Bible clear to the common people, could undermine Church authority. The Church had treated Scripture as being in its control. It blinded the mostly ignorant common people with Latin and Greek. The Latin Vulgate had supreme authority, but most people could not read or understand it. In 1530, Henry VIII prohibited the possession of the Bible in English translation as it could ‘­stir and incense [the people] to sedition and disobedience against their princes, sovereigns, and heads’.36 Vernacular translations of the Hebrew Bible were not just seditious in their time but also had subversive consequences far beyond what was imagined. The Reformation idea of ‘­Scripture alone’ without a clerical intermediary implied not just that people should read the Bible on their own and make up

64  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible their own minds about it but also that, in principle, they could and should think for themselves.37 As a vital part of a humanist education, the Bible was subject to critical study. Resultant theological debate leading to comparative critical Bible editions helped create a climate for secular scientific investigation, including social studies and theories of nation building. In this way, the growth of scientific method in the study of ancient Israel encouraged the historical consciousness of nations. Especially in the age of nationalism during and after the American and French revolutions, nations struggling for independence were often compared with the Jews (­even, ironically, when these nations were known for hatred of Jews). Their political system, directly or indirectly, could not help but be influenced by the Bible. The idea of the covenant between God and Israel (­e.g., Exodus 19: 3­ –​­8) might be seen as a theological precursor of constitutional monarchy, the ‘­consent of the governed’, and the free society.38 The Puritans and, later, revolutionaries in America, France, Italy, and elsewhere, including Washington, Robespierre, and Garibaldi, carried the torch of the prophets. Political revolutionaries brought increasingly secularized ideals of liberty, human rights, and equality into the forefront of what was to become Western democracy.39 Even as the ‘­sea of faith’ retreated in the face of secular enlightenment, the ideological influence of the Hebrew Bible persisted in secular forms.

The Bible and British national identity The vital political role of the British empire as midwife to Jewish nationalism owed much to the recognition of the Hebrew Bible, the ancient national testament of Judaism, as integral to its own identity. In the King James Bible, E ­ nglish-​­speaking peoples had for centuries seen themselves as a ‘­new Israel’; for many people, Israel’s exodus from Egypt was their own hope of independence. Indeed, the chief influence of the Hebrew Bible on modern national identity has been through the English language and literature. The scholars who translated the King James Bible (­1611) ‘­forged an enduring link, literary and religious, between the ­English-​­speaking peoples of the world’.40 The Bible spread with the British empire, and it should not be forgotten that ‘­the British ruled over much the largest and most diverse empire the world had ever known. It extended over every one of the world’s climatic zones, over every inhabited continent and across all the world’s major religions and civilizations’.41 Perhaps no people, apart from the Jews themselves, have so totally absorbed the Bible as the British;42 and this helps to account for crucial points of similarity between the poetry of Bialik and that of poets such as Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats.43 British history is, in a sense, biblical history. Long before the Norman conquest of 1066, the Bible helped unite different, often warring, groups in the British Isles. England, with its distinct, coherent national identity, was centuries ahead of other west

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  65 European societies: the ­A nglo-​­Saxon poem on the battle of Maldon of 991, for example, is an appeal to the nation to stand firm, as Israel did, against invasion.44 After a period of ­French-​­speaking Norman dominance (­­11th–​ 1­ 4th centuries), the Bible was crucial in forging English nationalism. Vernacular and literary English took on new power via William Tyndale’s Bible translation in the early 16th century. Henry VIII’s break with the Church of Rome helped free the Bible from clerical control and gave English Bible translation the royal imprimatur. The English translations of the Hebrew Bible in the 16th and 17th centuries, above all, the King James B ­ ible – ‘­ ​­the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language’45 – were ​­ revolutionary in British (­and European) history and in English literature. The Bible was no longer prohibitively expensive and read exclusively by ­Church-​­dominated Latin readers. It could now be read by the much larger numbers who knew English and could afford cheap printed editions. For these reasons, the English Bible, more than other translations of the Hebrew Bible, had massive influence on the growth of the vernacular among the general population and on English national identity. Between 1560 and 1611, there were over 100 editions of the Bible in English (­including, by 1557, a cheap pocketbook edition), and between 1611 and 1640 there were about 140 editions of the King James Version.46 Tyndale’s translations were milestones in the history of the English language and English national identity. Before Tyndale the English language ‘­was a poor thing, spoken only by a few in an island off the shelf of Europe, a language unknown in Europe’.47 Latin was the main language of educated men. England lagged behind the Continent as translation into English was prohibited by the Constitutions of Oxford of 1­ 407–​­09. Tyndale, a heretic in exile from a s­ till-​­Catholic England, pioneered Bible translation into English, in Cologne and Worms in the 1520s. Tyndale took the revolutionary view (­in fact, the norm in Judaism) that a ploughman could understand the Bible as well as, if not better than, a bishop. George Steiner sums up Tyndale’s importance: ‘­Beyond Shakespeare, it is William Tyndale who is begetter of the English language as we know it … It is Tyndale’s cadences, sonorities, amplitudes and concisions (­he is a master of both) which, via his commanding effect on the Authorized Version, characterize global English as it is spoken and written today. No t­ ranslation-​­act, save Luther’s has been as generative of a whole language’.48 Tyndale’s assistant, Miles Coverdale, printed the first complete Bible in English (­1535), probably in Zurich, dedicated to King Henry VIII. In 1539, a revised version of Coverdale’s Bible was printed and put in every parish church in England. (­Later, Bibles had to be chained to the pews because of their popularity.) For the first time, large numbers of English readers could respond, as the Jews had done for 2,000 years, to the full literary splendor of biblical stories and poetry. Coverdale’s translation of the Psalms is the ­best-​­known and, to many, ­best-​­loved poetry in English. It was incorporated into the Book of Common Prayer

66  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible (­1662), which was used each day:49 ‘­Even in their obscure moments they have the mellow beauty of some ancient, familiar window with slightly jumbled glass’.50 Most notable English poets between Wyatt and Milton tried their hand at translation from the Psalms. In this way, the Hebrew Bible largely determined British national identity, not just through its content but also through its language. It gave Shakespeare and all later English writers their chief model of literary excellence. Many biblical phrases became so assimilated into the English national heritage that their origin was often forgotten. If, for example, you stand at the parting of the ways, are in jeopardy of your life, play the fool, set your house in order, harden your heart, love your neighbor as yourself or turn the other cheek, you are quoting from the Hebrew Bible translated into English. If you believe the race is not to the swift; or that love is strong as death; feel like a voice crying in the wilderness, a still small voice; are slow of speech or slow to anger at those who multiply words without knowledge. If you are full of sour grapes, do not see eye to eye with your friends or put your trust in princes, you are using Hebrew expressions. If you believe that the leopard cannot change his spots, that you must cast your bread upon the waters, that for everything there is a season or that if you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind, you are using Hebrew imagery. If you escape by the skin of your teeth, you believe that if you spare the rod you spoil the child or that you have punished a scapegoat, you are quoting from the Hebrew. Examples can by multiplied a hundredfold, not just in English but in all the languages into which the Bible was translated. In modern times, Bialik and other Hebrew poets had this wealth of biblical idiom in the original, allowing them to create an exceptionally powerful and expressive instrument of national culture. In a Protestant Britain where Church and State were one, current history was understood in light of ancient Jewish history, and the nation was ideally the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Major events (­coronations, marriages, wars, deaths, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the English Revolution) were commonly identified with biblical texts, especially the 150 psalms, recited once a month. To Tyndale, England and ancient Israel were one: ‘­As it went with their kings and rulers, so shall it be with ours. As it was with their common people, so shall it be with ours’.51 Many English kings were commonly identified with biblical kings, Henry VIII as David, for example, or Edward VI as Josiah.52 In particular, the Geneva Bible of 1560 ‘­was the source book for public and personal lives in Britain, and a motor that drove revolution’.53 Oliver Cromwell treated the Geneva Bible as a guide in war, revolution, and statecraft.54 English ­l iterature – ​­Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, ­Milton – ​­is packed with biblical themes and allusions. Particularly in the Elizabethan period, and in the time of the English revolution in the 17th century (­in some ways a model for later revolutions), the Bible was the chief inspiration of nationalism. In the age of Elizabeth, an English population of under

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  67 six million bought half a million copies of the Bible.55 The imperialism of the E ­ lizabethans – the ​­ ‘­ancestor of modern nationalism’56 – ​­is reflected in their literature, notably Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (­1590, 1596) in which corrupt Catholic Spain and Ireland are set  allegorically against the ‘­true Israel’ of the Protestant Church. Spenser is described by Adrian Hastings as ‘­an ­out-­​­­and-​­out English Protestant nationalist’ and The Faerie Queene is described as ‘­the quintessence of Elizabethan nationalism’.57 Celebrating the union of England and true religion under the sovereignty of Elizabeth, it is ‘­a work of reconciliation between old Englishness and new Englishness, a closing of ranks between the “­Merrie England” which Catholics claimed had been lost with the Reformation and the Protestant gospel’.58 Spenser transforms the war between Protestant England and Catholic Spain into myth, the divine Una, the true universal English Church and its virgin empress Elizabeth I, opposed to Duessa, the satanic Roman Church. In Book I, after his struggle with moral impurity, the saintly Red Cross ­K night  –​ S ­ t. George the dragon killer, symbol of England, defender and future husband of ­Una – ​­arrives ­Moses-​­like at the top of a holy mountain where he glimpses the heavenly Jerusalem and the likeness of its earthly counterpart, ­Cleopolis (­London): The new Hierusalem, that God has built For those to dwell in, that are chosen his …59 England’s identification with Israel reached its height during the ­m id-​­17th century Puritan revolution, whose outstanding poet was Milton. The revolution was driven by the r­eligious-​­nationalist ideology and fervor of the prophets, by ­self-​­identification as a chosen people with a divine covenant and messianic hopes, a love of liberty and opposition to overweening monarchic rule. Milton read the Bible in Hebrew. Among Milton’s earliest writings were translations of Psalms 114 and 136, which relate Israel’s escape from slavery to freedom. The motif of freedom would later become central in Milton’s poetry, including Paradise Lost, and in his political works supporting Cromwell and the revolution. Milton’s English nationalism derives mainly from the Hebrew Bible and the idea of a ‘­national community bound by C ­ ovenant-​­bonds to its divine king’.60 The last book of Paradise Lost includes a prophecy of the birth of the nation of Israel, to which England would be heir. Though strongest in the 17th century, the influence of the Bible on the English language and on British nationalism predominated until the 20th century.61 In his translation of the Psalms in 1719, Isaac Watts was moved to replace ‘­Israel’ with ‘­Great Britain’.62 Burns was taught to read mainly from the Bible. Coleridge, in the Biographia Literaria (­1817), points out that fine English is less likely to come from scholars, whose style is artificial and burdened with linguistic knowledge, than from those who regularly read the Bible.63 Byron’s Hebrew Melodies reflect similar identification with the

68  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible world of the Bible.64 To Blake, immersed in biblical prophetic imagery, the visionary ideal of England is a ‘­new Jerusalem’: I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.65 Biblical influences saturate Victorian literature and the poetry of Kipling, ‘­ poet of empire’,66 and even modernists such as D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot.67 **** If the Bible in translation could give the English, Americans, Germans, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavians, Poles, Hungarians, Africans, Latin Americans, etc., a sense of chosenness in their ‘­new Jerusalem’, how much more could the Bible in the original Hebrew stimulate national identity among the Jews. Rabbinic Judaism for the most part facilitated the nationalism of longing; yet action was always latent in Jewish tradition. Among medieval Hebrew poets, Judah Halevi (­c. 1­ 075–​­1140) stands out as an outspoken poet of Jewish national identity, illustrating the continuing potential power of biblical nationalism among the Jews at the time of the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099: ‘­I’d lightly leave the good of Spain/­to see the Temple’s dust again’.68 When in 1666, the false messiah, Shabbetai Zevi, declared that the age of redemption had come and that he was the messianic savior of his people, Jews throughout the world began to prepare to return to the Promised Land. The dream of the lost homeland and hope for national regeneration are consistent motifs in Hebrew poetry from the Bible to modern times. The continuing influence of this poetry was ensured by the inclusion of much of it in the Jewish liturgy.

Supersession In finding their national identity in the Bible, poets of many different countries have affinities with Bialik; yet, Jewish nationalism was generally discounted in Christian Europe. The nations of Europe saw themselves as the elect heir to Judaism, now a fossil. The Jews could live on purely as a token of the supremacy of the Church, damned in the eyes of God as murderers of the savior, identified with contemptible material existence devoid of spirituality, having no original cultural development of their own, subject to hatred and persecution. As guardians of a crushed religion, the Jews were the most reluctant of European nationalists, among the last to emerge from the world of the Middle Ages and to discover their national identity. Initially, the growth of universalist secular Enlightenment encouraged not Jewish

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  69 nationalism but political loyalty of Jews to the countries in which they lived. The granting of emancipation to many European Jews in the 80 or so years after the French Revolution and the spread of secular enlightenment, led to their assimilation and upward social mobility.69 Assimilated Jews were generally willing to trade their albatross identity as a chosen, persecuted people for equality and human rights. The French Jews, for example, introduced a ‘­Prayer for France’ into their prayerbook, identifying France as God’s chosen nation: ‘­France is of all countries the one which You seem to prefer, because it is the most worthy of You’.70 Throughout Europe, Jews sought emancipation in the hope that citizenship and equal rights would protect them from the J­ ew-​­hatred that for centuries had blighted their lives in Christian countries. ­Nineteenth-​­century European nationalism, however, precipitated new, dangerous forms of a­ nti-​­Semitism, in which even conversion to Christianity could not eradicate the wickedness of the Jew, which was in the blood.71 Even France, with its enlightened revolutionary ideals, was infected by J­ ew-​ h ­ atred. In these circumstances, political Zionism was forced upon the Jews, who then discovered its overwhelming power of regeneration: ‘­The force we need,’ wrote Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization in 1897, ‘­is created in us by ­anti-​­Semitism’.72 Among Hebrew poets, Tchernichowsky, stirred by the example of modern poets such as Byron, and more deeply by the biblical King Saul, articulated the new reality: Jews would have to fight to survive. In Bialik, Hebrew prophetic poetry comes full circle: the revival of a dormant biblical national militancy in the original Hebrew that for hundreds of years had been largely the province of rising European nations in vernacular languages decisively influenced by translations from the Bible. After 1789, many European Jews had sought assimilation into these nations, finding hatred, persecution and ultimately genocide. In despair and rage, Bialik stands apart from most other modern national poets: he asserts instead a revived Jewish nationalism, based ironically on the same biblical heritage of European nationalism, in the original Hebrew text. Bialik’s poetry asserts the creative force of Jewish national identity, denied in Christian Europe. Bialik’s poetry affirms biblical literary power as a living, if mostly unacknowledged, force in modern political, social, and cultural life.

Notes 1 For a ­book-​­length list of biblical allusions in Bialik’s poetry, see Avital (­1951). For comparable compendia of biblical usage in literature, see Jasper and Prickett (­1999) and Atwan and Wieder (­2000). 2 The modern rediscovery of the Hebrew Bible via n ­ on-​­Jewish literatures and languages has a precedent in the Middle Ages, when Muslim fascination with the sacred language of the Koran inspired Jewish linguists and grammarians to a renewed interest in biblical language, its grammar and aesthetics. 3 Pipa (­1978: 23).

70  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible 4 Smith (­1991: 50) sums up the importance of the Hebrew Bible in the growth of nationalism: ‘­The profound consequences of the concept of a chosen people, and the passionate attachment to sacred languages and scriptures proved to be an enduring legacy for many peoples from late antiquity to modern times, sustaining their sense of uniqueness and nurturing their hopes of regeneration.’ See also Novak (­1995) and Smith (­1998, 2003) as well as the Introduction, pp. 12–13. On England and America as ‘­chosen peoples’, see Longley (­2002). For fuller accounts of national aspects of biblical literature, with bibliography, see Walzer (­1985), Aberbach (­1993), Kidd (­1999), and Grosby (­1999). 5 Though much modern cultural nationalism is true to the idealistic international spirit of the Hebrew prophets, there is also significant divergence from the biblical source in setting the Nation above moral principles. The adoption and perversion in the name of Christianity of the concept of chosenness, dependent in the Hebrew Bible on moral behavior, has brought national conflict, racist ideology, and the Holocaust. On the 19th century shift in perception of nationalism from the Left to the Right, from a vision of tolerance and international brotherhood to increasing rivalry and hostility among nations culminating in World War I, see Aberbach (­2015). 6 According to Kedourie (­1960), modern nationalism starts with Germany’s defeat by Napoleon at Jena in 1806. Kedourie, however, does not recognize that defeat characterizes certain forms of p ­ re-​­modern nationalism, notably that in the Hebrew Bible. 7 Fanon (­1983: 32). 8 Biblical messianism has had f­ ar-​­reaching influence on modern nationalism: … the mainspring of nationalism in Asia and Africa is the same secular millennialism which had its rise and development in Europe and in which society is subjected to the will of a handful of visionaries who, to achieve their vision, must destroy all barriers between private and public. (­Kedourie 1971: 106) 9 Yadati ­be-​­lel arafel (­I know on a foggy night, 1906); see pp. 34–5 earlier. 10 For translations of some biblical ‘­prophecies to the nations’, see Aberbach (­1993). 11 On universal significance of the Bible, see Weber (­1961: xxx). Bialik’s prophetic poetry implicitly makes the same point as it speaks to modern concerns. 12 For a selection of ancient near eastern texts, including some pertaining to the biblical prophets, see Pritchard (­2011). 13 Whitman’s poetry is particularly striking in its allusions to universalist prophetic ideals: Each of us inevitable, Each of us l­ imitless –​­ each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allow’d the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here.    ‘­ Salut Au Monde’ Whitman, imitating biblical free verse and parallelism, created in his poetry what he called a ‘­New Bible’ in an age in which the Bible was still overwhelmingly the determining book of American identity (­Perry 1969: 96). The Bible, Whitman wrote, was the ‘­principal factor in cohering the nations, eras, and paradoxes of the globe, by giving them a common platform of two or three great ideas, a commonality of origin, and projecting cosmic brotherhood, the dream of all hope, all time’ (­W hitman 1964: ii 548). The American ­self-​­image as ‘­a light unto the nations’, which Whitman brilliantly reflects, has had ­not-​­i nconsiderable political repercussions. What is sometimes denounced as naked American imperialism is, to an extent, a genuine attempt to bring the secular gospel of freedom and democracy to oppressed people. Biblical influence on this sense of responsibility as the ‘­true Israel’ should not be underestimated.

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  71 14 On cultural nationalism and moral values, see Hutchinson (­1987) and Hutchinson and Aberbach (­1999). 15 Amos 9: 7­ –​­8. Translations from the Bible in this chapter are by David Aberbach. 16 Amos 3: 2. 17 The moral purpose of the nation and of humanity as a whole is summed up in a section of the Book of Isaiah which apparently dates from the late 6th century BCE, at the time of the return of the Judeans to their homeland: It is not enough you are my servant, not enough to restore the tribes of Israel, or to bring the survivors ­back – ​­I have made you a light of salvation to all peoples! (­Isaiah 49: 6). 18 Micah 6: 8. 19 Deuteronomy 17: ­18–​­19. 20 2 Samuel (­11: ­1–​­13), 1 Kings (­21: 17f), 2 Kings (­24: 9). 21 Judges 5: ­19–​­22. 22 Isaiah 11: ­11–​­16; also Micah chs. ­5 –​­6. 23 Lamentations 5: ­18–​­21. 24 The prophet Joel, for example, warns of the day when the nations would gather to be judged in the valley of Jehoshaphat in Jerusalem: The harvest is ripe for the ­sickle – ​­Wield it! The vats overflow with ­g rapes – ​­Tread them! For there is much wickedness! Multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of decision … (­4: ­13–​­14). 25 Hosea 2: 23. 26 Ezekiel 37: ­11–​­12. 27 See Ezekiel 5: 5; Zechariah 9: ­9 –​­10. 19. The prophets make no distinction between politics and religion. Yet, national feeling for Jerusalem as capital of the ancient Jewish state, ‘­its vistas the earth’s delight’ (­Psalm 48), determined modern national feeling for Jerusalem as capital of Israel, much as the ancient Greek view of Athens made its choice as capital ­inevitable – ​­despite the initial unsuitability of both places, backwaters of the Ottoman empire. As Jerusalem, however degraded, is eternally crowned by the Psalms, so also Athens shines in eternal glory in Pindar’s ode: ‘­bulwark of Greece, city of the gods’ (­Trypanis 1984: 196). 28 On the biblical address to those unborn, see Deuteronomy 29: 1­ 3–​­14. 29 On an early concept of mission in Judaism, see Isaiah 56: 3. 30 Amos 7: 14. 31 The Hebrew synagogue service, whose origins date from the biblical period, includes many selected readings from biblical poetry, which have helped keep Jewish national identity alive in ­l iterary-​­religious form. See Aberbach (­2008: ch. 3). 32 On the Bible and modern nationalism, see Greenfeld (­1992). 33 Elton (­1971: 289). 34 Wright (­2001: 199). 35 Elton (­1971: 289). Protestantism ably exploited the vernacular market in order to reach the masses in its war against the Papacy and the monarchy; if p ­ rint-​ c­ apitalism aided the spread of Protestant ideas, the latter increasingly required familiarity with the Bible on the part of every believer, and hence put a premium on literacy and understanding in the local vernacular. (­Smith 1998: 135) 36 Seidman (­2006: 119). 37 Hill (­1994: 414). 38 Sacks (­2002: 134). 39 See Kohn (­1946). 40 Churchill (­2002: 124). 41 Lieven (­2002: 89). 42 In the ­half-​­millennium after the translation of the King James Bible, there were hundreds of English Bible translations. On the influence of the Bible on English, see Hill (­1994), Daniell (­2003), and Crystal (­2010). Also, see Colley (­1992). For a comprehensive dictionary of biblical motifs in English see Jeffrey (­1992). Broad

72  Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible selections of English literature influenced by the Bible are given by Jasper and Prickett (­1999) and Atwan and Wieder (­2000). The British ‘­temptation/­To belong to other nations’, as W.S. Gilbert put it in HMS Pinafore, or at any rate to identify with other nations, can also be attributed partly to the universalist spirit in the Hebrew Bible: this is apparent, above all, in Byron, but also in Swinburne, Clough, the Brownings, Kipling and T.E. Lawrence, among others. 43 On Bialik and Wordsworth, see ­Chapter 8; on T.S. Eliot, see ­Chapter 10; on W.B. Yeats, see ­Chapter 11. 44 Hastings (­1997: 42); also see Gillingham (­1992). 45 MacGregor (­1968: 170). 46 Hastings (­1997: 58). 47 Daniell (­2003: 249). 48 Steiner (­1996: 49). ­ ell-​­known that in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations they 49 The Psalms are so w appear not in the section on the Hebrew Bible but under The Book of Common Prayer, and there are more quotations there from the Psalms than from any other book, including Hamlet. 50 Dickens (­1970: 185). 51 Daniell (­2003: ­237–​­8). The Bible was a crucial factor in the evolution of British identity. The translation of the Bible into Welsh in 1563 rejuvenated Welsh national consciousness, and the Welsh came to identify themselves with ancient Israel: ‘­The Welsh myth of election pictured the community as the lost tribes of Israel, a latterday chosen people’ (­Smith 1999: ­136–​­7). In the poetry of Saunders Lewis, widely regarded as the main ­20th-​­century Welsh language poet, Wales is depicted in the prophetic language of the Bible as the ‘­new Israel’, a disappointment to the poet as to the prophet Isaiah (­ch. 5): A vineyard placed in my care is Wales, my country, To deliver unto my children And my children’s children Intact, an eternal heritage: And behold, the swine rush on her to rend her.      (­Elfin and Rowlands 2003: 77) The decision of John Knox and the Scottish reformers to adopt the English Geneva Bible of 1560 and the King James Version of 1611 and not translate the Bible into Scots was an important factor in weakening the Scots language and Scottish national identity, leading to increasing cultural and political union with England. 52 Daniell (­2003: 208). 53 Ibid., 221. 54 Cromwell would lead his men to battle with the opening of Psalm 68: ‘­Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered’. After the battle of Dunbar in 1650, Cromwell interrupted his pursuit of the Scots to sing Psalm 117: ‘­Fortunately,’ Hill observes, ‘­it is the shortest in the book’ (­1994: 356). The Scots, for their part, had the consoling memory of the battle of Bannockburn (­1314), in which the Scots, led by Robert the Bruce, annihilated the English army of Edward II. In Barbour’s epic, The Bruce (­c. 1370), English bodies filled the River Forth until the Scots could cross dryshod; so, the Israelites had crossed the Reed Sea while their Egyptian pursuers, horse and rider, drowned: ‘­That apon drownyt hors and men,/­Men mycht pas dry ­out-​­our it then’. 55 Daniell (­2003: xiv). 56 Kermode (­1965: 12). 57 Hastings (­1997: 84). 58 Ibid., ­82–​­3.

Bialik, nationalism and the Hebrew Bible  73 59 The Faerie Queene x 57. 60 Fisch (­1964: ­123–​­4). 61 During the Napoleonic wars, a profusion of biblical epics affirmed British national identity. After 1815, these epics lost their purpose. See Tucker (­2008: ch. 4). 62 Hastings (­1997: 62). 63 Coleridge (­1975: ­190–​­1). 64 On Byron’s use of biblical sources, see Slater (­1952). 65 Blake, ‘­Jerusalem’ (­1804). 66 Kipling, in ‘­The White Man’s Burden’ (­1899), draws on the Bible (­specifically Numbers 11: 5) in accusing colonized peoples in the British empire of ingratitude. If only to a limited extent, he posited, the empire had liberated them like ancient Israel from the ‘­Egypt’ of ignorance and backwardness: ‘­W hy brought ye us from bondage,/­Our loved Egyptian night?’ Some poets who lived under British colonial rule, such as Mqhayi and Walcott, have attacked the use of the Bible as a tool of imperial conquest. Yet, the Bible opposes the violence, immorality, and arrogance of imperialism; and indeed, many colonized peoples did in fact identify themselves with ancient Israel in their struggle for independence. They often came to regard the Bible as a charter of independence, and their literature reflects deep immersion in the Bible. 67 See Aberbach (­2003b: ­145–​­6). 68 Carmi (­1981: 347). On Judah Halevi and other medieval Hebrew poets, see pp. 87–9. 69 On secular Enlightenment and emancipation as factors in the diminution of Jewish nationalism, see Aberbach (­2013). 70 Marrus (­1980: 118). 71 On ­anti-​­Semitism, see Wistrich (­2010). 72 ­Mendes-​­Flohr and Reinharz (­1995: 536).

4 From the Bible to Bialik Poetry of Zion

Break into song, ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, redeemed Jerusalem… Isaiah 52: 9

Bialik’s chief literary mentor in Odessa, Mendele Mocher Sefarim, was typically disgruntled as the new word ‘­Zionism’ became popular in the late 19th century, and Bialik was labeled, to his own discomfiture, the leading poet of the Zionist movement. Mendele and Bialik, both lifelong students of the Hebrew language and literature in all their long, complex development, knew that love of Zion (­a havat Tziyon) was nothing new but part of Judaism, the inheritance of all Jews from ancient times to the present, universally recognized in the Bible and the Hebrew language, and throughout rabbinic literature, medieval, kabbalistic, and modern literature, and above all in the siddur, the daily prayerbook with its ­time-​­worn expressions of national hope to return to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.1 Secularists, both Jewish and n ­ on-​­Jewish, have sometimes denied a continuous Jewish tradition from the Bible to the present, in part as they themselves or their ancestors had broken with it. For most Jews, however, until 1939 and in some ways to the present day, the chain not only survived but was strengthened. Love of Zion in biblical poetry is akin to the love of God: in the prophetic literature, particularly the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and in the Psalms, loss of faith leads to the loss of the land; and the hope of return, fundamental in Judaism, is a perennial motif which, via innumerable translations became an intrinsic part of world civilization as peoples who adopted Holy Scripture as their own sought to build the ‘­new Zion’ or the ‘­new Jerusalem’ in their own lands. Bialik’s poetry in many ways recapitulates an entire tradition rooted in the Hebrew Bible but with countless variations as Jewish life changed, both in the land of Israel and the diaspora. The following thumbnail picture of Hebrew poetry which absorbed and inspired Bialik throughout his life highlights the links he

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-5

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  75 felt continually between his poetry and the long history of Jewish national creativity.

Zion in the Hebrew Psalms The Psalms, chief literary survival of the Jerusalem Temple priesthood and ritual, are archetypal poems of Zion. These include some of the oldest surviving literature, going back as much as 3,000 years or more, sung or chanted in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem Civil war in the time of King Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, led to the division of the kingdom by Jeroboam (­10th century BCE), From then on, Jerusalem was capital of the Davidic Kingdom of Judah alone. Judah survived the Assyrian onslaught in the late 8th century BCE which destroyed the rebel Kingdom of Israel to its north. The Psalms reflect the sense of supremacy and monotheist authenticity of the Jerusalem priesthood: [God] spurned the tent of Joseph, rejected the tribe of Ephraim, but chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion he loved.2 After the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians in the early 6th century BCE, the burning down of the Temple in Jerusalem (­586 BCE), and the exile of the Judeans to Babylonia, Zion became the spiritual center of Judaism and the Jewish people.3 The poetry of Zion, particularly the Psalms, survived in Holy Scripture as a precious memory of past majesty: it belonged to and defined the nation, in exile as in the land of Israel, but its faith and hope are directed to all humankind, ‘­a light to the nations’.4 When Persia, led by Cyrus, conquered Babylonia in 539 BCE and allowed exiled peoples to return to their homelands, some Judeans returned from exile and rebuilt a Judean state and a Second Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The literary culture preserved in the Hebrew Bible, with its roots in the Holy ­Land – ​­and eventually also in synagogue ritual and a distinctive H ­ ebrew-​­based educational ­tradition – ​­proved sufficient to enable diaspora Jewish communities to survive to modern times. Psalm 48, recited in the Temple on Mondays, was preserved in the siddur and continues to be recited on Mondays as part of the morning synagogue service: Great the Lord, greatly praised in Jerusalem, on his holy mountain, its vistas the earth’s delight!

76  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion Mount Zion to the far north, city of the great king! Defender of its palaces, God! For the kings joined in battle. Stunned, they fled in panic like a woman trembling, giving birth they fled like the east wind shattering ships of Tarshish! We heard it and we saw in the city of Adonai Zebaot, city of our God, forever strong. In your Temple, O Lord, we thought of your kindness. Your praise fills the earth, your right hand full with triumph. Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice for your judgments! Circle the city round, count Zion’s towers, inspect its ramparts, go through its palaces. Remember it to the last generation… for our God is forever here, to guide us till death… Psalm 122 in the ‘­Songs of Ascent’ is a pilgrim hymn; this too entered synagogue ritual, recited on the Sabbath between the afternoon and evening services. I was glad when they told me, ‘­Let us go up to the House of the Lord!’ We stood beside your gate, Jerusalem, Jerusalem upbuilt, a t­ ight-​­knit city where pilgrim tribes, tribes of Yah went to give thanks to the Lord, where judgment seats were set, seats for the House of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, may your lovers find peace, peace within your walls and palaces.

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  77 For my brothers and friends may I speak for your peace. For the House of the Lord your good will I seek. Psalm 136 (­the ‘­Great Hallel’), part of the Temple ritual in Jerusalem, and recited to the present day on Sabbath and festivals, relates Israelite history and myth in a priestly chant: To him who brought plague to Egypt’s firstborn –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! And brought out Israel from among them –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! With strong hand and outstretched arm –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! Who split the Reed Sea –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! And let Israel pass through –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! And cast Pharaoh and his army in the Reed Sea –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! Who led his people through the wilderness –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! Who beat great kings –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! And killed powerful kings –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! Sihon, king of the Amorites –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! And Og, king of Bashan –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! And gave their land as an inheritance –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal! A heritage to Israel his servant –​­    For his lovingkindness is eternal!5 Psalm 137, recited prior to the daily Grace after Meals, recalls the Babylonians exile and the longing for Zion: By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On willow branches we hung our harps when our tormentors mocked us, ‘­Sing us a song of Zion.’

78  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion How can we sing a song of the Lord    on foreign soil? If I forget you, Jerusalem, let my right arm go limp. Let my tongue stick to my mouth if I do not remember you. Psalm 124, another of the ‘­Songs of Ascent’, was adopted as preamble to the Hebrew Grace after Meals on Sabbath and Festivals, recalling the Judean return to Zion from the Babylonian exile when the Persian King Cyrus issued the Edict of Return (­538 BCE):6 When the Lord brought us back to Zion it was like a dream. Full of joy and laughter we were. Nations declared: Adonai has done great deeds with these. Adonai has done great deeds with us! We were glad! Bring back our captives, O Lord! like the desert streams! Who sow in tears shall reap in joy! Who go out weeping, scattering seeds, shall come back singing, sheaves in arms!

Zion and the prophets At the heart of prophetic poetry is love of Zion, grief for Zion’s ruin, the longing to return, and the conviction that ‘­Zion shall be redeemed in justice’.7 Prophetic poetry frequently refers to the vulnerability of Zion to invasion. The book of Isaiah has vivid scenes of the Assyrian invasion in the late 8th century. The opening chapter of Isaiah is recited on the Sabbath before Tisha B’Av (­Shabbat Hazon): Your country desolate, your cities charred with fire, your land devoured by strangers… the daughter of Zion left like a hut in a vineyard, a lodge in a cucumber, a city besieged.8

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  79 The book of Jeremiah has eyewitness glimpses of the panic caused by the Babylonian invasion over a century later, leading to the destruction of the Judean state in 586 BCE: Proclaim this in Judah and Jerusalem! Shout it out, blow the trumpet through the ­land –​­ ‘­Gather a­ ll – ​­to the fortified cities!’ Raise the banner for flight to Zion. Do not ­wait –​­ for I bring evil from the north, and ruin. A hot wind comes from the desert hills, too strong to winnow or to ­cleanse –​­ It is I who speak in judgement. Look! They come like clouds. Their chariots raise a storm, horses fleet as eagles, this people from the north! Clutching bow and spear, they roar like the sea, they have no ­mercy –​­ they ride dressed for battle against ­you –​­ daughter of Zion!9 In a passage recited in the Shacharit (­Morning Service) on Tisha B’Av, the prophet feels Zion’s anguish: Sorrow sweeps over me my heart is sick. My people cry out in a distant land. ‘­Is the Lord not in Zion, Is her King not there?’10 The torment of Zion is that of a woman in ­life-​­threatening labor: I hear a cry like the cry of a woman giving birth for the first ­time –​­ the cry of the daughter of Zion, gasping, her arms ­flailing –​­ Oiah li! I faint before the murderers!11

80  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion In the book of Lamentations, often attributed to Jeremiah and recited on Tisha B’Av, Zion in ruin is personified as a grieving widow: How desolate, widowed city ­once-​­teeming, great among ­nations –​­ now a slave, at night sits weeping. Tears run down her cheeks, no lover to comfort her, traitors the lot of t­ hem –​­ enemies. Zion ­mourns –​­ no pilgrims at festivals, priests sigh by her empty gates, virgins mourn bitter fate. Her foes triumph, her sin has its wage: in enemy hands her children slave. All glory gone… her l­ eaders –​­ exhausted deer seeking pasture, hunters near. Jerusalem in torment abandoned by her l­overs –​­ mocked by her foes… What can I compare you to, daughter of Jerusalem, to comfort you, daughter of Zion? Is this the joy of the earth, city of perfect beauty? Who will heal your sorrow, deep as the sea?12 Memories of atrocities committed by the invader are seared onto this scroll of woe: Women in Zion raped, virgins   in the towns of Judah. Our princes hung by the hands.

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  81 Old men abused. The young made to slave at the mill,    to stagger under piles of wood The old abandoned the city gate; the young, their song. And ­we – ​­our joy is gone. Our crown is fallen. Oi na lanu – ​­we have sinned!13 Jeremiah prophesies exile, with hope of return: The children of Israel and Judah have done evil, rousing my fury, they, their kings, princes, priests and prophets, the men of Judah and Jerusalem. They turned against me, and my teaching. They put idols in my Temple, defiling it. They built high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, for the sacrifice of their sons and daughters to Molech. I never commanded this, it was never my intent. ­ et – ​­as for Jerusalem and the people Y given to the Babylonian king, by sword, famine, and plague: I will gather them from all countries where I will drive them in my wrath, and return them to this place in peace, to be my people, and I their God, and I will give them one heart, and one way, to fear me for ever, for their good and their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to abandon them, and they never to leave me again. I will rejoice with all my heart and soul to do them good and plant them firmly in this land. As I brought upon them this great evil, so will I bring all the good I have promised. Fields will be bought in this land, though desolate, void of man or beast, in Chaldean hands. Men will buy fields for money, contracts written and sealed,

82  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion witnessed in the land of Benjamin, in the villages near Jerusalem, the towns of Judah, mountains and valleys, and towns of the south: I will bring their captives home.14 In the Babylonian exile, the prophet Ezekiel prophesies a messianic age of universal peace, when hunger, fear, and humiliation will be no more, and Zion a new Eden: I will make a covenant of p ­ eace –​­ no more evil beasts, nor desert and forest unsafe   to sleep in, I will bless Mount Zion and the hills around with rain in season and trees for fruit and the earth for g­ rain –​­ and they will be safe in their land…15 The yearning for a new Eden appears also in the book of Isaiah, after Cyrus’s Edict of Return (­538 BCE) allowed the Judeans to return to Zion from the Babylonian exile: … the Lord has comforted Zion, comforted all her ruins, and made her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord.16 The cry of the damned becomes the song of the saved, in ecstatic prophetic vignettes of the return to Zion, in soaring images of freedom and joy: How beautiful upon the mountains the feet of the messenger of good news,   of peace and salvation, telling Zion: Your King reigns! Your watchmen will lift their voices in song, all together, eyewitness to the Lord’s return to Zion. Break into song, ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people,   redeemed Jerusalem.17

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  83

Zion in the Song of Songs After the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans in 70 CE, as ­anti-​ ­Judaism grew, rabbinic literature reacted strongly against national ­self-​ ­condemnation and s­elf-​­hate, exacerbated by defeat and exile. The rabbis were outraged by Christian polemical distortion of prophetic diatribes against Israel as a permanent mark of God’s abandonment of his p ­ eople –​ ­because they refused to recognize Jesus as their messiah. Rabbinic Judaism stresses, instead, God’s continuing love for Israel, with pride in a distinguished past and hope for future salvation; and the Song of Songs found its place in the Hebrew canon in part as it was interpreted allegorically in this way. ­Anti-​­Semites portrayed Jews as a band of superstitious lepers, enemies of humanity, hated by the gods. The Song of Songs was one of the last works included in the Bible; only after 70 CE was resistance to its inclusion evidently overcome, in part as an allegorical rebuttal to such prejudices. To Akiva, a towering rabbinic figure of the Talmudic era and a martyr in the Jewish revolt against Rome in ­132–​­35 CE, the Torah is a spiritual Temple, and the Song of Songs its ‘­Holy of Holies’.18 In bed at night I wanted my ­lover –​­ he wasn’t there. I got up, wandered the city, its markets and streets, looking for my ­lover –​­ I didn’t find him. The city guards found me: Have you seen my lover? I went on. Right away I found him. I held him tight all the way to mother’s house, to her room. Swear, daughters of Jerusalem, by wild gazelles and hinds: you’ll not stir love up till it feels right. Who’s that, rising from the desert like smoke pillars, smelling of myrrh, frankincense and powders from travelling merchants?

84  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion This is Solomon’s bed, sixty Israelite warriors circle it, ­well-​­trained, in terror of night, sword on thigh. King Solomon made a portable coach of Lebanon wood with silver columns, ­gold-​­inlaid, purple its seat, lined with the love of Jerusalem girls. Go out, daughters of Zion, look at King Solomon, the crown his mother gave him on his wedding day, day of joy.19

Zion in the Mishna The Mishna, the first codification of Jewish law, written in Galilee c. 200 at a time when Jerusalem after its destruction in the ­Bar-​­Kokhba war (­c. 1­ 32–​­35 CE) was renamed Aelia Capitolina and banned to Jews, is saturated with the memory of Jerusalem, the mostly defunct laws and customs associated with it; yet, some passages relating to Jerusalem are closer to poetry than to law. Prominent among the lost moments of joy was the Bikurim (­­First-​­Fruit) ritual in the spring, when the ‘­Seven Fruits by which the Land of Israel was Praised’  – wheat, ​­ barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and h ­ oney  –​ w ­ ere brought to Jerusalem. The agricultural laws of the Mishna (­Zera’im, ‘­Seeds’) conclude with a lovingly detailed account of this pilgrimage, which must have had a large part of the country’s population on the march, sleeping in the open at night, the music and rituals on the way, and the tumultuous greeting in Jerusalem as the pilgrims bore their offerings to the Temple: An ox went before them, its horns covered with gold, a crown of olive leaves on its head. A flute played ahead of them as they arrived at Jerusalem. Messengers were sent as they adorned their bikurim, and important Temple priests, Levites and treasurers came out to greet them in suitable fashion. And all the craftsmen of Jerusalem stood up and welcomed them: Come in peace, Brothers!20

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  85 Another obsolete outdoor celebration recorded in the Mishna is the Simchat bet ­h a- ​­S ho’eva – ​­t he rejoicing of the place of ­water- ­​­­d rawing – ​­a public ceremony in Jerusalem during the festival of Tabernacles. Countless pilgrims thronged the city as priests and Levites ceremonially drew water from the Pool of Siloam in the valley below the Temple Mount and poured it into a silver bowl on the east side of the altar in the Temple. On the night before this ceremony, Jerusalem was lit up with giant golden candelabra: On top of each menorah four golden bowls, each with four ladders, and four ­boy-​­priests climbing up and down, pouring oil into the bowls, using priestly ­cast-​­offs, trousers and belts, for wicks to light the o ­ il –​­ all Jerusalem was lit up as pious men sang and danced,   juggling torches, and Levites on the fifteen steps from the Court of Israelites to the Court of Women played countless ­instruments –​­ harps, lyres, cymbals, t­ rumpets –​­ and two priests with trumpets stood on the top step and at cock’­s-​­crow at dawn they blew the trumpets as they went down the steps to the east gate, then turned west and declared: ‘­Our fathers stood, Temple behind them, and they bowed to the sun as it rose in the east… But ­we –​­ our eyes lift to God!’21 Nothing remains of this festival except the wonderful description in the Mishna and the Prayer for Rain (­Mashiv ­ha-​­Ruach ­u -​­Morid ­ha-​­G ashem), included in the Eighteen Benedictions from the eighth day of Tabernacles (­Shemini Atzeret) in synagogue.

86  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion

Zion in Midrash The aggadic tradition preserved in rabbinic literature from the late Second Temple period to the present builds on biblical poetry of Zion, adding ideas of its own, often involving the ­Shekhinah  – ​­the feminine presence of God wandering with the exiled Jews and grieving for their ­loss  – ​­and Elijah, the harbinger of the future Messianic age. Legend (­aggadah) and homily (­midrash) on the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem, which profoundly influenced Bialik’s Scroll of Fire, tend to telescope both as a single national catastrophe, commemorated on one ­day  – ​­the 9th of Av (­Tisha B’Av). An example is the entry of the Babylonians into the Temple in 586 BCE: They saw four angels with torches descending to the four corners of the Temple setting it alight. The High Priest climbed to the roof with ­boy-​­priests carrying the Temple keys. They said to the Holy One, blessed be He: We failed as your faithful guards. Take back the keys to your House! –​­and hurled them into the sky. A hand stretched out and caught them.22 An aggadah set after the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 CE depicts a group of rabbis led by Rabbi Akiva visiting the ruins of Jerusalem: From Mount Scopus they spotted a fox on the Temple Mount prowling the empty space of the Holy of Holies. They wept, but Akiva was glad. Why are you glad? they asked. Why do you cry? he asked. They replied: lt is written of the Holy of Holies, ‘­And the stranger who draws near it   shall be put to death’ [Numbers 1: 51]. Now it is a foxes’ haunt should we not weep?’ That is why I am glad, said Akiba to them, for it is written: ‘­And I will take to me faithful witnesses to ­record –​­ Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Jeberechiah.’23 What does Uriah, from the time of the first Temple, have to do with Zechariah, from the second Temple period? Scripture links the two, for Uriah p ­ rophesied –​­ ‘­Zion will be ploughed like a field’ (­Micah 3: 12),

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  87 and Zechariah (­8: 4), that ‘­Old men and women will again sit in the open spaces of Jerusalem.’ If Uriah’s prediction of doom was wrong, I doubted Zechariah’s vision of hope would come to pass. But as Uriah was right, Zechariah will be right too. They replied: Akiva, you have comforted us! Akiva, you have comforted us!24 The following Talmudic aggadah is attributed to the 3rd century CE Rabbi Yose: I entered the ruins in Jerusalem to pray. Elijah, of blessed memory, guarded the entrance. Why did you come here? he asked when I finished.   To pray, I replied. He said: You should have prayed on the road. I said: I fear distraction by wayfarers. He asked: what did you hear in the ruin? I answered: I heard a heavenly voice moaning like a dove:    Woe! I have destroyed my house,     burned down my sanctuary      and exiled my children among the nations! My son, Elijah said, I swear by your life the voice said this not just when you were praying but repeats it each day three times. Moreover, each time Jews in synagogues and houses of study say ‘­A men, may the name of God be blessed…’, the Holy One, blessed be He, shakes his head, as it were, and says: Happy the king so highly praised! What will be of the father who has exiled his children! Woe to those exiled from their father’s table!’25

Medieval Hebrew poetry of Zion Rabbinic grief for the destruction of J­ erusalem – ​­no joy in Jewish life could be complete thereafter, even at ­weddings  – ​­continued after the birth and spread of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries CE, and the bulk of the world Jewish population, which at the time was still in the Middle East, came under Muslim rule. Ancient Hebrew poetic forms and genres were enriched by ­newly-​­emerging Arabic influence, particularly in Spain, a remarkable meeting place of cultures, but the attachment to Zion was implicit in the use of Hebrew rather than Arabic, the vernacular of most Jews in the early Middle

88  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion Ages.26 The first known medieval Hebrew wine song, by Dunash ben Labrat in the 9th century CE, echoes both the Song of Songs and the typical temptations of sensuous Arabic verse: Drink vintage wine in an orchard of myrrh, lilies, henna, aloes, pomegranates, palms, tamarisks and vines, as fountains gush singers sing, lutes and flutes, ­lyre-­​­­strings –​­ The poet rejects this sybaritic life: You left off study of God’s Torah to have f­ un – while ​­ jackals prowl Zion’s ruins! How can we, despised, drink ­w ine –​­ for we are nothing…27 Though overlaid with religious guilt, this poetry also anticipates the largely secular character of modern Hebrew national poetry and its Greek influences, especially in the work of Tchernichowsky.28 The high point of Hebrew poetry between the biblical and modern periods came when the Crusaders conquered the Holy Land from Islam (­1099), briefly raising messianic hopes of a return from exile. Judah Halevi (­c. ­1075–​ 1­ 141), ­Bialik chief antecedent as a Hebrew poet of Zion, is associated with this dream, in poetry which entered the Jewish liturgy and remains so to this day. Halevi’s poems of Zion, written in ­Spain – ​­‘­the end of the west’ and, indeed, of the known world in the 12th c­ entury – ​­express yearning not only for the land of Israel as it was in the time of Jewish sovereignty but also as it might become in future. My heart is in the east and I­  –​­ on the end of the west: how can I enjoy, how taste my food, how keep my vows while Zion is in Christian hands and I in Arab chains. I’d lightly leave the good of Spain to see the Temple’s dust again.29 Halevi’s poem beginning, ‘­Zion, will you not ask’, is the ­best-​­known medieval Hebrew poem, recited by observant Jews on the night of Tisha B’Av. This poetry reflects Halevi’s anxiety at being caught between two religions at war and his hope for the messianic redemption of the Jews and their return to their homeland. Zion, will you not ask about your captives? They ask for you, the last of your flock.

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  89 Accept their greeting, west and east, north and south far and near on every side; my greeting too, ­lust-​­locked to weep Hermon’s dew across your hills: A jackal I am, wailing out your grief, a harp for the ­dream-​­song of your exiles’ homecoming.30 Halevi’s unhappiness in Spain drove him to think with longing of Zion. In an outpouring of biblical allusions, he declares love for Jerusalem.31 Gorgeous city of the great King! World’s delight! I miss you at the world’s end, your ruined Temple, exiled glory. I’d fly on eagle’s wings to water your dust with my tears. I seek you though your King is gone, no balm of Gilead but snakes and scorpions, I love your stones and kiss them, your clods sweeter than honey. Yet, as among many modern Zionists, even Halevi’s Zionism was filled with love for his native land. He vainly entreated his contemporary, the poet ibn Ezra, to return to Muslim Spain: How can I find peace with you gone? My heart beats after you. If I left off waiting for your return I’d die. Look, the mountains of our separation testify: clouds are cheap with rain. I cry buckets. Come back to Muslim Spain, lamp of Muslim Spain. Make your mark on every heart and hand. Pure of speech among the stammerers: Why spread Hermon’s dew on cursed Gilead?32

Zion in kabbalistic poetry In the Jewish mystical tradition (­Kabbalah), with continuous development from the Hebrew Bible to modern times, love of Zion is central. A number of

90  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion Kabbalistic poems entered the liturgy, particularly for the Sabbath and festivals. Hope of redemption from exile recurs in many zemirot (­r itual songs), sung for centuries among European and Oriental communities, and in the ancient kedusha of Sabbath and the festivals: Our king! Come back! rule us! We await you! When will you reign in Zion? –​­ let it be soon, in our time, forever. In Jerusalem your city, be great and holy, forever. Let us see your kingdom, written in your Psalms of glory by David your anointed one: May the Lord your God, Zion, reign forever! Hallelujah! The b known Sabbath poem is the Lecha Dodi by the ­16th-​­c entury ­ est-​­ Safed kabbalist, Solomon Halevi Alkabetz, traditionally recited on Friday evening, as the Sabbath enters. The entry of the Sabbath is a return in memory to Jerusalem: Temple of the royal city: Rise from the ruin, from ­tear-​­fi lled valley to God’s love! Rise from the dust, my people, dressed in g­ lory – ​­by David son of Jesse of Bethlehem! Free my soul!

Modern Hebrew poetry of Zion Hebrew poetry in ­1881–​­1948 draws with astonishing creativity on the entire history and culture of the Jews from the Bible to modern times. In doing so, it effectively exposes the absurdity of supersessionary ­anti-​­Semitism: that Christianity (­and later, Islam) had replaced Judaism, that Judaism was a dead religion and culture, that Jews were by definition evil and deserved persecution.

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  91 No one reading Bialik and other modern Hebrew poets could believe any of this to be true. The revival of Hebrew as a literary vehicle by which Jews could convey to the world their inmost feelings was proof that Jewish culture was not only not dead, it was a live and powerful civilization, capable of renewal and of ­self-​­defense, in the name of justice. Among Hebrew national poets apart from Bialik, Saul Tchernichowsky (­­1875–​­1943) and Uri Zvi Greenberg (­­1896–​­1981) stand o ­ ut – ​­but it was Bialik above all who made clear how immensely creative modern Hebrew poetry could be, with huge implications for the political revival of the Jewish people as the physical threat against them worsened. As always, the very fact of writing in Hebrew was an expression of J­ ewish nationalism, but after the outbreak of the Russian pogroms in 1881 and the aliyah (­immigration to the land of Israel) which followed, Hebrew became inseparably allied to the Jewish national revival, growing with the Zionist movement in reaction to each new manifestation of European ­anti-​­Semitism.33 Modern Hebrew poets, however secular, tend to continue prevailing themes in Jewish liturgy, such as the yearning for national renewal and for a lost land associated with the nation’s childhood. Such yearnings were given a practical direction as European nationalism grew after the French Revolution. Yet, until the Holocaust most Jews were Orthodox and had lived for centuries in Eastern Europe. In mainstream rabbinic Judaism, the return to Zion must await the messianic age; and the idea of secular Judaism and a secular political movement was alien to most Jews, both European and Oriental. Also, many emancipated, secular Jews who sought to assimilate in their countries of citizenship, saw the Jewish national movement as a ­threat –​ ­even a spur to ­anti-​­Semitism. Consequently, prior to the Holocaust, Jewish opposition to political Zionism was widespread. Zionists had only limited success through appeals to a distinguished Jewish national history and culture; ­anti-​­Semites, who condemned Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture with their genocidal hatred, were more effective, a fact observed by Herzl who described ­anti-​­Semitism as ‘­the force we need’.34 Bialik and his contemporaries, particularly Tchernichowsky, had reason to fear, as did Gordon, that in a more rational, less violent world they could be the last Hebrew poets.

Notes 1 On Mendele’s views on Zionism, see Aberbach (­1993). ­Sáenz-​­Badillos (­1993) gives a detailed account of the fundamental unity of the Hebrew language, its basic vocabulary, and grammar, from ancient to modern times. 2 Psalms 78: ­67–​­8. 3 The destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah triggering prophetic inspiration is the first in a series of historical/­literary junctures in which institutional collapse heralds a period of remarkable Hebrew creativity. See Aberbach (­1997). The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem is one of the central images in Bialik’s poetry, notably in Scroll of Fire. See 119–20 below.

92  From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion 4 Isaiah 42: 6. The universalist message in the Hebrew Bible seems to have some of its strongest expressions in the exilic period in the 6th century BCE, when Judeans came into contact with many other victims of the Babylonian deportation policy. A contrary view of this forced cosmopolitanism is apparent in the story of the Tower of Babel (­Genesis 11: ­1–​­9) and in Nehemiah’s anger at Judean exiles who returned to Jerusalem speaking foreign languages, having forgotten Hebrew (­Nehemiah ch. 13). 5 Psalms 136: ­10–​­22. 6 It is no accident that the Hebrew Bible ends with Cyrus’s Edict of Return, suggesting that the end of exile marks a new start for the nation, a return to Genesis as it were. 7 Isaiah 1: 27. 8 Isaiah 1: ­7–​­8. 9 Jeremiah 4: ­5 –​­6, ­11–​­13; 6: 23. 10 Jeremiah 8: ­18–​­19. 11 Jeremiah 4: 31. 12 Lamentations 1: ­1–​­2; ­4 –​­7; 2: 13, 15. 13 Lamentations 5: ­11–​­16. 14 Jeremiah 32: 26, ­32–​­44. The context is Jeremiah’s purchase, at God’s bidding, of land near Jerusalem on the eve of the Babylonian conquest. 15 Ezekiel 34: ­25–​­7. For other prophetic apocalyptic visions, see for example Isaiah 48: 18 and Ezekiel 39: 9. 16 Isaiah 51: 3. On the transformation of the waste land into a ‘­garden of Eden’, see Ezekiel 36. 17 Isaiah 52: ­7–​­9. 18 Mishna Yadaim 3: 5. On The Song of Songs and nationalist aims of Bible editors, see Aberbach (­2023). 19 The Song of Songs, chapter 3. 20 Mishna Bikurim 3: 3. 21 Mishna Sukkah 5: ­1–​­4. The 15 steps correspond with the 15 ‘­Songs of Ascent’ in the Psalms (­­120–​­34); the allusion to s­ un-​­worship comes from Ezekiel 8: 16. 22 For a selection of Midrash relating to Jerusalem and the land of Israel, see Bialik and Ravnitzky (­1992). 23 Isaiah 8: 2, Zechariah 1: 1. 24 Makkot 24b. 25 Berachot 3b. On Mendele’s adaptation of this aggadah in his autobiography, see pp. 127–8 below. 26 On Hebrew national poetry in medieval Spain, see Aberbach (­2015). 27 For the Hebrew original of this poem (­v­e-​­O mer al tishan), see Schirmann (­i 34, 35). The image of the jackals on the ruins of Jerusalem is from Lamentations 5: 18; see this chapter, p. 61 above. Bialik was critical of much ­post-​­biblical Hebrew poetry as being enslaved to form, artificial, excessively complex, and lacking in emotional depth: even Judah Halevi, the great medieval Hebrew poet of Zion, was crippled by the Arabic forms he had adopted (­Bialik 1935: ii ­165–​­8). 28 On the ambivalence to Hellenism in Jewish culture, see Leoussi and Aberbach (­2002). 29 Aberbach (­2015: 110). For the Hebrew original (­Libi ­be-​­mizrach), see Schirmann (­i 489). A number of Bialik’s early poems pay indirect homage to Halevi, notably El ­ha-​­Tzippor (­To the Bird, 1892) in which, with an evident allusion to Jeremiah (­8: 7) –​­ Even the stork in flight, the dove, the swift, and the thrush, Know their time to m ­ igrate –​­ But my people do not know   divine ­law –​­

From the Bible to Bialik: poetry of Zion  93 the poet addresses a migrating bird, ‘­Do you bear greetings from my brethren in Zion?’ and, further alluding to the prophets and to Halevi, asks if Zion is comforted in her ruins. In his poems of despair leading to the start of his shtika (­silence) in 1911, Bialik’s imagery suggests the crushing of early hopes: ‘­and the song of a bird will die at my feet’ (­Mi ani ­u -​­mah ani, 1911). See pp. 157–8. below. 30 Aberbach (­2015: 111). For the Hebrew original (­Zion, ­ha-​­lo tishali), see S ­ chirmann (­i ­485–​­6). 31 Biblical allusions in this poem include: Psalms 48: 3; 84: 3; Isaiah 63: 15; E ­ xodus 19: 4; Jeremiah 8: 19; Deuteronomy 8: 15; Psalms 102: 15. Heine, in his poem on Judah Halevi in Hebrew Melodies (­1853), writes that Jerusalem to the Hebrew poet was the equivalent of the beloved beautiful Lady to the medieval troubadors. 32 Aberbach (­2015: 125). For the Hebrew original (­Ech aharecha emtza margo’a), see Schirmann (­i ­461–​­2). As Judah Halevi valued Spain as a center of Hebrew poetry, Bialik valued even a­ nti-​­Semitic Tsarist Russia, particularly Odessa, where a distinctive modern Jewish culture grew. When after the 1905 pogroms a number of Russian Jewish writers, including Sholom Aleichem, left Russia, Bialik, despite his experience of Kishinev and the recent Odessa pogrom, wrote to Sholom Aleichem that ‘­No country is as good as Russia and no city as good as Odessa’ (­Bialik 1938: ii 9). 33 On responses to ­anti-​­Semitism in Hebrew poetry from the 1881 pogroms to the Holocaust, see ­Chapter 7 below. 34 ­Mendes-​­Flohr and Reinharz (­1995: 536).

5 Between the Hebraic and the Greek Bialik and Tchernichowsky

Cursed be he who cries: Avenge! Such vengeance, of a child’s blood Satan has not yet ­devised –​­ Bialik (­1903)

I hold a sword, my fist is ­hard – ​­when wicked men attack, I’ll hit back blood for blood. Tchernichowsky (­1916)

The lucky coincidence of Bialik (­­ 1873–​­ 1934) and Saul Tchernichowsky (­­1875–​­1943) – ​­the leading Hebrew poets of the ­1881–​­1939 ­p eriod – ​­on a similar trajectory in the l­ate-​­Tsarist empire, from small Ukrainian towns to Odessa and via Berlin to Tel Aviv after the 1917 revolution, has fascinated literary scholars, with good reason.1 Totally devoted to Hebrew art and to the national movement, both poets were in the mold of Romantic national poets starting from Byron, and including Petőfi of Hungary, Mameli of Italy, Botev of Bulgaria, Marti of Cuba, and Pearse of Ireland: all sought national freedom. Yet, Bialik and Tchernichowsky were polar opposites in character, outlook, and ­style – ​­no sooner compare a puritanical talmudic scholar with a soldier or a Casanova. Tchernichowsky is a foil to Bialik: his love of the body, the fighting spirit, the fascination with paganism and its gods, the power of instinct and impulse, balances Bialik’s love of Jewish religious, literary and intellectual tradition and his immersion in national defeat and grief. Together they represent the most formidable creativity in Hebrew poetry since the Golden Age in medieval Spain, Judah Halevi above all. Their loyalty to the Jewish national cause obliterated rivalry: each knew the other’s worth. While Bialik worked for a Hebrew ingathering (­kinnus) of the rich culture preserved by the European Jews in their long diaspora (­galut = exile), the religious and literary roots of modern Jewish nationalism, ­Tchernichowsky might be described as the first ­Israeli – ­​­­Hebrew-​­speaking, secular, worldly, independent, liberal, adaptable, and unafraid, a fighting

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-6

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  95 man. Their meteoric rise in the late 19th and early 20th century coincided with a disturbing rise of a­ nti-​­Semitism and nationalism, turning a small but growing number of Jews, mostly young men, in the direction both of the ‘­muscular Judaism’ of political activism and also cultural Zionism with its focus on the creation of modern Hebrew language and literature. To disillusioned young Eastern European Jews, Bialik and Tchernichowsky were revered guides. Their poetry changed people’s lives, in different ways. While Bialik and his Hebrew ­ neo-​­ prophetic successor, Uri Zvi Greenberg, wanted an exclusively Jewish national culture, to Tchernichowsky Greek civilization was more ­desirable  – ​­a source of health and joy, symbol of the ­new-​­old Mediterranean center of Jewish life. Tchernichowsky’s zest for life, his aggressive energy and optimism illumine Bialik’s dark despair, suicidal at times.2 Nietzsche, too, his elevation of the ­w ill-­​­­to-​­power and distinction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian in civilization, spoke to Tchernichowsky and his generation. A ­ nti-​­Semitism and the resultant creation of the Zionist Organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897 brought about greater physical assertiveness in Jewish literature. Tough, violent Jews began to appear: in works such as Bialik’s story Arye Baal Guf (­Tough Arye, 1898); Tchernichowsky’s poem, Baruch ­mi-​­Magenza (­Baruch of Mainz, 1901), with its G ­ reek-​­like revenge during the massacres of the First Crusade in the late 11th century; Jabotinsky’s novel, ­Samson (­1905), and Isaac Babel’s stories of Benya Krik, the Jewish gangster in ­pre-​­war Odessa.3 In Tchernichowsky’s poetry, unlike Bialik’s, power is uninhibited by rabbinic puritanism, and human conflict is natural as the violence of nature and the sea.

Not brief sleep Not brief sleep and dream are sweet, Nature, but in stormy strife, I see you, from plummeting mines to mountain pastures, parched desert to drifting cloud. When my soul howls in pain, and hope, a rose in autumn, dries, I go to where the ancient rocks undaunted cry. The rocks shame me, they roar at sea and sky, and the waves beat at arrogant rocks return broken, finding strength at each new start.4

96  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky Bialik, Tchernichowsky and R ­ ussian-​­Jewish history Bialik and Tchernichowsky came to maturity at the same time, in a late 1­ 9th-​­century world in which Jews, the most persecuted of all groups in the Tsarist empire, did not fight back. Impoverished, they had no government representation. In countless pogroms in the ­40-​­year period from the murder of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 by revolutionaries until the end of the Russian civil war in 1921, it was open season for Jews: they had little protection from the Russian police or the army, often perpetrators or facilitators. In Hebrew culture, with its glorious past, Jews could escape their degradation; and Hebrew poets such as Bialik and Tchernichowsky were living reminders of their creative potential as a nation, even in exile. To Tchernichowsky more than Bialik, however, violent revenge, as in Greek tragedy, was preferable to Jewish suffering and martyrdom; he was a fighter and served with distinction in the Russian army, while Bialik, like many Russian Jews, evaded conscription. Russian a­ nti-​­Semitism tended to discourage Jewish patriotism and spurred dissidence, especially in the younger generation. By the early years of the 20th century, Jews numbered about half of those arrested for revolutionary activities in Russia. Jewish militancy, slow in coming, had ­far-​­reaching results. The Russian Jews totaled nearly five million by 1­ 900  – ​­about half the world’s Jewish population, burdened with countless government decrees, subject to frequent violent outbursts, crippled by poverty, crowded by law in the Pale of Settlement: despite all this, they ‘­remained basically loyal to the imperial government until late in the 19th century’.5 Bialik to a large extent shared this characteristic Jewish quiescence: The Lord never bugled me to war. A whiff of grapeshot? – ​­a bad sign. I wince at the trumpet’s b ­ last –​­ Harp or sword? Harp every time.6 As ­anti-​­Semitic violence spread, though, Bialik, in ­Bar-​­Kokhba (­1899), recalled with evident admiration the historic finale of ancient Jewish militancy, the B ­ ar-​­Kokhba revolt against Rome in 1­ 32–​­35 CE: Nothing but your fierce hounding has turned us into beasts of prey. With cruel fury we’ll drink your blood. We’ll have no pity when the whole nation rises, c­ ries –​­ Revenge!7 The rage in this poetry and its stress upon Jewish national unity in the face of violent oppression set it apart from Haskalah literature for, as we have

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  97 seen, even during the pogroms of 1881, the Haskalah poet, Judah Leib Gordon, could still seek to encourage assimilation within Russia: Tens of thousands will not be slaughtered … Where we lived before, we’ll live after …8 Bialik’s poetry influenced Jewish militants such as Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism, and the poets Abraham Stern (‘­Yair’) and Uri Zvi Greenberg.9 Yet, Bialik’s reaction to the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, ‘­On the Slaughter’ was to reject revenge:

On the Slaughter Heaven, beg mercy for me! If you have a God, and he can be reached – ​­but I’ve not found ­h im –​­ pray for me! My heart is numb, my prayer gone, I’ve lost my strength and ­hope –​­ how long, till when, how long? Hangman! Here’s my ­neck –​­ yours the power, the axe. Let me die a dog’s death, the world my ­scaffold -​­ ­we – ​­we the few! My blood is ­cheap – ​­smash skull, let babies’ and old men’s blood stain you forever, for all time. If there is ­justice – ​­let it come now! But if it comes after I’m ­destroyed –​­ let its throne be wrecked forever! Let the heavens rot in eternal evil. Go, wicked men, in violence. Live on your blood, wash in it. Cursed be he who cries: Avenge! Such vengeance, of a child’s blood Satan has not yet ­devised –​­ let the blood seep to the depth! eat at the darkness, dig up the rotten foundations of the earth.10 To Bialik, the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 CE is the central symbol of Jewish national ruin and guilt, while Tchernichowsky

98  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky especially in his early poetry rates Greek culture over Jewish religious culture. Though rabbinically averse to violence, Bialik for all his despair inspired action and hope. Tchernichowsky’s Baruch of Mainz was less influential in its time in calling for revenge against ­anti-​­Semitic murderers than Bialik’s City of Slaughter in conveying Jewish national grief and outrage at ­anti-​­Semitic barbarities. This, Bialik’s most influential poem, implicitly rejects Jewish pacifism associated with the rabbinic tradition. By invoking the ­Maccabees  – ​­he portrays the victims, ironically, as cowardly descendants of heroes, fleeing their murderers like terrified ­m ice – ​­Bialik challenged his generation. And indeed, without directly calling to arms, Bialik inspired the creation of many Jewish defense groups in Russia: members of these groups who first saw action during the pogroms from late 1903 onward later emigrated to Palestine where they formed the nucleus of the ­self-​­defense group, the Haganah (­Defense), later the Israeli army. The inspirational power of City of Slaughter derives in part from its looming, challenging despair: And now, what are you doing here, Son of Man? Get up, escape to the desert with sorrow’s cup, rip your soul to bits, feed your heart to impotent rage, weep over the boulders, drown your scream in a storm. Bialik esteemed Jewish martyrs,11 but Tchernichowsky had no use for them and rejected the Jewish tradition of being led ‘­like the lamb to the slaughter’, reciting the Shema (‘­Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, God is One’): he respected the ones who died fighting. In 1916, while serving as a Russian army doctor (­for which he was decorated), he wrote one of his most militant poems. Not for the poet the ­tragic-​­heroic images of Jewish h ­ istory – the ​­ martyrs of Spain and of the Cossacks in ­1648–​­49: evil must be fought. The poet seeks the youthful power of prehistoric Canaanite culture, ‘­fresh, strong, wrestling with its God, despising its enemies’ swords’. Who are you, blood in me burning? Blood of the martyrs of ­1648–​­49? I’ll not let my throat be cut nor turn Christian, but die fighting! No, no! I grip the sword, my fist is ­hard –​­ when evil men attack, I hit back, blood for blood.12 Tchernichowsky, unlike Bialik who extols Jewish martyrs as authors of Jewish national survival, recoils from martyrdom. He rejects the lesson of the

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  99 talmudic aggadah of the martyrdom of Hanina ben Teradion during the Hadrianic persecution (­­135–​­38 CE) – that ​­ martyrdom is the highest ideal of the sanctification of the Name of God: Who are you, blood in me burning? Blood of martyrs dying at ‘­God is One’? I despair of God, I do not fight him. On heart empty of God, wool sponges have no use to the man ready with shield and sword.13 Both poets draw on the talmudic legend in which an Arab merchant and a rabbi, Rabba bar Bar Hanna, recall the Israelite warriors who failed to reach the Promised Land but remain lying where they fell in the desert, waiting to be resurrected.14 Bialik turns this aggadah into a magisterial allegory of the somnolence and latent power of the Jews: And ­then –​­ gripped with wild power the awesome warriors wake, a mighty generation, ready for war, ­lightning-​­eyed, ­blade-​­faced, hands on sword! Thundering in unison, the sixty myriads, their voice rips through the gale, clashing with the desert roar, ringed with storm and rage they cry:          We are heroes! The last generation of slaves, the first to be free!15 Tchernichowsky, in contrast, sees these warriors not as failures, but as conquerors destined to conquer again: Shatter the foe! Conquer all you see!16 The poet would die fighting, ‘­w ith shield and sword’ – he ​­ accepts violence and cruelty as part of nature: Eagle! Eagle! on your mountains, on your hills an eagle flies! Straight and black and broad, taut as an arrow drawn in the bow, over crags and the meadowside circles gently for the kill.17

100  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky Even so, as a witness to massacres of Jews in the Russian civil war (­­1919–​­21), Tchernichowsky did not urge his people to fight back: We are weak! We cannot rush you with axes (­as you do) splitting open women with child, we will not burn your houses down, nor crush your babies’ skulls with iron rods, to stop your coarse hands destroying the image of God in us, marks of ancient nobility of spirit, treasures passed down, gathered bit by bit, in flashes and sparks, hundreds of generations, ascetic, modest, the yoke of the Ten Commandments. Instead, the poet imagines a­ nti-​­Semitic hatred becoming a poison, turning violence against Jews inward, against the perpetrators: You’ll cut your brother’s throat like a prize Easter pig in the yard or village square, his dying snort your holiday song. Day of revenge! Your son will tear your grey beard in public, his fist in your face, and with an animal roar call you bastard. Day of revenge! Your beloved daughter like a bitch in heat, will stammer out, naked, drunk, in your ears her whorish ways… This our revenge! May our revenge live generation after generation!18 Such brutal condemnation of ­anti-​­Semitic violence, a p ­ re-​­Holocaust condemnation of the entire gentile world, was counterparted by glowing admiration for what in Tchernichowsky’s view was healthy and heroic in Jewish tradition. The poet loved fighters like King Saul:19 Some will remember, some will sing the song of Gilboa, the enchantment of En Dor for the solitary king, the people’s prophet who made a covenant with the sword and paid in blood;

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  101 with glorious, generous, humble heart, ­javelin-​­split, his sons too. Can a lion betray its stony lair? He fell like a lion: he and his men…20 Elsewhere, the poet imagines the dead king’s lover hearing of his death: The Philistines took the mountain, Edom invaded for spoil with the kings of the East and the tribes of Dedan. The people were called up, each family, my lover too, among captains, to be routed, slaughtered in the high fields, taken ­prisoner –​­ and my lover is gone.21 Tchernichowsky believed Jewish children should be taught the heroism of ancestors like King Saul, who made a covenant of blood with the sword. Though the poet at times exploded with anger and contempt at rabbinic Judaism,22 he included Rabbi Akiva, spiritual leader of the B ­ ar-​­Kokhba revolt (­­132–​­35 CE) against Rome, in a children’s poem written in Berlin in 1923:

They say: there’s a land They say: there’s a land, a ­sun-​­drenched ­land –​­ Where is that land? Where is that sun? They say: there’s a land with seven pillars. Seven shining planets on every hill. In this land all hope comes true. Whoever lands, Akiva says hello. ‘­Shalom, Akiva! Shalom, Rabi! Where the holy men? Where the Maccabee?’ Akiva says this in reply:

102  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky ‘­A ll Israel is holy. You’re the Maccabee!’23 Tchernichowsky: ­Jewish-​­G reek poet Of all modern Hebrew writers, Tchernichowsky goes further in his esteem for the ancient Greeks and Greek culture, so much so that he was known as ­Ha-​­Yevani, ‘­the Greek’. In his adulation for Greeks and Greek aesthetics, the Hebrew poet rebelled against centuries of Jewish opposition to Greek culture.24 Among other national poets perhaps only D’Annunzio so completely immersed himself in the classical world, an inspiration not just for poetry but for action. As a militant poet, Tchernichowsky had much in common with Bialik. Yet, Bialik with his profound talmudic education was essentially a cultural nationalist, whereas Tchernichowsky, one of the first Eastern European Jews to study classical languages, believed in action and was not afraid of conflict; rather, he welcomed a good fight. Tchernichowsky more than Bialik is the archetype of the modern Israeli. In his poetry and through the example of his own life he created a new image of the Jew, no longer bowed by hatred and violence, degradation and fear, with s­ elf-​­destructive submission enforced both by ­anti-​­Semitic discrimination and religious restraint, but instead proud and tough, ready to live, to fight and conquer. Writing mainly in Odessa, then in Germany after the Russian Revolution and Tel Aviv under British rule, where he lived from 1931 until his death, Tchernichowsky, together with Bialik and Greenberg, was a poet of Jewish emergence from powerlessness. Even in the age of the pogroms and Jewish defeat and despair, Tchernichowsky saw himself as a poet of victory. His absolute confidence in the latent national power of the Jewish people gives the poet in retrospect a prophetic aura. At a time, when Tsarist Russia was allied with Britain in World War I, he wrote his credo: Conquer the land, make it yours for all generations to come!25 Tchernichowsky’s translation of the Iliad and Odyssey into Hebrew, done from the Greek original, is a relatively minor part of his achievement. His poem Sirtutim (­Sketches, 1900), written when he was a medical student in Heidelberg, declares his Greek spirit in ‘­the kingdom of the Tsars’ by the Black Sea: ‘­under this light, in these angry breakers,/­Homer’s songs blossomed, and the vision of Sophocles’. Echoing the Greeks, Tchernichowsky declared his love of life, beauty, and art, of physical beauty, and of a prehistoric instinctive humanity that modern c­ ivilization  – ​­including ­Judaism  –​ h ­ ad allegedly crushed. Tchernichowsky, a doctor by profession, found in Greek mythology an antidote to the maladies of Judaism: his poetry dramatizes civilization and its discontents, the decline and distortion of natural

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  103 human instinct. The poet proclaims a new birth of sexual freedom and sensual excess in revolt against rabbinic puritanism: Let’s be happy, let’s be lovers true, let’s shout and sing, while skies are royal blue.26 Tchernichowsky’s free spirit contrasts with the torment in Bialik’s poetry:

Hungry eyes These hungry eyes, these lips     thirsting to be kissed, these breasts wanting to be touched, all your hidden precious parts, sated as even Sheol could not guess –​­ your majestic body, the fullness of desire, flesh that gorged me, blessing of joy’s spring –​­ if you only knew what I felt after. Innocent I was, no storm of lust   had fouled me till you came, I, foolish boy, cast down at your feet, mercilessly, my purity of heart and soul, tender flowers of my youth. For an instant infinitely happy, I blessed the hand that stroked    its sweet pain… and my world fell apart –​­ how great the price I paid for your flesh.27 Tchernichowsky, in contrast, does not lament the pain of the flesh but sings its pleasures. There is, for example, the baker’s daughter whose tasty confectionary includes her body: The girl’s ­shop – ​­my ­light –​­ lips and niches full of cakes, thick cracker bread, challas, cream puffs, pastries, sweetmeats in flasks, dishes and baskets, and brightly sparkling glasses, and in a China bowl raisins on sliced challa rolls,

104  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky ­sponge-​­cakes and biscuits in bottles and jars.28 To Tchernichowsky, as to Keats, beauty is the ‘­truth of truths’,29 and nature is ­sacred –​­ … you live with the hyssop on the wall, waterdrops on limestone, ­rainbow-​­embroidered, sudden brilliance in a canopy of fog…30 The poet, devoted to nature, is alienated from his people. In language reminiscent of Judah Leib Gordon, he writes of the Jews atrophied in their ‘­holy’ tradition. During the Polish revolt against Russia in 1863, Gordon condemned the Jews and their rabbinic leadership for their neglect of martial arts: You’re ruined, Israel: you did not learn the art of war, so you’re burnt out, spiritless stuffed with scribes’ dust, pages of t­ alk –​­ eternal living mummy.31 To Bialik, too, the rabbinic tradition was moribund: When young I heard these voices, I saw these mute toilers; brows furrowed, ­w ide-​­eyed, ­pale-­​­­faced –​­ as if begging mercy. Each furrow and g­ lance – a​­ strangled urge, a dead spark; they stirred my thoughts; scalded, my heart recoiled, but remembering their cry at night, like men being slaughtered, I cried out: God! What are they dying for?32 Bialik, though, did not reject rabbinic Judaism, as Tchernichowsky did in his early poetry, openly heretical, proclaiming ‘­Greek’ identity, in love with the sensual world, of conflict and Nature. Still, Tchernichowsky was not unusual as a critic of Judaism: both the Hasidic and Haskalah movements grew out of dissatisfaction with traditional Jewish life, its excessive concern with ancient Jewish law, and detachment from the natural world. The poet’s secular lifestyle, marriage outside the faith, years of medical practice largely among n ­ on-​­Jews, and his service in the Russian medical corps in World War I, drew him away from provincial Jewish life to a humanist outlook. In a sonnet cycle, the poet recalled the operations he performed under fire in the

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  105 war of 1­ 914–​­18 in language neither chauvinistic nor ­anti-​­war but with deep human compassion: To the sun I stood between the living and dying (­what hopeless art!) sharp scalpel in hand, weeping for joy or cursing in rage, I took in the last light in the eye of a dying man. Cannon thudded down the field sporadic fire lit my dark tunnel, alone, I drew the line, wiped a life from the page, so diamond is ripped from the onyx stone. Yet in the dying eye, that spark, that light soaking light near blind, the flash that sears in the dark calling down ruin, fire answering fire, You were there, your glory stunned ­me –​­ was I born too soon or after my time?33 In the corona of a second sonnet cycle, completed in 1922 after he escaped from Odessa to Berlin, the poet condemns destructive ideologies and ‘­fixers of the world’ and affirms faith in art and poetry, without irony. The poem followed years of war, civil war, deprivation and illness, and disillusionment with the ‘­trinket trash’ ideologies (­including Marxism) which promised a better world. The poet affirms his calling, and the power of art in human affairs: On the blood Tired of mankind and the detritus of the past we grow old, our eyes seek faraway light, grand miracles to make things right, rifling dead doctrines to life at last. We think we see ­clear-​­running truth, for prophets and ­gospel-​­bringers have led us from trap to pit to hellish abyss exhausting our thirst for the promise of youth. Cursed the priests of that trinket trash! And true prophets and their ­hangers-​­on! May the fixers of the world be forever damned! But the priests of beauty and the artist’s brush, masters of poetry and its secret charm, will save the world with song and psalm.34

106  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky The optimism here belies Tchernichowsky’s miserable existence at the time, in w ­ ar-​­torn Odessa in the immediate p ­ ost-​­1918 years, before he escaped to Berlin. In a somber letter to Bialik, who had already reached Berlin, to asked, among other necessities, for… a pair of ­much-​­needed trousers and socks.35 Poet as healer Radiating energy, optimism, and health, Tchernichowsky seemed largely untouched by Jewish sorrow, ignorance, and poverty. He shared with Heine the view of Judaism as a longstanding sickness: radical measures were needed for recovery.36 As Goethe hated the cross and baptism as symbols of an unnatural faith, Tchernichowsky hated the tefillin (­phylacteries), worn in prayer, symbol of the free spirit entrapped. He saw his poetry virtually as part of his medical profession, as a spiritual remedy: … light rays paint and revive all they touch, pass ­amber-​­like on gold binding of Goethe and Homer. This gold the writing desk, gold of Ophir its tools, burning like coals the eyes in Herzl’s portrait.37 Tchernichowsky, unusually among Russian Jews, was raised in a Jewish shtetl dominated by rabbinic authority but in a largely n ­ on-​­Jewish rural part of the Tsarist empire, outside the Jewish Pale, in the town of Mikhaelovka, southern Ukraine, bordering on the Crimean peninsula. His family was observant but progressive, his father a shopkeeper. Taught Hebrew privately, he studied secular subjects, including Russian and German, in a local girls’ school. Unlike most Russian Jews, who even after a century of Russian rule still used Yiddish as their main language, Tchernichowsky knew Russian well. As a teenager sent to Odessa to study business, he embarked instead on a medical career while the Hebrew revival in Odessa caught his imagination and he discovered his gift for poetry: he became a prodigiously skilled and versatile craftsman, among the best in the 3,­000-​­year history of Hebrew verse. Unlike Bialik, who had little formal education and undertook a series of mostly unsuccessful business ventures, Tchernichowsky had an excellent general education and knew many l­anguages  – he ​­ translated the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer, Plato, Anacreon, Shakespeare, Moliére, Goethe, Longfellow, and The Kalevala, among others, into ­Hebrew  – ​­while pursuing a medical career. After training at the University of Heidelberg (­­1899–​­1903) and Lausanne (­­1903–​­06), he practiced several years in Russia qualifying at the University of Kiev (­1910), worked in St. Petersburg until the outbreak of war in 1914, when he joined the medical corps of the Russian army; after the war, driven from Soviet Russia, he worked as a doctor in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem until his death. His marriage out of the faith, too, was unusual, to a Russian aristocrat and anarchist;38 this alienated the poet from many of his

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  107 fellow Hebrew writers, as did his decision to seek treatment in a Jerusalem monastery in his final illness, in 1943. Tchernichowsky’s poetry is a radical protest against Judaism, especially as it evolved under rabbinic influence after the destruction of the Jewish state by the Romans in 70 CE, but even before that, in the biblical period. A disciple of Nietzsche, he was fascinated by paganism in a variety of cultures, particularly Canaanite, as more authentic, freer, and healthier than monotheism, which deadened the human spirit. His ideal was a Nietzschean god of youth, power, and beauty. Tchernichowsky’s heretical views recall Goethe’s contempt for Christian dogma and admiration for ­idol-​­worshipping Saxons who opposed Charles the Great. Like other national ­poets  – Fishta, ​­ Fikret, Iqbal, Yeats, and Gibran, for e­ xample  –​ ­Tchernichowsky attacks his own people with the aim of cleansing them: the remedy was r­adical  – ​­ a Nietzschean transvaluation of values and (­influenced by the Hebrew novelist Berdichewsky) emancipation from traditional Judaism. He wanted an end to the alleged ­over-​­intellectualization of Judaism, its excessive moral rigor and lack of joy and sensuality, its inhibitions and corruption. Yet, Tchernichowsky was not blind to the joy in Judaism, its rituals and practices, and in its entire literary and religious tradition. After the Russian Revolution, as Jewish life in Eastern Europe faded, he delighted in a Jewish wedding: The badchan held the platter up for all to see and cried out: ‘­From the groom’s uncle, the famous nogid, Reb Raphael Khotinsky, this splendid silver plate with silver myrtle!’ –​­ and the musicians played a fanfare. Then Azriel Litrovinsky placed silver candlesticks on the table, and the badchan held them up: ‘­From Azriel Litrovnik, a gift from the groom’s friend, the famous nogid –​­ two silver candlesticks, made by an artist!’ – and ​­ another fanfare. One by one they came with gifts, relatives and friends of groom and bride some with more, some less: gold, silver, rouble notes, household utensils and women’s jewellery.39 This poetry, a loving record of a ­life-​­affirming tradition, has many precedents in Jewish history, especially in times of upheaval, going back to the Hebrew Bible; but it also has many parallels among modern national poets, including Scott, Leopardi, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Petöfi, Ibsen, Eino Leino, and Yeats: all seek to keep alive an endangered national identity in literature, including its religious roots. Though neither Bialik nor Tchernichowsky were observant ­Jews – ​­both wrote scathingly on the failings of rabbinic J­ udaism – ​­they loved the poetry of Jewish ritual. Bialik was known to profane the Sabbath, but his poem on the Sabbath has been for many Jews virtually part of the ­Friday-​­night service.40 In contrast, Tchernichowsky was an out and out heretic, and proud of it.

108  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky Tchernichowsky: poet of idolatry As a young poet, Tchernichowsky imagined a world without rabbis or rabbinic law, without the wrathful biblical God of justice, a world in which people are in touch with their true feelings and belong naturally to the landscape they inhabit. This is the world of the unnamed pilgrim girl making her way on foot from Galilee to deliver her offerings in the Temple of Jerusalem: Pilgrim girl On narrow hillpaths my kid goat follows me, the flowers in my basket wild from limestone and nettles; when I speak, the boys go at me, a thrush from Mount Hermon behind me. Should I be quiet or shout at them, for shame? Or laugh perhaps… my heart beats h ­ ard – ​­you explain. Is it that I’m from the hills of Galilee, or that I’m pretty that they laugh at me? Galilee girls are dark, our own wool clothes we spin. No traders here. The cliffs of our wadis close us in. Pampered, l­ ash-​­fluttering girls of the plain wear fancy Egyptian dresses, perfume from Sheba and Tyre. My skin is dark with cold nights and mountain wind, my hair too, with mountain lilies hemmed, among sunny streams and gardens, from springtime come autumn, when ox and goat the heights descend. From ­pilgrim-​­flocks yellow dust billows thick. Singing rises from the valleys. Am I happy or sad? Am I lovesick? Or just sick? Or is it the joyous Temple, city of David, I’ll see?41 Much of Tchernichowsky’s poetry is iconoclastic in its attraction to idolatry, especially to the culture of ­pre-​­Israelite Canaan, and to Greek mythology, with statues of Asherah, Astarte, Ilil, and Apollo. These are not museum pieces but intensely imagined, alive. ­G od-​­full night Night… night… ­God-​­full night, gates in ruin, Asherah shadows, no star no l­ ight –​­ trees stretch bare boughs.

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  109 Hush! on a hidden path the sound of a vanishing ­lark –​­ birds cry and pass! into the light or out of the dark? Shadows float and fall dance before the dawn silent as ­owls –​­ in gloom on fields of corn…42 In a notorious poem, the poet stands, a Jew eternally at odds with pagan culture, in front of a statue of Apollo, god of youth and power, life and joy. Unable to bear the prison of Jewish life, ‘­the dying of generation after generation’ – ​­reminiscent of Bialik in The Talmud Student, ‘­W hat are they dying for?’ – ​­the poet rejects Judaism symbolized by the tefillin:43 Apollo     I come to you, I bow to your ­statue – ​­symbol of life and light; I bow, kneel to the most high and good, most beautiful, most secret of all things. I bow down to life, might and beauty, I bow to all beautiful things, robbed by rotten human carcasses, rebels against life, against Tzuri Shaddai, God of the gods of wondrous deserts, God of the gods of the conquerors of Canaan in ­storm -​­ and tied him with tefillin straps…44 In other poems, too, idols come to life. In a poem addressed to the Canaanite goddess Astarte, the poet imagines a scene thousands of years ago: My Astarte My Astarte, tell me where in the valley you’re from? Did a merchant carry you from the ­sea-​­fortress, Sidon, through breakers of agate and chalcedony? Was he ambushed at night by warriors of Dan in the hills? Did you come among sandclouds with linen bundles on camels from Dedan, swaying with the Sheba caravan, kissing uplifted spear, behind singing crescent and tinkling pomegranate bells?

110  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky Your ­eyes – ​­emerald marvels, your ­parts – all ​­ ivory, no one tells your ­secret – who ​­ gave you to me! Here’s fine flour, a basket of figs, see this jar of olive o ­ il – ​­-​­the hours I’ve prayed: ‘­Bring him quick, my beautiful lover, don’t wait!’45 The Canaanite goddess, Ilil, is alive in the poet’s own love affairs: Poems to Ilil Let our times together be like a tune ­half-​­awake sealed by decree, fixed by fate: We never hoped to see joy so rare buried in timeless mystery by Life’s arbiter. *** I don’t love h ­ er –​­ love is gone… I’ve loved a few, and that’s done! But madly my heart sings like a b ­ ird –​­ pounds incessantly its crazed myrrh…46 In a late poem, the poet declares that, lacking possessions, he would like a statue with a combined likeness of Moses, Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Isaiah ben ­A motz  – ​­and Astarte47  – ​­symbolizing union of Western (­particularly Greek) and Jewish civilizations. Unlike Bialik who venerated the biblical prophets and at times (­notably in the ‘­Poems of Wrath’) imitated their voice, Tchernichowsky was intrigued by idolatrous ‘­false prophets’ in the Bible whose prophecies were suppressed. He preferred these condemned visionaries who (­as he saw himself) maintained faith in Nature and the holiness of the heart’s affections over the great monotheist biblical prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, obsessed by Israel’s sinfulness and the need for atonement.48 ‘­False prophets’, he believed, were in reality more truthful and ­life-​­affirming. In some poems, he imagines their message, not as theology, mysticism or

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  111 abstract morality, but in proclaiming faith in Nature and the ‘­God of the heart’. To the sun Was I born after my time or too soon? ‘­Gods’ surround me, fill the universe, to the stars, my gods, I pray, enthralled by you, sun and pale moon. Nothing without you, sun, warming me! No clouds, no garlic skin, no elephant tree, all children of the sun, transmigrations all of light and ­heat – ​­the burning coal. The hum of the universe the prayer of all: to you the battle trumpet sounds at dawn and, giving birth, mother jackals call, as suns in worlds above are swept in sound, in the eternal chorus I sing the dew that sleeps in me and over Edom’s land.49 Tchernichowsky in ­B ritish-​­ruled Palestine, ­1931–​­43 In 1921, after the Russian writer Maxim Gorky interceded with Lenin, a group of Hebrew writers, including Bialik and Tchernichowsky, were allowed to leave Russia. For the next decade, Tchernichowsky lived mostly in Germany, then in 1931 joined Bialik in Tel Aviv, where he worked as a school doctor. Bialik’s ‘­Work Song’ and Tchernichowsky’s ‘­I love to wander’ are popular songs of the time, echoing the sounds of work and change, reflecting the energy and enthusiasm of the dynamic, ­Hebrew-​­speaking community in the land of Israel under British rule, the growing number of Jewish farmers, and closeness to the land: Who sows grain and with a spade plants trees for fruit and shade?    Who do we thank?    Who do we bless? Work and skill! Who builds a roof to keep us dry, fences the garden and the vine? and for the Sabbath and the festive days takes the trouble, every time?    Who do we thank?    Who do we bless? Work and skill!50

112  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky Down the Sharon valley road, I love to wander along, past fences and vineyards loud with truck horns, ­pick-​­axe and ­hoe –​­ work forever song! I love the dirt t­ rack – where ​­ does it start? –​­ joining villages to Beth Shean, Haifa to Jezreel to Kfar Tabor the drill hunting water for cisterns and pits sings of eternal work!51 After Bialik’s death in 1934, Tchernichowsky was revered as the embodiment of Jewish national identity in Hebrew poetry, voice of a language both ancient and dynamically young. In his last years, Tchernichowsky wrote some of his best poems, technically brilliant as always but increasingly in vernacular Hebrew style, reflecting his new life in a H ­ ebrew-​­speaking society. In 1936 Tel Aviv, he responded to the rise in Arab terrorist attacks against Palestinian Jews: I’ve a baby, baby mine, born to the jackal’s howl, the bomb exploding, pioneer child: Sleep, child, sleep! Lullaby, lullaby!52 In the 1930s, Tchernichowsky became an inspiration to Jews threatened or attacked by ­anti-​­Semites, especially in Europe but also in the Middle East and the United States: he was the poet of Jews fighting back. The rise of Nazism and the outbreak of war darkened the poet’s last years. The German army in North Africa threatened the Jews in the land of Israel. Many Arabs (­including the Palestinian leadership) admired Hitler and were ready to collaborate in the Holocaust, given a chance. Tchernichowsky, by now mortally ill with leukemia, understood Nazis as a reversion to medieval ­anti-​­Semitism. He responded to early news of genocide in 1942 with Ballads of Worms, on the Black Death (­bubonic plague) in the 14th century, when an estimated ­two-​­thirds of Europe’s Jews, blamed for the plague, were murdered. As in Camus’ The Plague, Tchernichowsky uses the plague as metaphor of Nazism and the Holocaust. Bim, Bam, he’s come, tolls the bell in the white tower, ‘­The Black Death!’

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  113 Bim, Bam, he’s here, dread in all places, wood huts and palaces. Tchernichowsky lived to see the defeat of the German army at El Alamein in 1942, ensuring that Palestine would not be invaded and the Jews there, under British protection, would escape genocide. The poet died in 1943. His chief poetic legacy is the revival of ancient Jewish militancy. His belief in the necessity to respond to ­attack – ​­otherwise, the victim will be more vulnerable to further ­attacks – ​­became the policy underlying Jewish defense. The poetry of Bialik and Tchernichowsky contributed to the revival of Jewish pride and dignity in the process of regaining statehood, and to the rediscovery of the Hebrew literary heritage, particularly in the Bible and in rabbinic aggadah.

Notes 1 On various aspects of Bialik and Tchernichowsky as contemporary Jewish national poets, see, for example, Alter (­1969), Kurtzweil (­1975), Miron (­1987), and Aberbach (­2008). On communication between the two poets, see Ungerfeld (­1974: ­132–​­7). 2 On suicidal elements in Bialik’s life and works, see p. 52, note 17 above and pp. 154, 157, 175 note 5 below. 3 Babel’s Benya Krik is an heroic figure in the context of the widespread ­anti-​ ­ ovecot’, ­Semitism in Tsarist Russia, vividly recalled by Babel in his ‘­Story of My D set against the Odessa pogrom in 1905. As Bialik did, Babel sees the need for Jewish militancy in view of the pacifism taught by rabbinic Judaism, and he recalls a time in the story, ‘­Awakening’, when, ‘­chained to the Gemara, I lived the life of a sage’. Babel grew up in Odessa at a time when it was a major center of Hebrew literature; he read Hebrew and met Bialik and Mendele Mocher Sefarim, and he was more immersed in his Jewish roots than the Soviet censors allowed (­Sicher 2009). 4 Lo rig’e shnat (­Not brief sleep, 1896). Similar imagery of the roaring sea in the Bible (­Psalm 93, for example) gives proof of the power of God and the truth of his Law. Bialik’s edition of Tchernichowsky’s poems, beautifully published by Dvir in Berlin in 1923, despite austerity, is used for this chapter. 5 Lincoln (­1978: 289). 6 Shirat Yisrael (­Jewish song, 1894). In later life, Bialik preferred the restraint of Weizmann to Jabotinsky’s militancy, though both leaders esteemed Bialik’s poetry and found in it support for their different policies. 7 Aberbach (­1997: ­31–​­2). ­B ar-​­Kokhba is unusual among Bialik’s poems in alluding to the Jewish revolts against Rome. Many years later, in the 1920s and 1930s, when Jewish militants such as Jabotinsky proclaimed these revolts as precedents for modern Jewish militancy, Bialik, a moderate sympathetic to the Zionist diplomacy of Weizmann, seems to have been unsympathetic to this use of Jewish history, identifying instead with the traditional rabbinic disdain for violence and the belief, expressed both in the Talmud and by Josephus, that revolt against Rome was disastrous. 8 ­Bi-​­Ne’arenu uviZkenenu Nelekh (­With Our Youths and Our Old People We Will Go, 1881), Gordon (­1973: 11). See p. 30 above.

114  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky 9 Stern, a classical scholar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the 1930s, followed the ancient Greeks in the belief that a­ nti-​­Jewish violence must be met with violence: Jews must learn revenge from the Greeks to survive in a violent world. While studying in Florence in 1934, Stern wrote prophetically in Hebrew, quoting Archilochus: Yes, I too am a soldier poet; Today I write with ­p en – tomorrow ​­ with sword; Today with ink, tomorrow with blood; Today on paper, tomorrow on human backs; The heavens granted the book and the sword, Deciding fate: soldier and poet.

Stern (­1964: 39)

True to his poetry, Stern joined the underground Irgun and, after the British White Paper of 1939 largely closed Palestine to Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, carried out terrorist attacks with the aim of forcing the British out of Palestine. 10 ‘­On the Slaughter’ was Bialik’s initial response to the Kishinev pogrom (­April ­19–​­20, 1903), written within a few weeks after, shortly before the poet was sent to Kishinev by the Odessa Jewish Historical Society to collect information and write a report. Instead of the report, he wrote the poem City of Slaughter. Bialik’s first impulse seems to have been to blame the perpetrators, but after visiting Kishinev he blamed the victims. The title ironically alludes to the blessing recited by the ritual slaughterer (­shochet) before slaughtering and occasionally also by martyrs in the Middle Ages who preferred to commit communal suicide rather than fall into Christian hands. The opening phrase echoes the midrash on Moses’ death (­Deuteronomy Rabbah 7: 10). The poet indicates the depth of his despair when he questions God’s existence, evidently for the first time in Hebrew poetry. ‘­How long?’ echoes the traditional biblical cry (­e.g. Jeremiah 12: 4, Psalms 6: 4). Complaints against God are, however, familiar in Jewish literature (­e.g., in the book of Job and in aggadot on the destruction of the Temple, Gittin 56b). 11 See in particular Bialik’s poem Im yesh et nafshekha ­la-​­da’at (­if you want to know, 1896), expressing traditional Jewish pride in martyrdom. 12 Manginah li (‘­My Song’, 1916). 13 Hanina ben Teradion, caught by the Romans teaching the Torah in public, was wrapped in a Torah scroll and set on fire. To prolong his agony, his torturers put wet sponges or tufts of wool on his chest (­Avodah Zara 18a). 14 For the biblical story of the failed invasion of Canaan, see Numbers 14; on the talmudic legend of the ‘­dead of the desert’, see Bava Batra ­73b–​­74a. 15 Bialik (­2004: 62). 16 Manginah li (­My Song, 1916). 17 Ayit! Ayit! (­Eagle! Eagle!, 1936). 18 Zot tehi nikmatenu (‘­Revenge’, 1920). Written in Odessa and dedicated to the memory of Jews slaughtered in Ukraine in the Russian civil war (­­1918–​­20) between the Communists (­the ‘­Reds’) and their opponents (­the ‘­W hites’): the latter murdered over 100,000 Jews. 19 Tchernichowsky shared with Byron admiration for his namesake Saul, Israel’s first king, who won independence for his nation, was defeated by the Philistines and died nobly in battle. His poems on Saul, extending over four decades, reflect his changing national views. ‘­On the Ruins of Beth Shean’ (­1898), written by a ­star-​­struck idealistic Tchernichowsky in his early 20s, is set in the messianic age. Saul, about to take revenge on the gentiles, is commanded by God to love

Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky  115 them instead. The poet at this stage had a belatedly liberal universalist view of national i­ dentity – ​­not unlike that of Byron in the early 19th century (­see Byron’s ‘­Song of Saul Before His Last Battle’). The cruelty of early ­20th-​­century history brought the poet to a more narrow spirit of national struggle, in ‘­On the Mountains of Gilboa’, written over 30 years later, after the Arab massacre of the Jews in Hebron in 1929, and ‘­A Band of Soldiers’ (­1936), which ends by extolling Saul’s ‘­covenant with the sword’. ‘­Love Song for Saul’ is sung by an anonymous lover after Saul’s death. 20 Anshe chayil chevel (­A Band of Soldiers, 1936). Kish: father of Saul (­I Samuel 9: ­1–​­2); last and largest: Saul is described as being head and shoulders taller than other Israelites (­I Samuel 9: 2); the prophet: Samuel; Utz to Dan: from the Southern extremity of the kingdom of Israel, bordering on Edom, where Utz was located, to the Northern extremity in Dan, bordering on Lebanon; slave from Bethlehem: pejorative term for David, whom Saul treated as an enemy and tried to kill (­I Samuel 20: 33); Gilboa: site of Saul’s last battle against the Philistines, in which he died; En Dor: Saul consulted the witch of En Dor before the battle at Gilboa (­I Samuel 28: 8ff.); the people’s prophet: an allusion to Saul’s prophesying (­I Samuel 10: ­11–​­12). 21 Shir ahava ­le-​­Shaul (­Love Song for Saul). 22 See, for example, Tchernichowsky’s poem on Apollo, quoted p. 109. 23 Omrim yeshna eretz (­They say there’s a land…, 1923). Akiva: leading rabbi of the Mishnaic period, martyred during the Hadrianic persecution (­c. ­135–​­38 CE). 24 On mutual influences and rivalry of Hebraic and Greek cultures from ancient to modern times, see Leoussi and Aberbach (­2002). 25 Manginah Li (­ My Song, 1916). Bialik’s poem ­L a-​­Mnatze’ah al ­ha-​­Meholot (­Totentanz, 1915), strikingly contrasts with Tchernichowsky’s aggressive militancy; set against the slaughter of World War I, it captures a mood of obsession and despair, a ‘­dance of death’ reminiscent of Mark Gertler’s wartime painting, ‘­­Merry-­​­­Go-​­Round’. 26 Nagilah, nitalsah ­ba-​­ehavim (­Let’s be happy…, 1893). 27 H ­ a-​­Eynayim ­ha-​­re’evot (­Hungry eyes, 1897). To Joseph Klausner, in 1903, Bialik wrote of his dislike of portrayals of youthful lust in contemporary Hebrew literature (­Bialik 1937: i ­186–​­7). On sexual disgust in Bialik’s poetry, see, for example, Haya erev ­ha-​­kayitz (­On a summer evening, 1908), and Bialik (­1971: 164, 168, ­184–​­5). 28 Et mi ohav? (­The Baker’s Daughter, 1903). 29 Shalosh Amitot (­Three Truths, 1924). 30 Neta zar at ­le-​­amekh (­A lien to your people…, 1898). 31 Although Gordon believed that the Russian Jews should assimilate in Tsarist Russia, his use of Hebrew and attacks on his people inadvertently gave his poetry a national character and contributed to the rise of Jewish nationalism. Bialik admired Gordon as a fighter; in a meeting in Odessa to commemorate Gordon 20 years after his death in 1891, Bialik gave him the highest praise: ‘­we are all dwarfs compared to him’ (­Bialik 1935: ii 171). 32 ­Ha-​­Matmid (­The Talmud Student, 1896/­7). 33 ­L a-​­Shemesh (­To the Sun, 1919). For another sonnet in this cycle, see p. 111 below. 34 Al ­ha-​­Dam (­On the Blood, 1922). 35 See Tchernichowsky’s letter to Bialik of February 7, 1922 Ungerfeld (­ 1974: ­134–​­5). 36 To Heine, in ‘­Das neue israelitische Hospital zu Hamburg’ (­1844), his poem on the newly built Jewish hospital in Hamburg (‘­Ein Hospital für arme, kranke Juden’), Judaism was an even worse sickness than poverty and pain. 37 Sirtutim (­Sketches, 1900).

116  Between the Hebraic and the Greek: Bialik and Tchernichowsky 38 Tchernichowsky and his wife, Melania Karlovna von Gosias Gorbatshevitsh, had a daughter, Isolda, named after the heroine of Przybyszewski’s novel, Homo Sapiens (­­1895–​­96). The poet evidently identified with the Nietzschean qualities of this novel, its stress on individuality, and rejection of social convention. 39 Hatunatah shel Elka (­Elka’s Wedding, 1920). nogid = here a communal leader, philanthropist; badchan = jester. 40 According to the Judaic scholar, Shimon Rawidowicz, who knew Bialik in the 1920s, the poet ‘­profaned the Sabbath in private and in public’ (­Rawidowicz 1983: 95). 41 Olat Regel (­­Pilgrim-​­Girl, 1909). Mount Hermon: on the northern border of the Land of Israel and Lebanon; from the hills of Galilee: the ancient Galileans had a reputation for being less sophisticated than most other Jews in the Land of Israel, especially those in Judaea and Jerusalem. 42 Laila… Laila… lel elilim, 1907. 43 Tchernichowsky in all probability knew Heine’s critique of the allegedly corrupt Judaization of Apollo, in ‘­The Apollo God’. A nun, seeking the god of youth, beauty and health, chances on an old Jew, who tells her that Apollo has been transformed into a chazzan in the German synagogue in Amsterdam. ­ e-​­Nokhah Pesel Apollo (­Before the Idol of Apollo, 1899). ­Or-­​­­Yah-​­li: I have the 44 L light of Yah (­God) ‘­The nation is old’: despite the poet’s lament, the ancient Greeks respected and honored antiquity, including Judaism (­i n theory at least). Tzuri Shaddai: my Rock, the Almighty; tefillin: phylacteries, worn during the morning prayers. Greenberg expressed a more conventional Jewish attitude in his refusal to be judged by gentile aesthetic criteria and rejecting Hellenism as being inimical to Judaism. 45 Ashtarti Li, 1919. Astarte: Semitic goddess of fertility, beauty and love, associated particularly with Phoenicia, and corresponding to Aphrodite in Greek mythology. In the Bible, she is referred to as Ashtoreth or Ashtaroth, usually pejoratively as she represents n ­ on-​­monotheist religion; worshipped as a fertility goddess in the form of a tree, she is frequently condemned (­e.g. Exodus 34: 13). In contrast, the poet depicts romantically the ‘­Asherah shadows’ at night. The biblical ‘­false prophets’ included Asherah worshippers. Tchernichowsky illumines the immense popularity of polytheism in contrast with monotheism, which seems to have been confined almost totally to the Jews until the rise of Christianity. 46 Shirim ­le-​­Ilil, 1925. 47 Li m ­ i-​­sheli en li klum (­I have nothing, 1937). 48 Somewhat ironically, many talmudic rabbis were themselves critical of the prophets for their diatribes against Israel, which they regarded as excessively harsh and unjust (­Aberbach 2023). 49 ­L a-​­Shemesh (­To the Sun, 1919). For another sonnet in this cycle, see p. 105 above. 50 Shir ­ha-​­Avodah ­veha-​­Melakha (­Work Song, 1932). 51 Ahavti ki eta (‘­I love to wander…’, 1934). The poet follows the biblical boundaries of the land in including the ‘­two banks’ of the Jordan. 52 Shir eres (­Lullaby, 1936).

6 Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity

Aggadah: beautiful pebbles sea-lapped for centuries generation after generation until cast ashore polished and smooth. Bialik (­1910)

Bialik worked many years on the Sefer ­ha-​­Aggadah (­Book of Legends), first published ­1908–​­10, and knew Jewish myth and legend better than any Hebrew poet before or since: aggadah was the fire in his soul, the fabric of his creative being, though he had equal esteem for the ancient tradition of Jewish law, halakhah.1 Aggadah to Bialik the artist was freedom; halakhah was duty, even enslavement. Still, duty and discipline had their place. A devoted Talmud scholar (­a matmid) in his youth, Bialik in his later years began a commentary on the Mishna, the first codification of Jewish law (­c. 200 CE), completing the first section, Zera’im (­Seeds), on agricultural law in the land of Israel. Rabbinic aggadah and halakhah are a national link to the world prior to the destruction of the Temple and the loss of Jewish statehood in 70 CE. As a poet, Bialik had especial interest in the imaginative qualities of aggadah, which he recast as part of a viable modern national culture in ways comparable to the work of other national poets, such as Shevchenko in Ukraine, Lönnrot in Finland, Mickiewicz in Poland, or Yeats in Ireland: all collected and studied legend in the national language and sought to adapt it to modern national identity. Scroll of Fire (­Megillat ­ha-​­Esh, 1905) is Bialik’s quintessential aggadic poem, a confession of the inseparable links between his national role and private concerns; and Safiah (­A ftergrowth ­1903–​­23), an aggadic autobiography. In his use of myth and legend to interweave a traumatic personal and national past, Bialik is comparable with other poets who suffer severe trauma or disability, especially in c­ hildhood – ​­including Burns, Solomos, Shevchenko, Byron, Kolcsey, Leopardi, Fikret, Prešeren, Pascoli, Shawqi, Bharati, and ­Neruda – ​­and seek to revive and unify a wounded, humiliated, divided nation; but his use of talmudic aggadah in Hebrew recalls Mendele and anticipates Agnon. Each of these masters of Hebrew literature speaks to national concerns through the use of aggadic fragments, creating a mythical world of wholeness and stability prior to family disruption. DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-7

118  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity

Aggadah in Bialik’s poetry Exile haunts modern Hebrew poetry, drawing on biblical memories as well as the ancient homiletic tradition; yet, in modern Hebrew poetry, victimhood, persecution, and ­self-​­blame are felt more strongly than in the Bible. Hebrew enlists the past, including legend and folklore, in national struggles. Hebrew poetry preserved in exile helped the Jewish people survive. The Bible and rabbinic literature acted as massive quarries for wisdom, heroism, and warnings of moral danger and catastrophe. Much ­19th-​­and early 2­ 0th-​ ­c entury Hebrew literature might be described as modern Midrash, of which Bialik was the outstanding practitioner in poetry. Bialik’s characteristic blending of the modern and the traditional is seen in a poem dating from 1902 in which the torment of an isolated couple is fused with national exile: Distant islands, lofty worlds of our dreams they made us into strangers   wherever we went they made our lives hell. Golden islands we thirsted for    as for a homeland all the stars hinted at them with trembling light. And on these islands we remain,   friendless, like two flowers in a desert, two lost souls searching    for an eternal loss in a foreign land.2 In a later poem, Bialik sets Jewish legend against the background of rising assimilation among the young generation of Russian Jews and their rejection of both traditional Judaism and Jewish nationalism: You’ll raise Pithom and Rameses for your oppressors, using your children as bricks; when their cry lifts from the wood and the ­stone –​­ it will die before reaching your ears.3 Pithom and Rameses were cities built by Israelite slaves in Egypt.4 Bialik recasts legends of the slavery to convey his bitter anger at the younger generation of contemporary Jews who ignored their own heritage and enslaved themselves (­as he saw it) to foreign and hostile cultures (­Germany, for example, or Russia). In Mete Midbar (­Dead of the Desert, 1902), Bialik recasts a talmudic legend in which an Arabian merchant offers to show Rabba bar Bar

Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity  119 Hanna the Israelites who died trying to force their way into the Promised Land. The dead warriors lie in gigantic shapes where they fell in the desert: “­Come and I will show you the Dead of the Desert.” I went with him and saw the dead men looking as though they were ecstatic. They lay supine and the knee of one was lifted. The Arabian merchant passed under the knee riding on a camel and holding a spear ­erect – ​­and he did not touch it.5 Bialik turns this aggadah into a magisterial allegory of the somnolent condition of the Jews of his time and of their immense latent power. The warriors in Bialik’s poem are not a few desperate fighters, as in the biblical story, but ‘­sixty myriads’, i.e. the entire nation. The climax of the poem was often read as virtually a declaration that the Jewish exile was over. Yet, the poem does not support this interpretation. True, the warriors wake amid a desert storm, as at Sinai, and ready for battle they chant in unison        We are heroes! The last generation of slaves, the first to be free!6 but they remain frozen where they lie in the desert, and the poem ends in despair.

Scroll of Fire Scroll of Fire, with its portrayal based on talmudic aggadah of Jerusalem’s destruction by the Romans in 70 CE, conveys a parallel disaster in Bialik’s life, after his father’s death in Zhitomir, when the child was separated from his mother. At the time of writing Scroll of Fire, Bialik recalled a fire from that moment of childhood trauma: This was the first fire I had ever seen. No later fire, even much bigger ones, ever made such an impression. In the middle of that night it seemed the whole world was being destroyed. Everything was lit u ­ p – I​­ saw a plain, a field, a ­synagogue – ​­I heard ­cries – it ​­ was all a game, an entertainment. I remember I was very happy at the sight, but there was also the fear of God. When I wrote the opening of Scroll of Fire, I recalled the dry trees burning fiercely in a storm of fire. Everything was wiped out, only heaps of coals remained.7 Here is the opening of Scroll of Fire, the g­ rief-​­stricken God and his Temple in flames: All night seas of flame boiled, tongues of fire leaped on the ­Temple-​­mount,

120  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity starry showers of sparks flew from charred heavens earthward … Cloaked in pillars of smoke, footstool dust and ashes, head buried in arms, in mountains of grief, silent, desolate he sat staring at the ruin, eyes black with eternal wrath, silence frozen in his ­eyes –​­ did God smash his crown, kick his throne away? … Like the ruined natural world in Nerval’s Aurélia, or the lost Atlantis in the writings of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, this image of total destruction appears to reflect the poet’s chronic sense of personal loss: a child who has just lost his father and is about to be separated from his mother, as Bialik was at the time of the fire, might well feel that ‘­the whole world was being destroyed’. Scroll of Fire is, on one level, a personal aggadah of ruin, depression and anger, and the distorted sexual relationships following catastrophic loss. The ambivalence of the central character toward his ‘­prophetic’ ­role – ​­his guilty awareness of private as well as national ­motivations – is ​­ a key to the poem and to Bialik’s artistic life. In Scroll of Fire, Bialik combines two aggadot on the hurban (­destruction) of the Temple: that of the sacred fire saved from the ruined altar and of the captured children on a boat to Rome who leap to their death to escape their fate as sex slaves to Roman masters.8 In Bialik’s retelling, an angel rescues the sacred fire and carries it to a clifftop on a desert island, where the children are shipwrecked. The boys, separated from the girls, search the island for water and after a few days they find a black river, an allegorical image of corruption, particularly of the growing violence against Jews at the time of the poem. The poet curses the nations, echoing the Psalms and the book of Lamentations: From deep destruction take a song of ruin, black like the brand of your heart; bear it among the nations, empty its coals over their heads, scatter it with the wrath of God!9 The boys all drink from the river except one, a former Nazirite in the Temple, who tries and fails to console the others and give them hope. Gripped by wrathful despair, they see the girls appear on the top of a cliff opposite them, marching as if hypnotized, then leaping into the river below, leaving just one standing on the cliff; all the boys leap in after them, leaving just the

Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity  121 one who tried to give the others hope. His confession to the remaining girl is the heart of the poem, a story of the death of his father and his mother’s inability to raise him. He remembers the girl from the homeland, in the hills of Samaria: All my life my soul in a thousand voices cried out to you in myriads of ways, crooked and invisible, fled from you to you… even as a baby in the black of night, I saw your beauty, sought your hidden light… your eye held me with a mother’s sorrow, like a weaned child in his mother’s arms I made my love known and I waited. Now, the Temple is gone, the young Nazirite is ready to devote himself to his beloved, but she vanishes, leaving only her reflection in the river below. He climbs the cliff to reach the sacred fire intending to return to his former worship but, looking down and seeing her image, he falls, consumed by lust, clutching the sacred fire, into her arms. Carried by the rushing water into a distant exile, he becomes a prophetic figure, expressing the pain and wrath of the exiles, but tormented by his unconsummated love and solitary grief (­yegon ­ha-​­hayahid). The poem ends with the angel who tried to save the sacred fire removing ­tears – ​­apparently those of the fallen ­prophet – from ​­ the cup of national sorrow.10 At the time of writing Scroll of Fire, Bialik was involved with a ­Russian-​ J­ ewish artist, Ira Jan (­Slyapin): he wrote poems and letters confessing his feelings for her: ‘­Immediately after you left my spirits dropped. I couldn’t finish the poem. I thought I would go mad’.11 At this time, in 1905, Russia itself was on fire with revolutionary violence. The immediate event behind Scroll of Fire was the naval mutiny in June 1905 when Odessa was shelled for several days by the sailors on board the battleship Potemkin (­the event depicted unforgettably in Eisenstein’s film). Bialik was there when the oil refineries were hit and the entire harbor was set ablaze, and he recalled many years later, ‘­The daily cannon fire and gun shots stirred up a storm in me’.12 The poem draws on a combination of public and private sources to become, for most of its readers, a national allegory, recast from aggadic sources, expressing national ruin, trauma, and despair, and the hope of redemption. What the solitary individual could not do, the nation could.

Aftergrowth Bialik’s use of autobiographical aggadah reaches an artistic peak in Aftergrowth, particularly the delightful ­Chapters ­9 –​­15, written in ­1918–​­19, at the end of World War I, after the Russian Revolution and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, as well as the emancipation of the Russian Jews, and during the

122  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity Russian civil war of ­1918–​­21.13 Aftergrowth gives little sign of the turmoil in which it was written. It is a form of kinnus, a bringing together of fragments of the past, personal, and national: From the blurred letters of these ­dog-​­eared b ­ ooks  – ​­Chumash and Rashi and the rest of the ­Tanakh – ​­which I studied in sporadic, disordered ­bits – ​­rose in confused fragments ­long-​­forgotten generations and ages, peoples, lands and stories. I spoke with the ancients and took part in their lives and deeds. I did not need whole sections. I built myself their ruined world even out of verse fragments and shards of meaning.14 In Aftergrowth, Bialik creates a child’­s-​­eye view of Judaism in which the imagination is free to roam and the child becomes virtually a part of the aggadic world. In a Hebrew style of unique beauty, richness and style, he describes the village of Radi, his birthplace in Ukraine, as a ­m irror-​­image of this fantasy world, whose origin and guardian is God himself. Every detail of this landscape comes from the Bible and rabbinic literature: for example, a pit in a nearby field is none other than the pit where Joseph was cast by his brothers; the river Teterov is where Moses was hidden among the bulrushes; a sandy track is the wilderness crossed by the Israelites on their way to the Promised Land. Aftergrowth is not free of nightmare, isolation, and depression, yet for Jewish children in Eastern Europe, aggadah could be a limitless source of entertainment and pleasure, an inner world with a language of its own; Hodu and Cush, the giants Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the Zuzim, Nachbi ben Vafsi, the Gibeonites, Sambatyon, Og king of Bashan. To Bialik, as to the Jews generally, memory is itself a form of territory in exile. Yet, the landscape of memory, both personal and collective, is not Jerusalem or Galilee but, ironically, Ukraine. Not even Shevchenko described the Ukrainian landscape as lovingly as Bialik, though (­like other Hebrew writers) Bialik tended to find in the hills, fields, and woods of his childhood biblical images of the land of Israel. Bialik followed Mendele in depicting the landscapes of Eastern European Jews in language deriving from biblical and talmudic literature. Whereas Mendele was an enlightened maskil critical of the narrow horizons of traditional Jewish education, Bialik, a cultural nationalist, saw aggadah as a precious national heritage. In Aftergrowth, he tells how as a boy in heder, he studied the Psalms in the open air, and the Ukrainian exile was transformed into the land of the Bible: The gate of understanding opened by itself. “­As a tree planted” [Psalms 1: 3] meant the tree in whose shadow we sat; “­by streams of water”, the pool in the valley; “­The valley of the shadow” [Psalms 23: 4], the ruin where the evil spirits were found, which Rabbi Meir told us never to enter; “­Thou preparest a table before me” [Psalms 23: 5], the table where we sat studying the holy Torah.15

Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity  123 Bialik infuses his writings with the spiritual fervor of ­Judaism – ​­particularly ­ asidism  – in H ​­ new creative forms.16 Already as a child, he had learned to use aggadah to escape into a ­semi-​­idealized world of the past and, later, as a creative means of expressing and mastering the trauma and of unifying the fragmented parts of his life. Aftergrowth indirectly gives much insight into the capacity of East European Jews to retain their distinctive religious and national identity, through imaginative empathy with the land of the Bible. The child in Aftergrowth does not just read about the Israelites in the ­desert – ​­he becomes one: By day we crossed the desert, parched and thirsty, land of snake, viper and scorpion. The boys led their camels loaded with rolls upon rolls of powder, balsam and spices. The ­white-​­bearded turbaned elders rode ahead in glory and honor, on white ­she-​­asses, their dangling feet nearly scraping tracks in the sand. At night we stopped in the forests. We slept round bonfires, barricaded by a ­g utter-​­like circle of stones, to protect against wild animals as Jacob did, according to Rashi [Genesis 28: 11]17.’ The opening of Aftergrowth, published last, in 1923, is in the richness of its language practically a prose poem. Bialik was living in Weimar Germany, the center of Hebrew literature while he was there (­together with Agnon and Tchernichowsky), until he moved to Tel Aviv in 1924, when the center moved with him. Aftergrowth, ­Chapter 1, was written in the shadow of Bialik’s escape from the Soviet Russia in June 1921, after the Russian novelist, Maxim Gorky, impressed by Bialik in Jabotinsky’s fiery ­translations  – ​­he called Bialik a ‘­modern Isaiah’  – ​­interceded with Lenin to allow him and other Hebrew writers to leave the country. At this time, Hebrew and Zionism were banned in Russia: minority national movements were seen as a threat to its unstable socialist regime. Having survived the Russian civil war, during which an estimated 100,000 Jews were murdered, Bialik lost everything in Russia, including a valuable library of 3,000 books: ‘­In the name of Trotsky and Lenin, they didn’t leave me so much as a shoelace. I left the country with nil’.18 In Odessa, Bialik had been a director of the Moriah publishing company, specializing in Hebrew educational texts. Moriah was closed by the Bolsheviks, and in 1922, Bialik was trying unsuccessfully to ­re-​­establish it in Berlin. (­It was eventually set up again in Tel Aviv, as Dvir.) Berlin was in a state of ­post-​­war chaos and economic ruin. The picture of the poet in the opening of Aftergrowth, dragging himself among the angry, frustrated crowd alludes to these circumstances. Disoriented, Bialik wrote at the time that Berlin ‘­is foreign to me. I don’t know its ways, and the people here are uprooted wanderers who don’t know what the next day will bring’.19 Since the outbreak of war in 1914, he wrote, he had not known a day’s peace. The world had been turned u ­ pside-​­down by war; the future of the literary movement which he led was uncertain. Russia was no longer the heartland of

124  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity Zionism; Hebrew writers were scattered; and Odessa, where Bialik wrote his greatest poetry, in ­1900–​­11, was no longer an important center of Hebrew literature. The total break with the past is suggested in the elegiac tone in the opening chapter of Aftergrowth. In a comparable mood after his expulsion from Russia, Tchernichowsky wrote the long poem Elka’s Wedding (­1921), describing in loving detail a Ukrainian Jewish wedding, part of an entire lost world. This was the swan song of Hebrew literature in Russia.20 Berlin’s cultural life before and after the war was dominated by J­ ewish ­writers  – ​­Döblin, Kolmar, ­Lasker-​­Schüler, Sternheim, and Tucholsky, among ­others – ​­but Bialik was not drawn to their company. The ­German-​ J­ ewish Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau, assassinated by ­anti-​­Semitic German nationalists in June 1922, had summed up the position of the ­German Jews: In the youth of every German Jew, there comes a moment which he remembers with pain as long as he lives: when he becomes for the first time fully conscious of the fact that he has entered the world as a ­second-​­class citizen, and that no amount of ability or merit can rid him of that status.21 ­ erman-​­Jewish writers, largely deluded by their success into thinking that G they belonged to the German nation, tended to be cut off from Hebrew culture. Most of them could not read even Bialik’s simplest children’s poems. Most German Jews, including the Zionist minority, were German patriots who saw the land of Israel not as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish nation but as a refuge for East European Jews. Bialik’s view, shared with Ahad Ha’am, was that the identification of Jews with European culture was an aberration, their grotesque patriotism a sign of insecurity in an ­anti-​­Semitic milieu. Jews had given enough to the cultures of other nations, which were invariably ungrateful and persecuted them in return. The Jews should create a culture for themselves, in Hebrew, always directed towards the land of Israel. Bialik’s cultural program for Moriah and later, Dvir, was kinnus, the ‘­ingathering’ of Jewish culture from the diaspora as the cultural arm of the Jewish national movement. In m ­ id-​­1922, Bialik moved to the s­pa-​­town of Homburg, near Frankfurt, where Agnon was living. Here, Bialik met the only German Jew with whom he formed a close and lasting relationship, the 2­ 5-­​­­year-​­old Gershom Scholem, then on the threshold of his career as founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism. Scholem venerated Bialik not only for his poetry but also for his superb Hebrew conversation. (­Bialik usually spoke Yiddish but used Hebrew, somewhat reluctantly, in the company of the punctilious Scholem.) Scholem became Bialik’s protégé: as a member of the board of governors of the Hebrew University, Bialik was later to recommend him for his teaching position in Jerusalem. Scholem’s stimulus might be detected in the opening of Aftergrowth, which stands out from the rest of the book in its

Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity  125 mystical content. It reads almost like the testimony of a Jewish mystic. The poet recalls his childhood as a world of providence and faith and unceasing miracles. The origins of Judaism are the origins of all religion, the mystery of creation, the soul of poetry: God in his mercy gathered me under the shadow of his wings…. His hidden hand scattered miracles on every path, planting riddles wherever I looked. In every stone and twig a midrash of wonder, in every hole and ditch eternal mystery.22 Bialik looked back lovingly to his Ukrainian childhood, and particularly the Volhynian shtetl where he was born in 1873. He knew he would never go back. The opening of Aftergrowth is the work of a man who has lost everything but the four cubits of his genius. It belongs to the kind of artistic creation, mostly music, done not for glory or bread, but for its own sake, leaving the world behind as it were, for the sheer delight of creation: ­Beethoven’s last quartets or, a closer parallel, Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, which also at times dances on the brink of cloying sentimentality. As in Bialik’s poems of ­childhood – notably ​­ Yatmut (­Orphanhood, ­1928–​­34), the most ambitious of his few poems written after he moved to Tel ­Aviv –​ ­Bialik is magnetized not just by the child he was, or by a childhood lost or never had, but by the child he, a childless man who loved children, created as his sole progeny. In his aggadic autobiography, Bialik confronts the paradox that the more private his creative imagination, the more it expresses a national spirit. The dream in the opening chapter exposes the poet’s uneasy relationship with his people: angrily frustrated with life, part of his society but solitary, an artist transfixed by his own reflection, his alienation, and longing for harmony mirroring the collective. The orphan speaks for an orphaned people.

Mendele and autobiographical aggadah Before Mendele Mocher Sefarim, childhood had hardly figured in Hebrew literature. Mendele, the leading Jewish writer of fiction prior to 1939, was a mentor to Bialik, who called him Saba, grandfather. A key passage in Mendele’s autobiography is an admission of how little the author, an expert in natural history, knew as a child of the world around him.23 He shared the traditional rabbinic alienation from Nature. His childhood imagination was rooted, fascinatedly, in the Bible and Talmud. He had fixed in his mind a whole array of animal, mineral, and vegetable species which he had never ­seen – ​­the only zoo he saw as a child was the human one around h ­ im – ​­and some of which had never existed except in Jewish folklore and legend. As an educator, Mendele had deep reservations toward aggadah, and he devoted more time to his t­ hree-​­volume Toldot ­Ha-​­Teva (­Natural History, ­1862–​­72) –​ t­ he first work of its kind in ­Hebrew – ​­than to any of his fictional works. In

126  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity Natural History, he addressed widespread Jewish ignorance of and alienation from the natural world. ­Jews – i​­ ncluding himself as a ­child – ​­understood the natural world not through observation so much as through scriptural, halakhic and aggadic texts: ‘­Of the natural world, with its variety of plants, animals and birds, Shloyme knew nothing. What did he care for the rye, the b ­ uck-​­wheat and potatoes, his daily fare? The harvest in the fields surrounding his village, the nearby forest and its trees, meant nothing to him. His imagination was full of other things: mandrakes [Genesis 30], myrrh, onycha, galbanum [Exodus 30: 34], vines, dates, figs, pomegranates, olives [Deuteronomy 8: 8], ­acacia-​­wood [Exodus 25] and ­gopher-​­wood [Genesis 6: 14]. Of animal species he knew: the h ­ e-​­goat from the time of Moses [Numbers 4: 11], the lion and leopard who taught might and valor to the Children of Israel [Mishna Avot 5: 20]; the hind, which taught them to run, like himself, in urgent haste [ibid.]; the wild ox crouching over a thousand hills [Bava Batra 75a], the buffalo so h ­ uge—​­like Mount T ­ abor—​­that only its snout could fit into Noah’s ark [Bereshit Rabbah 32]. Of creeping things he knew the viper [Genesis 49: 17] and the shamir, created on ­Sabbath-​ ­eve at twilight and used to cut stone for the Temple in Jerusalem [Mishna Avot 5: 6], and he knew of nits [Shabbat 107b]. Of birds he knew the ­turtle-​­dove [Song of Songs 2: 12], the wild cock which had brought the shamir [from rabbinic legends of King Solomon], the ­bar-​­yochna, an egg which had once fallen and drowned sixty cities and broken three hundred cedar trees [Bechorot 57b]; and the ­ziz-​­sadai, that great bird whose wings block the sunlight [Bava Batra 73a, Bereshit Rabbah 22]. In short, Shloyme may have been born in the village, but he lived elsewhere… in time past, in a world that was no longer. He lived temporarily in this world, but his permanent residence was in that world. He visited his parents’ house briefly, like a guest at an inn. He would eat and sleep and the next day would return to the other world… His way of life was that of thousands of other ­Shloymes—​­in memoriam, in memory of an ancestral way of life. As their ancestors had done, so did they, to fulfil what is written, and even what is not written. That is how they lived in those days.24 Mendele wrote these lines in Odessa in the early 1900s, when Isaac Babel was a child in the same city. Over two decades later, after the Russian Revolution, Babel recalled a Jewish childhood typically detached from Nature. In the story ‘­Awakening’ (­1930), a small Jewish boy in the Odessa slums is raised by his father to be a violin prodigy but, keen to be a writer, is attracted to the powerfully built, aged Jew, Yefim Nikitich Smolich, who teaches him to love Nature. ‘­W hat’s that tree?’ I didn’t know. ‘­W hat’s growing on that bush?’ I didn’t know this either.

Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity  127 ‘­W hat bird is that singing?’ I knew none of the answers… ‘­And you dare to write! A man who doesn’t live in nature, as a stone does or an animal, will never in all his life write two worthwhile lines.’25 As an educator, Mendele sought to restore to Jewish life the love of the outdoors. His writings ‘­Judaize’ the natural world, often with great charm and humor. In The Travels of Benjamin the Third, frogs croak from an appropriate psalm, while elsewhere a cow stands like a preacher at the pulpit, a raven wears a striped black and white tallit (­prayer shawl) and prays, storks are like women at the mikveh (­r itual bath) dipping modestly into the water, a team of oxen naturally says the birkat ­ha-​­mazon (­g race after meals), a horse behaves like a recalcitrant heder pupil, a local hill recalls the Mount of Olives and the Lebanon.26 For all Mendele’s maskilic ambivalence to aggadah as a world of fantasy useless in the modern world, he depicts the first stirrings of his artistic instinct much as Bialik does, in aggadic symbolism, alluding several times to the following aggadah, set after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE: Rabbi Yose said: Once I was walking among the ruins in Jerusalem and entered one to pray. Elijah, of blessed memory, appeared and guarded the entrance until I finished… He asked: Why did you come here? To pray, I replied. He said: You should have prayed on the road. I said: I am afraid of being distracted by wayfarers. He asked: what did you hear in the ruin? I answered: I heard a heavenly voice moaning like a dove, saying, Oy that I have destroyed my house, burned down my sanctuary and exiled my children among the nations! Elijah then said: My son, I swear by your life the voice said this not just when you were praying but repeats it each day three times. What is more, each time Jews in synagogues and houses of study say ‘­A men, may the name of God be blessed…’, the Holy One, blessed be He, shakes his head, as it were, and says: Happy the king praised so greatly in his house! What will be of the father who has exiled his children! Woe to those exiled from their father’s table!27 Mendele draws on this aggadah in portraying a childhood friend, an eccentric carpenter named Hirzl who, among other talents unusual in the shtetl, knew how to draw. One work of his stuck in the child’s m ­ ind – ​­a picture of Rabbi Yose and the dove based on the talmudic legend. The wonder of the child’s mind is tempered by the gentle irony of the satirist: He drew Rabbi Yose following the talmudic account, with Rabbi Yose (­wrapped in tallit and crowned with tefillin, face plaintive, beard short, sharp and gray) praying in a Jerusalem ruin, hearing a heavenly voice moaning like a dove (­a creature shaped somewhat like a dove, mouth

128  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity agape) saying: Oy that I have destroyed my house, burned down my sanctuary and exiled my children among the nations! This work astonished the village mavens: words they could find in praise of Rabbi Yose, but as for the ­dove  – ​­their mouths hung ajar in speechless ­wonder  –​ ­Ribbono shel olam, what can we say at this marvel?28 The picture and the aggadah of Rabbi Yose struck a chord in the child’s heart, for he determined to copy Hirzl’s work: Shloyme wanted very much to imitate Hirzl and do work similar to his drawing of Rabbi Yose and the heavenly voice moaning like a dove. However, it didn’t turn out, and he excused himself, saying he didn’t have proper artist’s materials. For carving he needed a sharp chisel, while the one he had, won in a raffle, was soft and notched; and as for painting, he needed all sorts of colors…29 The aggadah takes on deeper significance in the final chapters of Of Bygone Days, written shortly before Mendele’s death in 1917. These chapters are a moving portrait of the author after his father’s death when he was 13 or 14. Separated from his mother, who could not support h ­ im – ​­the parallel with Bialik is ­striking – he ​­ lived in a village a few miles away. In his loneliness, childhood memories returned, including those of Hirzl and his picture and the aggadah of Rabbi Yose: Hirzl the carpenter, t­oo – ​­that old man childlike in his walk, his talk and ­crazes – came ​­ to him with his violin and the picture he had done of Rabbi Yose, old, thin, w ­ ispy-​­bearded, wrapped in tallit, crowned with tefillin, praying in a Jerusalem ruin, above his head a dove moaning in misery, abandoned, dejected.30 In the context of Mendele’s life, as of Bialik’s, aggadah becomes virtually symbolic of his own ruin.

Agnon Agnon, steeped in aggadah – he ​­ edited rabbinic texts pertaining to the giving of the Torah and the Days of A ­ we – was ​­ thoroughly familiar with the aggadic writings of his older contemporaries, Mendele and Bialik, and they were among his main influences in stories such as ­Ha-​­Mitpahat (­The Kerchief, 1933). Like them, Agnon reconstructs a world of wholeness and innocent faith in which the child is certain of the historic truth of aggadah, in this case of the ­2nd-​­century CE Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, Elijah, and the Messiah: Rabbi Joshua ben Levi found Elijah standing by the cave of Rabban Simeon bar Yochai. He asked: Will I enter the World to Come? Elijah

Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity  129 replied: If this Master [God] wills it. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: There are two of us here, but I hear three voices. When will the Messiah come? Elijah replied: Go, see for yourself. Where is he? asked Rabbi Joshua. Sitting by the gate of the city [of Rome], replied Elijah. How can I recognize him? asked Rabbi Joshua. Elijah replied: He sits among the diseased poor. Everyone else bandages and unbandages his wounds in a cluster. He bandages and unbandages each wound one by one, thinking, if I am wanted I must not be delayed.31 ‘­The Kerchief’, based on Agnon’s memories of the town of Buczacz in Galicia at the end of the 19th century, tells of a child distressed by the absence of his father, a businessman whose work takes him each year to the great fair in Lashkowitz. The aggadah of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi permeates the child’s imagination, and his longing to bring his father home becomes entangled with the a­ ge-​­old Jewish yearning for messianic redemption: Throughout the time father was in Lashkowitz, I slept in his bed. Right after saying the Shema, I would stretch myself out in the long bed and cover myself up to my ears as usual, so as to get up in case I heard the shofar of the Messiah. I loved thinking about the Messiah the King. I often contemplated and laughed heartily at the future astonishment in the world on the day when he would appear. Yesterday he was sitting binding and unbinding his w ­ ounds – ​­and today he is king. Yesterday he sat unnoticed among the poor, some of whom treated him despicably, when the Holy One, blessed be He, suddenly recalled his oath to redeem Israel and gave him permission to appear in the world. Others might be angry with the poor for not treating the King Messiah with respect, but I felt love for them seeing as the King Messiah had chosen to sit among them. Others might feel disrespect for the poor, as they ate cheap black bread even on the Sabbath and wore filthy clothes, but I loved them as some of them had the merit of sitting with the Messiah.32 In a nightmarish dream, the child flies to Rome in search of the f­ather-​ ­Messiah and finds him, as the aggadah relates, sitting by the city gate binding and unbinding his wounds: … as my eyes closed, I would take my tzitzit and count in its knots the number of days father would be in Lashkowitz. Green, white, black, red and blue lights whirled round, like those seen by wayfarers in the fields, forests, valleys and streams, and all sorts of treasures glittered and shone in them. I felt mischievous with joy at all that treasure hidden for us until the day the Messiah appeared, speedily in our time. Then a great bird came and pecked the light away. Once I took my tzitzit, tied myself to its wings and said: Bird, bird, take me to father. The bird spread its wings and brought me to a city called Rome. I looked down

130  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity and saw a group of poor people by the city gates. One of them was sitting binding and unbinding his wounds. I looked away so as not to see his suffering, and a great mountain towered up full of thorns and briars, with wild animals grazing, unclean birds flying and repulsive crawling things. Suddenly a great wind came and tossed me onto the mountain. The mountain started to crumble and I was about to be crushed. I tried to scream but did not for fear that the unclean birds would peck at my tongue. Father came, wrapped me in his tallit and carried me to bed.33 The significance of ‘­The Kerchief’ and its aggadic source in Agnon’s development as an artist is clear in his account of how, while still a child, he began to write. For his first poem was done in a state of longing for his father who, like the father in ‘­The Kerchief’, was away at the Lashkowitz fair: When I was a child of six or seven, my father of blessed memory went to the fair in Lashkowitz. I missed him terribly and was sad all the time. One evening I came home from heder and pressed my head against the wall and cried: “­Father, father, where are you/­I love you deep and true!” I was amazed to write this poem, by a­ ccident – ​­my first Hebrew poem. After, I wrote many poems and stories but they seemed lightweight alongside those two lines rhymed out of longing for father.34 This longing was complicated by the mother’s i­llness – ​­she had a heart ailment from which she eventually d ­ ied  – and ​­ her consequent difficulties in caring for Agnon, the eldest of five children. In ‘­The Kerchief’, both parents are distant from the child, in contrast with the fantasy world of aggadah offering intimacy and the promise of salvation or release, if not through religious faith then through the power of art. In using aggadah, Agnon follows Mendele and Bialik in synthesizing past and present, portraying individual creative imagination as an outgrowth of ancient national culture. These writers showed that ancient Hebrew creativity could be adapted to modern Jewish nationalism, at a time when ­anti-​­Semitism gave this nationalism urgency and force.

Notes 1 In his essay, Halakhah ­ve-​­Aggadah (­Halakhah and Aggadah, 1915), one of his richest and most profound works, Bialik describes the ­c enturies-​­long growth of Jewish tradition, based on halakhah and aggadah, two forms of the same element, like water and ice, each changing into the other, and each vital in Jewish survival. 2 Im dimdume ­ha-​­hamah (­Bialik 2004: 54). 3 Akhen gam zeh musar Elohim. Ibid., 102. For the full poem, see pp. ­31–2 above. 4 On Pithom and Rameses, see Exodus 1: 11; also, see p. 41 note 50 above. 5 Bava Batra 7­3b–​­74a. The biblical source is in Numbers 14. Tchernichowsky draws on the same talmudic source in his poetry. See p. 99 above.

Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity  131 6 Bialik (­2004: 62). 7 Bialik (­1935: ii 30). 8 II Maccabees 1: 19f.; Gittin 57b. 9 For biblical sources of the curse against the cruel nations which seek to destroy Israel, see Psalms 79: ­6 –​­7, Lamentations 3: 66. These are customarily recited at the Passover seder, at the end of the festive meal, when Elijah is ceremoniously ‘­welcomed’ and ‘­drinks’ from his wine glass (­to the children’s delight), before the recital of the Hallel (­psalms and prayers of praise). 10 The image of the t­ ear-​­filled cup comes from Psalms 56: 9. In The Legend of Three and Four, written a ­quarter-​­century after Scroll of Fire, Bialik seeks a new balance of private grief and public ecstasy, in the marriage of the children of enemies, now united in one family. However, after Scroll of Fire, the word ‘­Zion’ no longer appears in Bialik’s poetry. On Bialik’s consistent despair of Zionism in his poetry, see pp. 213; 220 note 30 below. 11 Ungerfeld (­1974: 141). See Holekhet at ­me-​­imi (­You’re leaving me) and ­Li-​­Netivekh ­ha-​­ne’elam (­In your vanished traces) – ​­both poems of separation from a beloved woman dating from c. 1907, and recalling Bialik’s poems of separation from his mother (­Aberbach 1988): Your memory, pure angel, with me, shelter of God’s grace, whisper of blessing, shudder of modesty, mother’s tear on Sabbath candle.    (‘­ You’re leaving me’) Details of Bialik’s relationship with Ira Jan are scanty (­see Holtzman 2017: 1­ 00–​­1). 12 Bialik (­1935: ii 26). 13 On ‘­screen memories’ in Bialik and Freud, see ­Chapter 9. 14 Aftergrowth, ch. 9; Bialik (­1975: 204). 15 Aftergrowth, ch. 8; Bialik (­1975: 203). Heine, in Prinzessin Sabbath, describes the Sabbath transforming the Jew from a dog into a prince and transporting him to the Holy Land: ‘­Hӧr ich nicht den Jordan rauschen?’ 16 Though in its mystical enthusiasm, Bialik’s poetry can be said to have a Hasidic spirit, in conversation his view of Hasidism was not unlike that of early exponents of the Wissenschaft des Judentums toward Judaism: ‘­publish a “­Compendium” [of Hasidic writings] and put an end to Hasidism, with no resurrection [tehiyat ­ha-​­metim]’ (­Rawidowicz 1983: 67; in Berlin, December 14, 1923). The poet regarded aggadah similarly: ‘­I didn’t come to ­open – but ​­ to stop, to seal, to end, to finish aggadah off’ (­ibid.). 17 Bialik (­1975: 208). 18 Bialik (­1938: ii 240). 19 Ibid., 249. 20 On Elka’s Wedding, see p. 107 above. 21 Joll (­1960: 65). 22 Aberbach (­2002: 64). 23 Mendele wrote his autobiography in Yiddish, as Shloyme Reb Chaims (­1899, ­1912–​­13, 1917; and in Hebrew, as ­B a-​­Yammim ­h a-​­Hem (­I n Those Days) (­­1903–​ ­10, 1917). The Introduction appeared in 1894. The Hebrew version is quoted here. 24 Mendele (­1947: 242). 25 Babel (­1975: ­272–​­3). Bialik, similarly, in poems such as ­Ha-​­Matmid (­T he Talmud Student, 1896/­7), attacked the traditional ‘­path of Torah’ for closing young men off from the sun and the open air and the real world. See p. 104. Although the

132  Bialik, Aggadah and Jewish national identity Haskalah is generally associated with the ­19th-​­century Hebrew revival, poets in other languages, such as Boris Pasternak, were also affected by it. Pasternak’s extraordinary nature poetry might derive in part from Haskalah ideology in which his father, Leonid (­a major ­Russian-​­Jewish painter) and grandfather were steeped. Bialik and Leonid Pasternak were friends: Pasternak did a fine portrait of Bialik, and Bialik wrote a glowing appreciation in Hebrew of his art. 26 Mendele (­1947: 66, 67, 93, 101, 105, 133, 140). 27 Berachot 3b. On this aggadah as part of the history of Hebrew literature, see p. 87 above. 28 Mendele (­1947: ­282–​­3). 29 Ibid., 287. 30 Ibid., 295. 31 Sanhedrin 98a. 32 Translated by David Aberbach, in Abramson and Parfitt (­1995: ­238–​­9); from Agnon (­­1953–​­62: ii 257). 33 Abramson and Parfitt (­1995: 239); from Agnon (­­1953–​­62: ii 258). 34 Agnon (­1976: 26).

7 ­Anti-​­Semitism and Hebrew poetry ­1881–​­1948

… see with your own eyes, feel with your hands in the courtyards, on trees, stones, walls, the dried blood and brains of the dead. Bialik (­1903)

Much Hebrew poetry of the period ­1881–​­1948 marks the spread of European ­anti-​­Jewish hatred after the pogroms of 1­881–​­82 and resultant militancy among young Jews. In ­19th-​­century Western and Central Europe, there was unprecedented voluntary Jewish assimilation and conversion and, partly in reaction, a dramatic rise in ­anti-​­Semitism, supported by secular political ideologies, with growing threat of ­anti-​­Semitic use of science (­and bogus science) and technology. Hebrew writers were less inhibited than Jewish writers in other languages (­w ith mostly ­non-​­Jewish readers) in confronting with fury and despair the rise of European a­ nti-​­Jewish genocidal racial hatred culminating in the Holocaust. P ­ re-​­1939 Hebrew writers such as Bialik have a unique place in literary history: as their interests, concerns, and readers are almost entirely Jewish, they often ­write – ​­especially with regard to ­anti-­​ ­­Semitism – ​­with truth and directness lacking in other languages. Zionism in its modern secular political form grew essentially as a Western European response to political and ‘­scientific’ ­anti-​­Semitism; the cultural form of Zionism was above all the spoken Hebrew language and literature, mostly in Eastern Europe, where the Church was overtly a­ nti-​­Semitic and frequently incited violence against Jews. ­Anti-​­Semitism arrested and even reversed the process of assimilation and the patriotism triggered by emancipation. The shared experience of ­anti-​­Semitism, though in different forms and intensities, forced highly diverse Eastern and Western European Jewish communities, often at odds with one another and with little in common, into a common bond, based on a shared threat but also, increasingly, the sense of a shared national culture. Though modern Hebrew was rooted in the history of the Jewish people and Judaism starting with the Hebrew Bible, it responded to current events, including ­anti-​­Semitic outbursts. In modern Hebrew poetry, the sense of a Jewish nation with ancient roots but viable in the modern world effectively

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-8

134  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 takes off with Bialik’s response to the Russian pogroms in ­1903–​­06, in the ‘­Poems of Wrath’ (­Shire Za’am). The poetry of Gordon, Bialik, Tchernichowsky, Greenberg, and others in the 1­ 881–​­1948 period indicts the historic basis of a­ nti-​­Semitism: that Christianity (­and later, Islam) had replaced Judaism, that Judaism was defunct and Jews by remaining Jews were evil and deserving of persecution. No rational person could believe such wicked lies, certainly not, as we have seen, those who read Bialik and his contemporary Hebrew poets, for whom Jews and Judaism were very much alive, dynamically so. The Enlightenment, with its stress on reason and support for Jewish emancipation, strongly attracted Jews who dreamed of a modern rational world, based on science, and thirsted for secular education, to take part in the life of the country. For the first time since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, a society free of J­ ew-​­hatred could be imagined, and the revival of a Jewish nation in a world of secular nations, with its unique identity and right to s­ elf-​­determination. The revival of Hebrew took force from these changes, welling up from a rich and powerful r­eligious-­​­­historical-​ l­iterary civilization, based on social justice and capable of adaptation to changing times. It was Bialik above all who made clear just how immensely creative modern Hebrew poetry could be, and this had huge implications for the political revival of the Jewish people as the physical threat against them worsened. The Jews were traditionally seen, and saw themselves, as exiles from the Land of Israel; and among Russian Jews, the pogroms brought about an ‘­ ideological metamorphosis’ unparalleled in West European countries, away from adaptation to and merging with Russia and in favor of mass emigration.1 A despairing return to Jewish militancy starts in ­post-​­1881 Hebrew poetry: for example, in Judah Leib Gordon’s Achoti, Ruhama (­My Sister, Ruhama, 1882), written at the time of the pogroms of ­1881–​­822; Bialik’s ­Be-​ ­Ir ­ha-​­Haregah (­City of Slaughter, 1903), after the Kishinev pogrom in 19033; Tchernichowsky’s Zot tehi nikmatenu (­Revenge, 1920), in angry response to the Ukrainian pogroms during the Russian civil war (­­1918–​­20); and Uri Zvi Greenberg’s Ne’um ben ­ha-​­dam: al Arav (­The Word of the Son of Blood: on the Arabs, 1929), after the Arab pogroms in 1929.4 The victims in each case were unarmed Orthodox Jews, including women and children, their bodies often mutilated, disemboweled, or hacked to pieces. Jewish horror and contempt for such behavior militated against acts of revenge. The poet curses the man who cries, Revenge!5 Such vengeance, of a child’s blood Satan has not yet d ­ evised –​­ These atrocities drove Jews to ­self-​­defense. Yet, none of the poets, for all their horror and rage, actually exhorts Jews to take up arms and fight back. Eager militants were rare, often preferring the glory of books to the glory

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  135 of arms. Gordon, his commitment to the Haskalah shaken, describes the Jews at the time of the 1881 pogroms as victims of a rape; the disgrace is the perpetrators’, their punishment to bear the mark of Cain.6 Emigration from Russia seemed the best s­ olution – ​­not to the ‘­house of the loving mother’, the land of ­Israel – ​­‘­we have no mother’ – ​­but elsewhere, perhaps America, the place of the ‘­light of freedom’. The Jews, having abandoned their military tradition in the Roman era, seemed after centuries of pacifism incapable of fighting back. Gordon consoles his people by assuring them that they remain unstained by their violation. Bialik gives no such consolation. Bialik in his ‘­Poems of Wrath’ spoke with wild prophetic power during the ­1903–​­06 pogroms, when Jewish victimization was endorsed by systematic ­government-​­sponsored legal discrimination and ­government-​­tolerated violence. Yet, for years beforehand, Bialik had sought in ancient Jewish ­sources – ​­particularly the exodus from Egypt and the Jewish wars against ­Rome – ​­the spirit of dissidence and revolt leading to freedom: We’ll have no pity when the whole nation rises, c­ ries –​­ Revenge!7       We are heroes! The last generation of slaves, the first to be free!8 After the Kishinev pogrom in Easter 1903, an increasing minority of Jews, horrified by ­anti-​­Jewish violence and persecution, and repulsed by the gentile world, turned to Zionism. Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’ reflect a revolutionary change in Jewish consciousness in the process of emerging from powerlessness through nationalism. Bialik’s ‘­On the Slaughter’ was a gut reaction to Kishinev: If there is ­justice – ​­let it come now! But if it comes after I’m ­destroyed –​­ let its throne be wrecked forever!9 His most influential lines in inspiring Jewish militancy during the ­1903–​­06 pogroms are paradoxically the scenes of utter humiliation and despair in City of Slaughter: ‘­the sun shone, the acacia bloomed, the killers killed’.10 The scene is Kishinev but it could be anywhere, at any time in Jewish history, wherever Jews were murdered. Everywhere, on the streets and houses, in courtyards and on walls, even on the trees, there are bloodstains and brains of the victims. Nature itself is corrupted, for the violence takes place against a backdrop of beautiful spring weather: pogroms often occurred at Easter, incited by sermons on the crucifixion. Books and scrolls are torn and burned, stoves are smashed, stones and bricks are charred, feathers and

136  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 broken glass everywhere, spring and slaughter together. The poet finds no hope in faith or tradition and even mocks the victims for seeking help from their hapless rabbis. The poem ends with humiliation and despair, as it began, but with a new note, of cowardice and shame, as the poet taunts the survivors to dig up the bones of their buried slaughtered relatives, fill their sacks, and go begging the ‘­pity of goyim’. The poet has no answer to violent a­ nti-​­Semitism. Nearly 20 years after City of Slaughter, Tchernichowsky responds with a cry for revenge for the ­far-​­worse pogroms in Ukraine during the Russian civil war (­­1918–​­20) between the Communists (­the ‘­Reds’) and their opponents (­the ‘­W hites’), in which the latter murdered over 100,000 Jews. Yet, this would not be a violent revenge, as in the poet’s earlier works such as ‘­Baruch of Mainz’ (­1901). The poet recoils from the inhumanity of the murderers, who would cut pregnant women open with axes and use iron bars to beat babies to death. Jews could not behave this way for in their ancient tradition they treasured the image of God, the reverence for life preserved in the Ten Commandments. Echoing Bialik’s irony of spring and slaughter together, Tchernichowsky describes the beautiful Ukrainian countryside, the green plains, fields rich with grain, sweet ­forests – here ​­ tens of thousands of Jews were butchered, piled up for the wolves to eat, ‘­tossed like shit or garbage into pits, tied and buried alive’. All that remains is the ­blood-​­stained earth, nourishing a riot of flowers, roses, red mallow, burning poppies, blushing pinks, ‘­to garland the heads of your whores,/­to put color in your flags, life in your banners’. The poet curses the murderers, fated to be poisoned by their J­ ew-​­hatred, destroyed by their addiction to sadistic cruelty and murder:11 Our blood will seep into you, poison your existence, through your eyes cold as jackals, heart harder than millstones The revival of Jewish life in the land of Israel seemed, in contrast, an escape into an idyllic world in an age of peace, ‘­each man beneath his vine and fig tree’. Arab pogroms reminiscent of those in the Ukraine came as a shock, in 1920, 1921 and, by far the worst, 1929. The challenge of Bialik’s City of Slaughter loomed over the Jews in the land of Israel, as it did over the European Jews. Jews did not return to their ancestral homeland to fight anyone; now they were confronted with the choice: fight or die.

From Kishinev to Tel Hai Jewish militancy was not new: it derived from biblical and early rabbinic Judaism. Jews from a religious background such as Bialik, who loved learning and hated violence for its own sake, tended to judge harshly those who harbored religious contempt for Jews and Judaism. That Arabs could behave as racial a­ nti-​­Semites, to the point of collaborating with Hitler, was as

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  137 much a shock to Zionists as was the notion among Jewish socialists that socialists, with their atheist ideology, could be governed by ­anti-​­Semitic prejudice. The pacifist history of the Jews, both in Europe and to a lesser extent in Arab countries, in which ­anti-​­Semitic policies and actions were frequent, was itself a goad to Arab attacks. Jews did not fight back in pogroms in Arab lands;12 why should they be different in Palestine? Yet, in Palestine, the Jewish reaction to murder, rape, destruction, and looting at Arab hands was unexpected: instead of being traumatized and cowed into submission or exile, as they were in pogroms in Europe and Arab countries, the Jews responded aggressively, feeling they were no longer in golus (­exile) but were defending their ancestral homeland, Eretz Yisrael, upon which again, after 2,000 years, Jewish blood was being shed. Arab violence, in short, justified, encouraged, and strengthened Zionism: Zion was the final resort and refuge, the place of the last stand. Hebrew writers are mostly consistent with rabbinic culture in their recoil from violence and reverence for life, but they nevertheless accept the need for ­s elf-​­defense against ruthless enemies. They rarely defend the type of militant patriotism often found among Westernized European Jews, especially in wartime. The Jewish national anthem, the ‘­Hatikva’ which, unlike most anthems in their hope to be ‘­v ictorious, happy and glorious’, expresses hope ‘­to be a free nation in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem’.13 There is nothing in modern Hebrew literature, however devoted to the cause of Jewish sovereignty, remotely comparable to the ­super-​ ­chauvinistic Hassgesang (‘­­Hate-​­Song for England’), by the ­German-​­Jewish poet, Ernst Lissauer, written in the flush of enthusiasm for war that swept Europe in August 1914: Wir haben alle nur einen Feind: England.14 During the war, even German Zionists shared Lissauer’s chauvinism.15 Even so, Jewish nationalists who fought out of patriotic loyalty for other countries often preserved traditional Jewish repulsion by war. Jewish a­ nti-​­militarism is evident in the fact that the Jewish Legion, organized by Jabotinsky and serving in a n ­ on-​­combative capacity in the British conquest of Palestine in ­1917–​­18, ‘­c ame to symbolize militaristic tendencies that were alien to most Jews’;16 instead, the defense of Tel Hai, a remote Jewish village far in the North attacked by Arabs, where Joseph Trumpeldor and five of his men were killed on March 1, 1920, became the defining event for an entire generation of Jews in the land of Israel. The fight at Tel Hai was hardly a footnote to history; its symbolic importance was immense. That Jews fought and died was nothing new: this had happened throughout Europe since the French Revolution, when Jewish emancipation brought conscription and army service; and in Russia, too, where conscription preceded emancipation by 90 years. Jews had fought for Polish and Italian independence, for various German states in the Napoleonic wars; for most of the countries that rose in the insurrections of 1­ 848–​­49; for both France and Germany in the ­Franco-​­Prussian war of ­1870–​­71; and for all sides in World War I. In the Russian pogroms, Jews had begun to fight back as Jews, breaking the

138  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 c­ enturies-​­long pattern of submission to Gentile violence. The significance of Tel Hai lay in the fact that this was the first time in 1,785 ­years – ​­since the fall of Betar in the war against Rome in ­132–​­35 ­CE – ​­that Jews had died in battle defending the soil of Eretz Yisrael, on which they labored. In his eulogy for the fallen, the labor leader Berl Katznelson pointedly refrained from militarism: ‘­T hose who had fallen were simple workers defending the fruits of their toil. These were men who had not intended to fight but were ready to defend to the last the piece of land they had saturated with their sweat’.17 Trumpeldor became the exemplar of Jewish national hopes, in his h ­ eroism – he ​­ was the most decorated Jew in the Russian army, with a distinguished service in the ­Russo-​­Japanese war of ­1904–​­05, where he lost an arm; his devotion to the ideal of building the land according to socialist ideals; and his lack of militarism. His alleged dying words at Tel Hai impressed even cynics such as Yosef Haim Brenner: ‘­It is good to die for our country’.

From Bialik to Greenberg: the Hebrew prophetic voice Greenberg was Bialik’s chief militant poetic disciple and heir, galvanized into prophetic grief and wrath as European a­ nti-​­Semitism grew in the 1920s and 1930s. The two great emotional poles of Greenberg’s work were ­Jew-​ ­hatred and the ­re-​­establishment of a Jewish state. A towering figure in modern Hebrew literature, Greenberg is the leading ­neo-​­prophetic Hebrew free verse poet after Bialik. He is also a major Yiddish poet, an expressionist, a poet of World War I, a Cassandra of Jewish catastrophe, fighter in the Jewish underground in British Palestine, author of the most profound poetic response to the Holocaust in any language, Rechovot ­Ha-​­Nahar (­Streets of the River 1951), and poet of the birth of the State of Israel. A top figure in Jabotinsky’s ­r ight-​­wing Revisionist party and, for many years, a member of the Israeli Knesset in Begin’s Herut party, Greenberg, unlike Bialik, is a highly controversial figure, subject to unusual extremes of adulation and condemnation, close critical attention and neglect. Greenberg’s military service in the A ­ ustro-​­Hungarian army in World War I marks a crucial divide between him and Bialik, between his and Bialik’s generation, and more generally between the entire world preceding 1914 and the world after 1918. Greenberg shares with other B ­ ible-​­based national poets an explosive mix of creative passion and aggressive nationalism. Among contemporary poets, D’Annunzio stands out as a national poet who, as an enlisted soldier in the Italian armed forces in World War I, sought salvation in the heroism and glory of military action. Greenberg, in contrast, was deeply shocked by the slaughter in the war and did not romanticize it. He was, in fact, no more a ­natural-​­born revolutionary than Jabotinsky.18 His poems on his war experiences in 1­ 914–​­18 are filled with horror. He was spiritually close to his pacifist Hasidic forbears, whom he esteemed for their high level of religious civilization. Greenberg’s militancy is the expression

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  139 of determination to avoid dying, as Jews had died for centuries, without a fight. Yet, somewhat like D’Annunzio, whose greatness as a poet was compromised by association with Italian fascism, Greenberg’s reputation has suffered because of his militant Jewish nationalism. As the fiercest, most ardent and original poetic spokesman for Jewish ­religious-​­nationalist chosenness, Greenberg sought the realization of messianic longing through restoration of the s­ o-​­called Jewish ‘­k ingdom’; and in language unsuited to the ideals of rational secular democracy, the poet totally identifies himself with the divine calling of the prophet.19 For this reason, his poetry has, at times, been attacked or dismissed by the Israeli literary establishment, which is predominantly secular, liberal, and unsympathetic to passionate exclusivist nationalism, especially with a dangerously strong religious coloring, as in Greenberg. For Greenberg even more than Blake, the biblical celestial Jerusalem can be created on earth: the purpose of Hebrew poetry is to bring about national rebirth. The poet holds up his personal biography as a symbol of the life of his people. He sees no split, as in much modern poetry, between the ‘­man who suffers and the mind which creates’, but like a biblical prophet lives wholly in the public realm, with no private life, or none that really matters: his life was the Nation. In this respect, he went further than Bialik, who in some respects felt his private life chafing against his public role. Greenberg saw his personal history as part of the entire history of Jewish martyrdom, culminating in the Holocaust. Yet, unlike the biblical prophets, none of whom is known to have been a soldier and several of whom (­Hosea, Isaiah, Zachariah) portray visions of universal peace, Greenberg was a soldier. Though he valued the universal, humanistic character of Judaism, the Nation came first. Bialik in his poetry asserts the primacy of personal experience, with flashes of guilt at not fulfilling his national role. Greenberg, in contrast, accepts a public prophetic role to the exclusion of private life: he did not marry till late in life. His poetry bears traces of this privation, in its allusions to life as it might have been: the poet envies those who merely live their lives, not a cause, as he does: Everything in the world is fine, for the man with the little heart    that beats and feels, without the cutting knife of what I know –​­20 He is drawn to lovers, ‘­their bones alive with song’, for his role inhibits him from singing ‘­a grand lust for women’21: His ears hear the song of girls from Ba’al Peor calling him to their breasts in summer hidings    under veils and petticoats to statues of Astarte and Aphrodite by fruit-​­orchard gates…22

140  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 Like a modern Jeremiah, Greenberg portrayed his excruciating life experiences forging him for his national role: Like prophetic chapters my life burns    in total revelation, my body a metal mass for smelting. My God the blacksmith hammers me: every past wound opens in me, spits fire shut in my bones. This my sentence, my fate, my way.23 Like Jeremiah (­20: 7­ –​­9), too, the poet is a lover in a tortured relationship with God, though unlike Jeremiah’s God, Greenberg’s God in this poem is female: Like a woman who knows I’m stuck on her, my God mocks me: escape if you can. But I can’t. Both Bialik and Greenberg responded forcefully to ­anti-​­Semitism. Yet, their poetry raises the question: is modern Jewish nationalism a continuation of or a rebellion against Judaism? As Bialik’s ‘­prophetic’ role did not square with that of the biblical prophets, neither did that of Greenberg: in some ways, Bialik and Greenberg are unlike the biblical prophets who offer hope based upon religious faith and tend to be pacifists, teaching a morality which transcends the nation. The nation’s enemies carry out God’s will, which must be accepted. In contrast with their biblical sources, Bialik is uncompromising in his despair, and Greenberg in his violent militancy. Both are evidently concerned less with universal prophetic ideals than with Jewish survival.

Greenberg: national biography Greenberg drew on his early life to portray the collective transformation of the Jewish people: from orthodox Hasid to avant garde Yiddish expressionist to poet of World War I to Hebrew poet in the Land of Israel. Uprooted from his Hasidic home in Polish Galicia and conscripted into the A ­ ustro-​ ­Hungarian army in 1915, Greenberg, then an 1­ 8-­​­­year-​­old Yiddish poet, was thrust into the Serbian front on the Sava river. There, he witnessed grotesque horrors which never left him:   …bodies twisted upside down on the barbed wire, in thick darkness a long thin cry in death, I alone was left of the warring human race,

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  141 I saw my brothers planted feet up, kicking at heaven, the moon’s silver face, the awful sheen of blunt hobnails of upturned soldiers, dead men’s boots kicking at heaven, sent a current of deathly terror through me, a vision of a ­deity-­​­­in-​­terror, of man’s fall. I cried as if I were the last, I’ll never cry as I did by the river Sava.24 Toward the war’s end, Greenberg deserted. In Lemberg during the pogrom of November 1918, he and his family were captured by Polish a­ nti-​ ­S emites and lined up against a wall in a mock execution. Greenberg never forgot and was never the same after the ordeals which he suffered during the war: Miraculously I survived the grasp of goyim. My father’s God be blessed! I’m not lying in Slav earth, a Jew cut to pieces, eaten by worms.25 The poet felt he had survived for a purpose. He saw his poetry not as art but as ­God-​­given prophecy meant to influence events and ultimately bring about messianic salvation. Greenberg was no aesthete. He rejected aestheticism, which he associated with hated Hellenism.26 He believed in action. As a ­fighter-​­poet, he has much in common with 1­ 9th-​­century militant national poets, such as Mickiewicz, Petőfi and Botev.27 His poetry, born in violence, is full of violent images and gestures: perhaps no word echoes more angrily and insistently in his writings than ‘­blood’. Hebrew, he declared, was not his mother tongue, but ‘­the language of my blood’. Through his experience of ­Jew-​­hatred, Greenberg came to accept, despite his hatred of war, that in a world in which even ‘­civilized’ nations collaborated or acquiesced in genocide or, at best, were silent onlookers, Jews had little choice but to learn the use of arms. His grim view of Jewish history was largely formed by the time he arrived in Palestine in December 1923. Driven into nationalism by a­ nti-​­Semitism, he wrote powerful valedictions for the European Jews; if they were to be saved, no Christian country would save them: national revival was their only chance. Forced to leave all valuables, we dressed for exile,   slung satchel on shoulder. We sang like new recruits in an army barefoot on Mediterranean sands. We were forced to go. The earth screamed under our feet, rattling our beds. Mouldy bread sickened us to death.

142  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 Adulteress water turned us green with terror. Everywhere we looked we were nailed to the cross, agony filled our lives …28 In the 1920s and 1930s, Greenberg celebrated the growth of the yishuv in British Palestine. In common with other Palestinian Hebrew poets of the period (­many of whom, including Bialik, Shlonsky, and Shin Shalom, former Hasidim), he adhered to the ‘­religion of labor’ taught by the labor socialist philosopher, A.D. Gordon. The poet is an incandescent vessel of messianic song, and the land of Israel is depicted in prayer, its geography the phylacteries, and the 36 righteous men of Jewish legend in the kibbutzim: ­Jerusalem – ​­tefillin shel rosh, the E ­ mek – ​­shel yad! Lamed vavin in all kibbutzim, divine grandeur of all who suffer for the Kingdom! Sinai smoking over father’s shoulder in Poland, face ­twilight-​­red … at times ­wax-​­like! Candles in the s­ even-​­branched candelabrum mother lights such Jerusalemite radiance: our Jerusalem! Is this my light’s source? – ​­–​­ Answer me, God of my father in Zion!29 Greenberg wrote for Jews alone, not for those whom he regarded as brutal despicable goyim.30 Their ‘­­skin-​­deep’ culture hid ­deep-​­rooted barbarity. The poet’s commitment to Jewish survival hardened with the rise of p ­ ost-​ ­1918 ­Jew-​­hatred and Arab opposition to Jewish nationalism.

The 1929 pogroms The violence in over 20 Palestinian Jewish towns and villages in 1929 shocked Greenberg. In the poem, Ne’um ben ­ha-​­dam, Greenberg responds (­Bialik did not)­31 to the 1929 atrocities, the worst of which were in Hebron, where 66 Jews, including yeshiva students and children, were murdered with knives and hatchets, and the survivors were evacuated. The Jewish community in Hebron had existed for centuries and had its origin in the biblical era. The poet addresses the Arabs directly, accusing them of adopting European ­anti-​­Semitism (­making a ‘­treaty with Edom’), making impossible any constructive relationship with the Jews, and warning them, as Tchernichowsky does the murderers in Ukraine, that their own violence will ultimately destroy them. Greenberg follows Bialik in declaring his repulsion by the barbarous acts of goyim, then rejecting revenge. The poet openly expresses shock, hate, and contempt toward the behavior of the Arabs, who seemed to glory in their lust for violence and torture of helpless Jews. A people whom he had previously regarded as fellow Semites were poisoned

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  143 by the ­anti-​­Semitism of Christian Europe, complicit with Edom. Greenberg echoes Tchernichowsky’s revulsion at the Ukrainian murderers during the Russian civil war: Though you stab my people with your rusted sword, and I’ve buried with my hands my murdered brothers, and I’ve seen the widows and the orphans, and the smouldering houses, yet I, a Jew, will not pay you Arabs in kind for your slaughter and torture of Jews in Hebron and Safed and Motza and Beer ­Tuvia –​­ I cannot hack limb from living flesh, and toss it in the fire, as you do…32 Sadistic acts in Hebron and ­elsewhere – ​­including the torture of children before murdering ­them – ​­shocked the Jewish community into the realization that normal peaceful coexistence with Arabs was unlikely, if not impossible: ‘­The dread that the Arabs were planning to annihilate the entire Jewish c­ ommunity – ​­men, women, and ­children – in ​­ one concentrated burst of violence surfaced for the first time’.33 Greenberg thus arrived at a Manichean view of Jewish/­A rab relations: the violence of 1929 showed Jewish ­self-​­defense to be a condition of survival: ‘­I never knew till now what a soldier is for’. Greenberg prior to the l­ate-​­1920s, writing in the Labor Zionist publications, Davar and ­Ha-​­Poel ­ha-​­Tzair, largely shared the consensus of moderation among Jews in Eretz Yisrael.34 The 1929 poem records his changed outlook: his initial expectation that the Arabs would accept the Jews in their biblical ancestral home, as fellow Semites (‘­doesn’t an abaya look like a tallis?’); his disillusionment with their rejection; his outrage at their deadly attacks, and his growing conviction that, especially as they allied themselves with ­anti-­​­­Semites – ​­including, ultimately, the ­Nazis – ​­the Arabs were comparable with genocidal European Christians. (­The Sephardic Jews living in mostly ­pro-​­Nazi Arab countries during the Holocaust came to a similar conclusion; after the war most of them emigrated to the State of Israel.) Greenberg mocks the naiveté of Jews such as himself for seeing the Arabs as Semitic brothers.35 In a spirit of national revival, ‘­Rising jubilant from the pit of Christianity and the prison of Islam’, Jews arrived at Jaffa and Haifa with prayers on their ­lips – ​­‘­like silent melodies in David’s harp’; they worked in their desolate ancestral homeland with the false hope that Arabs would accept them as fellow Semites, their kinship based on ‘­the Torah of the House of Shem’. Instead, they found ­anti-​­Semites comparable in hatred and violence to those in Europe they had fled: We found the sister and concubine of Edom, her crescent moon winking at the cross in ­Golgotha –​­

144  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 Greenberg, raised in the ancient rabbinic tradition, viewed modern Jewish nationalism in relation to the distant past, centuries before the birth of Islam. Modern Zionism was conceived as a form of conflict avoidance: by leaving the countries where they were hated and going back to their ancestral homeland, the Jews would end the rationale of ­anti-​­Semitism, and this oldest of hatreds would die out. Jews did not generally anticipate conflict in their return to a land universally associated with them, ­including – ​­at least ­theologically – the ​­ Muslim world, which accepts Jewish Scripture as holy and the Jews as the ‘­p eople of the Book’ (­a hl ­al-​­kitab). Greenberg, too, did not imagine that Jews were escaping ‘­from the teeth of Christianity to the teeth of Islam’, as he put it. The most vehement opponents to Zionism prior to 1917 were assimilated Jews, particularly in Germany, who felt their ­hard-​­won citizenship threatened:36 ­anti-​­Semites could and did insult them by demanding that they ‘­go back to Palestine’. Greenberg was aware, furthermore, that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 had the support of prominent Arabs, including Emir Feisal ibn Hussein, leader of the p ­ an-​ A ­ rab movement, and the Ottoman empire in its dying days, as well as the newly created League of Nations.37 Balfour’s own hope was that in their ancestral homeland, the Jews would live ‘­in peace and quietness under British rule’.38 They had the protection not just of British rule but also of international law, as it existed at the time, and had no wish for or interest in conflict: the vast majority of immigrants in any case settled on the coastal plain between Haifa and Tel Aviv, which Arabs had avoided as this was an arid, barren, malarial region, with poor soil. No one disputed that Hebrew prayer was directed toward Jerusalem, for millennia the spiritual capital of the Jews; they were not strangers. Arab recognition that the Jews, by making the land bloom, brought benefit to the ­region  – it ​­ was ­hoped – ​­would lead to ‘­a lasting peace and lasting ­c o-​­operation between the two peoples’.39 The League of Nations recognized Hebrew, a language indigenous to the land of Israel, as the national language of the Jews: other languages (­e.g. Aramaic, Greek and Arabic) were unlike Hebrew as they were languages of extensive territories and cultural empires far beyond the land of Israel. The government and policing were in British hands; ideally, Jewish involvement would hardly be necessary. Arguments over these issues in the interwar years were so harsh and bitter that it seemed at times that Jewish ­m ilitancy – including ​­ that of G ­ reenberg – ​­was less apparent in reaction to Arab attacks and violent a­ nti-​­Semitism than in internecine conflict. Greenberg was fascinated by Shabbetai Zevi, the ­17th-​­century false messiah who within a few weeks brought a large part of the world Jewish population from a state of euphoria at impending redemption to despair. Shabbetai Zevi embodied the ­semi-​­mystical nature of Jewish nationalism under the imprint of rabbinic teachings. Appearing in 1666, less than 20 years after the Chmielnicki massacres in Poland, Shabbetai Zevi declared himself to be the Messiah: the end of days had come, and Jews were about to return to

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  145 the land of Israel. Totally unexpected was the breadth and depth of support for Shabbetai Zevi, from an entire ­cross-​­section of the Jews internationally: Ashkenazim and Sephardim, West European and East European, men and women, young and old, rich, and poor, the educated and the u ­ neducated –​ a­ ll joined in this ecstatic moment, revealed in their national unity by the a­ ge-​ ­old longing to return to Zion, quickened now into actuality, so that when the bubble of hope burst with news of Shabbetai Zevi’s conversion to Islam, many Jews were already packed or on the road, lips brimming with laughter and tongues with song. Yet, the international popular longing among Jews for Zion, the common feeling of estrangement in exile, was clear, as was the peaceful aim of redemption, in defiance of a world of conflict and suffering. The poet’s dream was that of Jews through the ages, of Jerusalem rebuilt, of the Shekhina, God’s presence, returning to a peaceful and prosperous Zion, children at home, cattle grazing in the fields:40 I built in isolation here a quiet green village, my dream had no defensive wall. In 1929, the reality had to be faced: the pacifist dream in Hebrew poetry going back to ­Isaiah  – ​­a world without need for walls and ­borders  – ​­was impossible once the Arabs had made clear the alternative to s­ elf-​­defense: indiscriminate slaughter with no British police or army to intervene and stop it, a repetition of the trauma of East European pogroms. I never knew till now what a soldier is for. Now I know: I will build village after village, each a bulwark to the other, and the ploughman’s hand will be the soldier’s hand in the field. As Tchernichowsky warns the Ukrainians that in murdering Jews they have murdered themselves, Greenberg warns the Arabs that their bloody deeds have produced a ­self-​­destructive poison. The poem’s ­end – ​­the appearance of a biblical God of vengeance, ‘­roaring like a lion to judge Edom’41– ​­echoes Bialik in the conclusion of the poem, Yadati ­be-​­lel arafel (­I know on a foggy night, ­1905–​­06), the last of the ‘­Poems of Wrath’ responding to the Russian pogroms of ­1903–​­06: ‘­Then the God of Vengeance, with injured heart, will rise and ­roar –​­/ and storm out with his sword’.42 Both poets portray wrathful revenge as an act of God, and they shun human revenge for fear of becoming morally no better than the enemy. Greenberg follows Bialik, too, in his reverence for rabbinic culture as the essence of Jewish identity, for example in his allusion to the Shekhina, the mystical, aggadic figure representing the female presence of God, wandering with the exiled Jews and comforting them with maternal love. At the end of the poem, the poet warns the Arabs against an unholy alliance with ‘­Edom’, i.e. European ­anti-​­Semites: ‘­You will not defeat my Jerusalem’.

146  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 Greenberg abhors compromisers of the past, seekers of accommodation with the enemy, such as Yohanan ben Zakkai and Josephus (‘­I hate the peace of the defeated’) – ​­and their modern traitorous counterparts, as Greenberg provocatively described them, particularly David Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann (‘­g uilty as murderous Arabia and Edom’).43 He felt kinship with ancient militants, the kana’im (­zealots), biryonim (­hooligans), and sicarii (­assassins), and with defeated war leaders such as Simeon bar Giora, John of Gischala, Eleazar ben Yair, and B ­ ar-​­Kokhba: all died fighting Rome.44 After the riots of 1929, as of 1936, the Jewish Diaspora, previously lukewarm to Zionism, was more sympathetic towards and supportive of the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. Even the previously ­anti-​­Zionist Reform movement now saw Zion as a refuge for the oppressed and a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life.45 The Jews in Eretz Yisrael were increasingly suspicious of the British government, its police and army, which had failed to protect them; and the British government, in London and Palestine, was increasingly ambivalent toward Jewish immigration and wary of inflaming Arab hostility.

Greenberg after Bialik’s death in 1934 Bialik lived to see the rise of Hitler and immediately saw the threat of catastrophe.46 Greenberg shared this view. After Bialik’s death in 1934, Greenberg became the leading Hebrew prophetic poet, expressing with grief and rage overwhelming at times, and with increasing poetic power and confidence, the catastrophe of the European Jews. In Germany, ­a nti-​ J­ ewish racial laws came into force in late 1935. About 60,000 Jews left Germany for Palestine, an unprecedented number, and from a country where the Jewish population of about a ­h alf-​­million had been, for the most part, a­ nti-​­Zionist. There was violent Arab opposition to Jewish immigration to Palestine. These alarming developments hurt Greenberg into an increasingly militant poetry. In a 1936 poem addressed to the British empire, he predicted the birth of a Jewish ‘­k ingdom’, personified by himself: I am the coming kingdom, rising from the living words at Sinai like every kingdom of Israel, its ­key – ​­poetry!47 By the late 1930s, Greenberg sank into despair as he saw the nations whose languages and religious cultures which owed most to the Hebrew Bible bringing the European Jews to the brink of extermination: Germany, by making Europe a lethal trap; and the United States and Britain, master of the largest empire in h ­ istory – including ​­ the Jewish National Home in the Land of ­Israel – by ​­ keeping the gates of immigration shut.

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  147

The Holocaust and Greenberg For several years, Greenberg was stunned into silence by the Holocaust, which included the murder of his parents. In a later ­prose-​­poem, he tried to imagine what happened, as a stark symbol of the fate of the European Jews: All that was left was grey sky, a ­corpse-​­pile, an officer smoking on the white plain.48 Greenberg’s dirges for the Holocaust victims in Streets of the River declare the poet’s sense of mission: …he, divine wanderer, goes barefoot to Harel, his eagle high in the ­sun-​­wheel… He, messenger of the Kingdom, still in burning vision: eats fire drinks fire sings fire ceaseless in fire’s ­fate – ​­poet and song to fire’s end.49 Zion is all that is left to the poet; only here do Judaism and Jewish existence make sense, does the poet feel at home: Here I breathe matriarchy and patriarchy from Genesis, from the majesty of the first altar, the bound Isaac, from the depth of the sea, from above the sun, from bittersweet fate past present and ­future –​­​­50 Greenberg joined the Jewish underground, the Irgun, with the aim of forcing the British out of Palestine and saving some of the European Jews. Between the end of the war in 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 (­when he became a member of Knesset in Begin’s Herut party), he wrote a series of dirges collected in 1951 in Streets of the River, including savage invectives against the Christian world: Not like dogs were we to the goyim… They pity a dog, stroke, even kiss it like a ­much-​­loved baby, pampered at home, and when it dies, how that goy will mourn!51 Springtime again in the country: flowerbeds, lilac, singing birds. Sheep lie down in the shallow stream… No longer the wandering Jews, beards and sidelocks, In the inns no longer, with tallit and tzitzit, No longer in shops, with trinkets, cloth, groceries, No longer in workshops, in trains, in the market, in synagogues; They lie under the ploughtooth of Christians. God has visited his goyim with munificent grace…52

148  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 Greenberg lashed out in grief and guilt at those Jews who, regarding Europe as home, failed to return earlier to their homeland, and were murdered: ­ ow – ​­our bodies made holy in their blood N rot there, the inheritance of worms, house and vessels bathed in holiness of Sabbath and festivals, song of deep longing, the flap of the Shekhinah’s ­w ings –​­ the inheritance of goyim: for in their land we built houses and synagogues and dug graves not in Jerusalem Jerusalem of rock of gold. Allelai Amen.53 **** The dirges in Streets of the River follow a direct trajectory from Bialik’s City of Slaughter; and Greenberg’s condemnation of the barbaric world of goyim is the culmination of Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’. Yet, Bialik, unlike Greenberg, remained attached all his life to the pacifism which for two millennia had dominated Judaism and Jewish life: in his politics, he was closer to Weizmann than J­abotinsky  – ​­both of whom shared with Greenberg the adulation for Bialik as inspirational national poet.54 Bialik sought a poetic voice not just in a prophetic national calling but also in the inner, buried life; and his exploration of childhood trauma was characteristic of Romantic poets, notably Wordsworth, as we shall see in the next chapter. Bialik rediscovered childhood trauma as emblematic of his orphaned people.

Notes 1 ‘… spontaneously in almost every town of any size societies were founded for the colonization of Palestine’ (­Frankel 1981: 49). 2 For a historian’s account of Gordon’s response to the pogroms, see Stanislawski (­1988: ­160–​­76). Bialik’s story ­Ha-​­Hatzotzra Nitbaysha (­The Shamed Trumpet, 1915), written at a time of mass deportations of Russian Jews in World War I, portrays a typical deportation of a Jewish family from the countryside after the May Laws of 1882, when Bialik was 9 years old. 3 On Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’ written in response to the pogroms of ­1903–​­06, see see pp. 7–12, 31–2, 34–5, 50, 97–8, 118–21. 4 Ne’um ben ­ha-​­dam (­The Word of the Son of Blood), is a Hebrew wordplay on ben Adam, Son of Adam (­i.e. a man). The poem appears in Greenberg’s collection of poems responding to the 1929 attacks, Ezor Magen ­u -​­Ne’um ben ­ha-​­Dam (­Defensive Shield and the Word of the Son of Blood) (­Greenberg 1930: ­29–​­30); translation by David Aberbach from this text. A sign of the ferocity of the 1929 pogroms was that Bialik’s portrayal of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, in City of Slaughter, applied to them, practically word for word. 5 Bialik, Al ­ha- ​­Shechitah (­On the Slaughter, 1903) (­Bialik 2004: 78).

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  149 6 Bialik had a similar view, far more powerfully expressed, of the guilt of the Gentile world, in poems such as ‘­On the Slaughter’ and ‘­I know on a foggy night’. See pp. 34–5, 97 earlier. 7 En zot ki rabat tzerartunu (­Nothing but your fierce hounding, 1899) (­Aberbach 2015: 237). 8 Bialik (­2004: 62). 9 Ibid., 78. Also in response to the 1903 pogroms, the Hebrew poet, Ya’akov Cahan, wrote the poem Biryonim (­Hooligans), famous for its call for national rebirth: With blood and fire, Judah fell. With blood and fire, Judah will rise. 10 On City of Slaughter, see pp. 9–12, 29–30, 98. 11 From Tchernichowsky’s Zot tehi nikmatenu (­Revenge, 1920). On this poem and its affinities with Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’ see pp. 100f., 134f., above. Brenner’s story Hu amar la (­He Told Her’), written in 1918, also in response to pogroms in Ukraine, reflects the generation gap among the Russian Jews in an age of growing ­anti-​­Semitic violence: a young man tells his mother that he will not accept the fate of his father, murdered by ­anti-​­Semites; nor will he take comfort in the traditional texts of Judaism, for his faith is gone. It is morally wrong to let oneself be slaughtered, as Jews did in the past. He will fight the ‘­descendants of Chmielnicki’ and take revenge. 12 Wistrich (­2010) in his history of ­anti-​­Semitism mentions the many Arab pogroms against Jews, in Spain, Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Egypt, as well as Palestine; only in Palestine did the Jews organize ­self-​­defense. On the unmilitary image of the Jews in Arab lands, see Rogan (­2012). 13 The Hatikva, by Naftali Herz Imber, is notably lacking in biblical militant echoes, though the Hebrew Bible has long been a quarry for militant hymns and anthems in many countries: in the British national anthem, for example, ‘­God save the King’ is found for the first time as a salute to Saul, first king of Israel (­I Samuel 10: 24), and ‘­O Lord our God arise/­Scatter his/­her enemies’ comes from Numbers (­10: 35). 14 Albanis (­2002: 215). Lissauer’s Hassgesang was the most popular song in Germany during the war, distributed to all regiments. It came back to haunt Lissauer, who believed fervently in the indissoluble unity of Judaism and Germanism. By the end of the war, German a­ nti-​­Semites were citing Lissauer as proof of allegedly ­un-​­German ‘­Jewish hate’; good Germans did not indulge in such degenerate practices. The German Jews claimed in response that Lissauer’s chauvinism was untrue to Jewish tradition and provoked ­anti-​­Semitism. 15 German Zionists ‘­went as readily as other Jews to the war and fought faithfully at the front for Germany’ (­Horwitz 1988: 255). ­German-​­Jewish patriotism was often expressed in language and imagery deriving from Jewish tradition. Whereas Bialik in City of Slaughter castigates the allegedly cowardly Jews at Kishinev for betraying the memory of the Maccabees during the 1903 pogrom, scurrying to hide like mice, Martin Buber in a patriotic Hanukkah lecture supporting Germany on December 19, 1914, compared the Germans to the Maccabees! (­ibid., 240). 16 Shapira (­1992: 98). Many early Zionists, nevertheless, admired and tried to emulate the Arab ideal of the courageous fighter, learning to ride and shoot, and to speak Arabic, even to dress as Arabs. Arabs were often employed as guards in Jewish villages. Arabs entered Hebrew literature, notably in the writings of Moshe Smilansky, Yitzhak Shami, and Yehuda Burla. Admiration was mixed with wariness. The Hebrew writer, Yitzhak Epstein, warned in 1907 that the ­Palestinian Arabs must be treated justly and should not be underestimated:

150  Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948 ‘­These people are brave, armed, excellent marksmen, have superb cavalry, and are zealous of their nation and especially have not yet weakened; they are after all but a fraction of a large nation which controls all the surrounding lands: Syria, Iraq, Arabia and Egypt’ (­­Mendes-​­Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 559). 17 Shapira (­1992: 102). 18 The leading Zionist political leaders were chiefly writers and intellectuals, not men of action: Herzl was a playwright; Jabotinsky, a novelist and poet; Weizmann, a chemist. 19 On Greenberg as modern prophet, see p. 140 below. 20 ­L e-​­Imi (­To my mother, 1931). 21 ­Ha-​­Mamshil meshalim (­Author of parables, 1928). 22 Shir ­ha-​­Siyum (­­End-​­poem, 1946). 23 Im Eli ­ha-​­Napach (­With My God, the Blacksmith, 1927). Translation by David Aberbach (­2003a: 17). 24 Hazkarat neshamot (­Memorial, 1928), ibid., 19. 25 Hizdaharut (­Radiance, 1926), ibid., 23. 26 On the consistency of Greenberg’s rejection of Hellenism and n ­ on-​­Jewish influences as consistent with rabbinic tradition, see Leoussi and Aberbach (­2002). Yet, Greenberg was not impervious to the influence of other poets: these included Whitman (­also a free verse poet who looked to the Hebrew prophets for inspiration) as well as contemporary Expressionists such as Peretz Markish and Else Lasker-Schüler. 27 On Greenberg’s militancy in the context of militant national poetry, see Aberbach (­2015). 28 Yerushalayim shel Matah (­Earthly Jerusalem, 1924), in Aberbach (­2003a: ­20–​­1). On the adulteress’s trial by ordeal, see Numbers 5: 11f. 29 Aberbach (­2003a: 23). 30 goyim: Heb. ‘­nations’, a reference, sometimes derogatory, to n ­ on-​­Jews, though goy (­nation) is also used to describe the Jews and Israel. 31 On the 1929 pogroms and Bialik’s City of Slaughter, see p. 148, note 4 earlier. 32 Translated by David Aberbach (­Aberbach 2019: 175). 33 Shapira (­1992: 274). 34 Ibid., 143. 35 Greenberg’s warning in 1928 that the Jews must arm themselves against Arab attacks was ridiculed (­Miron 2010: 217). Even so, the wrath in Greenberg’s poetry is directed less against the Arabs than against the Labor Zionist leadership that he felt had betrayed the nation; as a result, he eventually lost his standing as a poet, he was ostracized, demonized, and virtually driven from the country in ­1933–​­39 (­ibid., ­226–​­7). The restraint of previous poets, including Gordon, Bialik, and Tchernichowsky in the face of a­ nti-​­Semitic violence should be seen in the context of a European Jewish population which for centuries had sought to avoid violence and tended not to respond to attacks. 36 See Aberbach (­2006, 2013). 37 The Muslim world did not approve of the independence movements of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania, and other states which emerged from the Ottoman empire; independence in each case was achieved only after war. The Ottoman recognition of Zionism in the years preceding the empire’s collapse could be seen as a significant point of departure in the Islamic view of national movements. Leading Arabic newspapers in Cairo were ‘­surprisingly friendly’ to the Balfour Declaration (­Laqueur 1972: ­236–​­7). 38 Mackay (­1985: 318). 39 Ben Gurion, statement to the Peel Commission, January 7, 1937 (­­Mendes-​­Flohr and Reinharz 1995: 608). Greenberg viciously attacked Ben Gurion and his fellow

Anti-Semitism and Hebrew poetry: 1881–1948  151 Labor Zionists of the Jewish Agency for clinging to illusions of compromise and maintaining a Diaspora mentality of conflict avoidance (­havlaga, restraint) at all costs. The hope for peace remained, nevertheless, at the heart of Zionism and is repeated several times in Ben Gurion’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, for example in the appeal to the Palestinian Arabs to ‘­return to the ways of peace’ (­ibid., 630). It is noteworthy that as a militant Revisionist, Greenberg was marginal, and he became a national poet not as a militant but for his poems for the Jews murdered by the Germans, first published in Hebrew newspapers in Eretz Yisrael, then collected in Rechovot Hanahar (­Streets of the River, 1951). This, perhaps the most important book of Israeli poetry, is the Yad Vashem of Hebrew literature. 40 This and the following quotes in this chapter are translated by David Aberbach (­2003b, 2015). For Hebrew source, see note 4 earlier. 41 On the biblical Esau and Edom as the rabbinic symbol of eternal ­Jew-​­haters, see Hacohen (­2019). 42 For a translation of Yadati ­be-​L el arafel, see pp. 34–5 above. 43 On attacks against ‘­traitors’ in national poetry, see pp. 13, 47, 48, 80. 44 Among others similarly drawn to the alleged heroism of the biryonim were leading Revisionists such as Yehoshua Heschel Yeivin, Abba Achimeir, and Joseph Klausner. Klausner regarded the biryonim as ‘­the forerunners of both the French revolutionary ­sans-​­culottes and the Bolsheviks’ (­Shindler 2006: 159). On Tchernichowsky’s admiration for the biblical King Saul for his military prowess and death in battle, see pp. 100–01 above. 45 ­Mendes-​­Flohr and Reinharz (­1995: 518). 46 Bialik uses the word Shoah (­sho’at Hitler) to describe Hitler’s ­anti-​­Semitism (­1939: v 244). 47 Yehuda ­ha-​­yom, Yehuda makhar (­To the British Empire, 1936). 48 El givat ­ha-​­gviyot ­ba-​­sheleg (­Hill of corpses in the snow, 1951). 49 Shir ­ha-​­Siyum (­­End-​­poem, 1946). 50 Yerushalayim adei ad (­Jerusalem Forever, 1947). 51 Ein od meshalim (­No more metaphors, 1951). 52 Tahat shen maharashtam (­Under their ploughtooth, 1946), translated by David Aberbach (­2015: 56). 53 Kinat ­ha-​­seh ­le-​­vadad (­Lament for the Solitary Sheep, 1951), translated by David Aberbach (­2003: 29). Shekhinah: the female presence of God, believed to wander with the Jews in exile. Allelai: Heb. ‘­woe’. 54 Bialik’s disgust at the deposition of Weizmann at the 17th Zionist Congress in 1931 by the militant followers of Jabotinsky is expressed powerfully in the poem Re’itkhem shuv ­be-​­kotzer yedchem (­You see again your powerlessness). see p. 220, note 30 below.

8 Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony

… the echo of a God in hiding exploded in the stillness: ‘­W here are you!?’ Bialik (­1904)

Bialik could be described as one of the last of the 1­ 9th-​­century Romantics, comparable in many ways with Goethe, Wordsworth, and Pushkin: the Romantic longing for a heroic past, a lost paradise, a distant land, for the glory of a bygone age, and the attempts to dignify the downtrodden and the unfortunate, are familiar in Jewish literature from ancient to modern times. The Romantics idealized the Wandering Jew, sympathizing with his plight and with his dream of the return to Zion. Bialik helped make the dream real. The Hebrew prophet is the antecedent for Shelley’s view of the poet as ‘­legislator of humankind’. The Sturm und Drang in Bialik’s poetry, the rage against injustice, marks a turning point in modern Jewish history, the Jewish struggle to fight persecution and emerge from powerlessness. Bialik gives much credence to the Romantic belief that the poet can change the world. The Romantic notion associated with Lord Byron of the poet as leader and moral guide, exemplar of principles of liberty and justice, is the norm in Hebrew literature from Isaiah to Bialik. Bialik’s role as a shaper of the Zionist movement, a spiritual and intellectual force equal in his way to Theodor Herzl, was characteristic of 19th and early 20th century national ­poets – ​­such as Petőfi, Mameli, Botev, Marti, and P ­ earse – ​­who rejected art for its own sake but sought social and political change, even revolution, by asserting national identity. But although Bialik’s verse storms with the chaos of his a­ ge – ​­the vicissitudes of Jewish nationalism, increased violence, mass migration of Jews from Russia, the first rumblings which led to the Russian Revolution, increased secularization and questioning of traditional Judaism and rabbinic ­authority  – ​­the poignancy with which he expressed the national mood of loss and longing for revival owed much to personal trauma. Bialik did not like to be thought a national poet. His purely ‘­national’ poems are among his weaker efforts. Instead, he saw himself as an artist struggling with his pain. The emotional mainspring of many of his finest works was identical to

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-9

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  153 that of Wordsworth. The loss of a ­parent – ​­Bialik, his father when he was 7, and Wordsworth, his mother at the same a­ ge – the ​­ resulting separation from the surviving parent, and the total breakup of their ­families – ​­both passed into the miserable care of ­g randparents – ​­left lifelong scars and haunted the imagination. Early loss and separation mark their poetry: the preoccupation with childhood; the haunting presences and objects, sometimes obviously a parent or ap ­ arent-​­figure; the yearning for a lost time and lost paradise, associated with the time before family breakup; heightened response to the natural world and its attributes of parental love and care; an emphasis upon feeding; the motif of union with Nature; a mood of isolation, desertion, depression, guilt, and hostility. In writing of early childhood, both poets sought to understand themselves, in creative response to the trauma of loss. As poets of loss and separation, Bialik and Wordsworth may be compared with many similarly driven poets, from different countries,1 for whom loss is a source of insight into more general social and national concerns: Wordsworth, for example, into the destruction of landscape by industry; Bialik, into the consequences of national exile.

Bialik and parental loss Born in Volhynia, in Ukraine, Bialik was the son of a timber merchant whose business failed by the time the future poet was 5 years old. His mother, to whom he was attached, was known for her wailing at funerals, a highly emotional, pious woman troubled by the death of her first husband. The father set up as a ­t avern-​­owner in Zhitomir (­Bialik remembered him studying Mishnah while drunkards staggered in and out).2 He fell ill and died, leaving three children. Bialik was about 7 at the time. Then occurred a blow comparable to Dickens’ traumatic experience in the blacking factory. Bialik’s distraught mother, having to go to work, was unable to care for him, so he was taken to his paternal grandfather, a ­well-­​­­to-​­do former lumber merchant in his 70s who had retired many years earlier to devote himself to Torah study. Bialik was haunted to the end of his days by this memory of separation. Though his mother was blameless, he could not help but feel betrayed. The death of his father and the forced separation from his ­mother – far ​­ more than the rise of Jewish ­nationalism – ​­were motivating forces and focal points of his later life as a charismatic artist. Bialik’s unease at being thought a ‘­national poet’ can be attributed partly to his awareness of the importance of these personal factors in his creative life. Bialik’s life with his aged grandparents was restricted and puritanical, duty took the place of creative living, and inspiration was stifled. He was vulnerable to the onslaughts of relatives who had a notion of how to ‘­c ivilize’ the boy, by allegedly isolating, beating, and humiliating him.3 He remembered with especial disgust the torture of religious life which

154  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony his grandfather imposed upon him, the endless learning equated with virtue, the Talmud, Mishna. Bible, the Zohar, the prayers each day, a hundred blessings. bundle after bundle of mitzvot [commandments], and the minutiae of mitzvot, and the minutiae of the minutiae from the day the Lord created the Chumash [Pentateuch) until the last book of laws or ethics was written down…. And all this labour the Jew is obliged to undertake, is forced to carry out, is not free to be rid of and escape from, even for one hour.4 The tormented child had suicidal thoughts and took to risky behavior, climbing on roofs and telegraph poles.5 In Shirati (­My Poetry, 1901), Bialik explores the emotional sources of his poetry, particularly the impoverished period between his father’s death and his removal to his grandfather’s house. Bialik never forgot his mother’s degradation, her failed struggle to support her children. In striving for literary success, he sought to ensure that he would never know such poverty again. In ‘­My Poetry’, the mother would labor in the market during the day and at home until midnight. At dawn, she got up to bake bread: her tears fell into the dough and, the poet writes, entered his bones.6 And my heart knows –​­ her tears fell into the dough. In the morning, when she cut the warm bread, salty with tears, and I swallowed it, her sighs entered my bones… Yatmut (­Orphanhood, 1928, 1933, 1934), Bialik’s most ambitious late poem, explores this troubled period. Comparing himself as a suffering soul to the fathers of the three main religions, he emphasizes the universality of his tragedy: he is not only Isaac on the verge of being sacrificed but also Ishmael abandoned by his mother and Christ crucified.7 At the age of 50, Bialik admitted that he still thought himself ‘­an orphan who believes a father still exists, that he hid somewhere and might appear any moment… this stems from weak nerves, from an ailment in the nervous system’.8 Many years earlier, he had written, ‘­If only my father had lived, if only I had grown on his knees… I would have had a settled mind, and been a man among men, knowing his worth and his place, happy and successful all his days’.9 ‘­Sometimes I think of killing myself’,10 thus Bialik confessed to a friend in 1907, as in his poetry: Perhaps through my very hunger and thirst   for life and its joys, with disgusted soul, braving the Creator’s wrath, I will kick at his gift, cast my life at his feet, like a broken shoe torn from the foot.11

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  155 In another macabre poem of this dark time, the poet imagines himself dying in rage at his people’s ruin, rotting in the grave, his skeleton mocking their calamity and disgrace.12 There is also the haunting, g­ rief-​­ridden Arvit (­Dusk, 1908): Dusk The sun rose, the sun also ­set –​­ but she was gone, another day, two ­days – not ​­ a sign anywhere. The west fills up with shapeless forms, clouds on the h ­ orizon –​­ you clever ones, are worlds being born or destroyed? No, neither born nor destroyed, I see: This epicene dusk scatters ashes everywhere. One thing more: I sought your change and lost my g­ old –​­ and the devil stands behind me, laughing cruelly.13 Even grand miracles and prophetic visions of messianic redemption could not salve the poet’s despair; instead, they speak of boredom, depression, and unfulfilled desire: And it shall be when days grow long… And it shall be when days grow ­long –​­ all alike, little joy, much ­g rief –​­ man and beast bored to death; a man goes to the seashore at dusk to think but the sea won’t ­flee –​­ he’ll yawn; he’ll go to the Jordan, it won’t flow ­back –​­ he’ll yawn; he’ll watch the Hunter and the ­Bull –​­ still up in the ­sky –​­ he’ll yawn. Man and beast miserable alike, burdened with life,

156  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony tearing hair in t­ edium –​­ cat bald of whiskers. Longing will sprout like stale mushrooms in a rotted tree stump. Longing will fill the cracks as lice fill rags. And it shall be a man will go home to supper and dip his herring in v­ inegar –​­ he’ll sigh; he’ll have his tasteless lukewarm drink and sigh; he’ll put his shoes and socks by the ­bed –​­ and sigh, man and beast will sigh together, each man in dream the wailing ache of c­ raving –​­ on the tin roof the cat sobs and scratches. Hunger grows like no other not for bread or vision, but for the Messiah! A man will rise at dawn worn out by sleep and dream, empty inside, sleep still raging in his eyes, ­n ight-​­terror in his bones, cat’s wail scratching his gut and b ­ rain –​­ he’ll rush to the window wipe the mist, ­ ut – hand ​­ over eyes, or to the door to look o dirty fevered eyes, hungry to be s­ aved –​­ at the little path beyond the yard, ­ pposite –​­ the garbage dump o he’ll seek the Messiah! His wife pokes out from under blanket, scrawny, depressed, her hair a mess, she’ll pull from baby’s mouth her dry breast, to listen: isn’t the Messiah coming? Isn’t that his donkey braying? Baby lifts head from crib, mouse peeps from hole: isn’t the Messiah coming?

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  157 Can’t you hear his donkey’s bells? Maid fanning samovar behind stove sticks ­coal-​­black face outside: isn’t the Messiah coming? Didn’t his trumpet sound?14 Crushing depression, despair, and thoughts of ­self-​­murder afflicted Bialik periodically throughout his life, but the years leading up to the poet’s abandonment of poetry, in 1911, seem to have been especially hard. During this period, Bialik’s mother lived with the poet and his wife in Odessa. The suicidal thoughts he had had after his separation from her in childhood returned.15 Her death may have triggered further traumatic childhood memories.16 Bialik’s poetic silence from 1911 might have been linked to her death.17 In a poem of 1910, the weary poet, half in love with death, stands before the bookcase of o ­ nce-​­holy books, where living prayer and the eternal lamp of faith died, and summons the night to gather him into its eternal peace.18 In the following year, the poet’s sense of defilement and unworthiness again culminates in a d ­ eath-​­wish: Who am I? Who am I and what am I    to be welcomed by this golden ray, my cheek touched by a breeze, tender-​­winged? What if the corn clings to me in the field or fresh grass kisses my feet? The Lord’s blessing is late,    his mercy slow. There’s no longer room in me. Let them go elsewhere, and alone I’ll return to silence. For a pillow, I ask only a stone    from a ruin, unwanted, useless, lifeless. I’ll hug it, I’ll join myself to it, I’ll shut my eyes and petrify –​­ Let me have no dream or vision    no memory or hope no yesterday no tomorrow but everything frozen, eternal silence, unbroken    to swallow me. No leaf will shiver for me, no grass will mourn no path to cross my border no ray of light to see me

158  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony and the song of a bird will die    at my feet –​­ only a little cloud will waver above me   for an instant –​­ w ­ atching – ​­and float silent on.19

Loss and separation in Wordsworth Wordsworth, too, was deeply disturbed by the collapse of his family. Although in The Prelude he implies that he was largely unscathed by the loss of his ­parents – ‘­ ​­The props of my affections were remov’d,/­And yet the building stood’20 – ​­his sister Dorothy tells a different story: Many a time have Wm, J, C, and myself shed tears together, tears of the bitterest sorrow, we all of us, each day, feel more sensibly the loss we sustained when we were deprived of our parents.21 In childhood loss, Wordsworth shared with Bialik harmful extremes of grief and rage, verging on suicide. Memories from the time after his mother’s death present Wordsworth as angry, impulsively violent, and prone to ­self-​ ­harm. He recalls striking a whip against a portrait of a woman in his grandfather’s house.22 In another memory, also possibly linked to his mother’s death, he turns his hostility against himself: I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; so much so that I remember going once into the attics of my grandfather’s house at Penrith upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew was kept there. I took the foil in hand, but my heart failed23 Wordsworth’s memory of attempted suicide suggests that the poet’s account in ‘­Nutting’ of the destruction of a hazel bower in the same period in childhood, after his mother’s death, might have had a ­self-​­destructive element:24              … up I rose, And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage: and the shady nook Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being…25 Nature in Wordsworth’s imagination is ­maternal – ​­on one level, as in other conceptions of Nature, in the writings of Spinoza or Darwin for example, an attempt to preserve the mother lost in childhood through a form of union with the natural world; but perhaps also a target of rage at abandonment or

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  159 irrational guilt at having destroyed the loved person. ‘­Nutting’ in its psychological complexity warns that human beings can have within themselves a deep potential irrational violence against the world they ­inhabit – ​­the unleashing of which is a form of suicide.

The ‘­I’ of the romantic poet The chief ‘­Romantic’ quality of the poetry of Bialik and ­Wordsworth – the ​­ exploration of the ­self – ​­can be seen as an attempt to buttress the self made weak by childhood loss and consequent emotional instability. Indeed, much of their greatest poetry tells of childhood: sections of Bialik’s ­prose-​­poem, Safiah (­A ftergrowth), ­Ha-​­Brekha (­The Pool), ehad (­One by one), are comparable with parts of Bialik’s The Prelude, ‘­Tintern Abbey’, and the Immortality Ode in their power to move. Both poets grew up in small towns surrounded by natural scenery of great beauty, Wordsworth in Cockermouth, Cumberland, and Bialik in the Ukrainian village of Radi. In trying to recreate and understand their childhood, both poets may be expressing a wish to return to that time, to derive comfort and stability from happy memories, to confront the trauma of their parents’ deaths. Both explore the wounded Self and search for cures, Wordsworth for ‘­The many feelings that oppressed my heart’, and Bialik for being, as he put it, ‘­roasted alive on his coals’.26 Of the healing power of childhood memory, Wordsworth writes in ‘­Tintern Abbey’ that in lonely rooms and amid the din of cities     I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration… Bialik, too, finds such memories to be a source of strength in alien surroundings. In his last poem, Predah (­Separation), written shortly before his death in 1934, he describes his departure from his mother after his father’s death. Memory was all that remained: Now I carry you wherever I go, you live in me forever, and in strange lands, when my heart hurts with longing, I hide myself away and unsheath you, one by one…

Loss and nature Childhood loss and separation heightened the poets’ response to the natural world, to its attributes of parental love and care, as a paradisal emblem of the lost time before the breakup of their families. Nature in their works is

160  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony mother and nurse, a source of food, of spiritual nourishment, consolation and peace.27 Nature has her own language and bond, from earliest infancy, radiating in the love of mother to child, creating his attachment to the external world. In Bialik’s Aftergrowth: No words, no sounds, only vision, mystic speech, specially made, void of sound. I did not hear it, but it spoke to me. So a mother’s passionate love and anxious care pass into the unconscious soul of her sleeping baby as she stands, heart pounding, by the cradle.28 And in Wordsworth’s The Prelude:              … blest the Babe Nursed in his Mother’s arms, who sinks to sleep Rocked on his Mother’s breast; who, with his soul Drinks in the feelings of his Mother’s eye!… Along his infant veins are interfused The gravitation and filial bond Of Nature that connect him with the world.29 Separation from the mother or, in Wordsworth’s case, her death, seems to have created or intensified in both poets the need for a mystic bond with the natural world, a bond so strong that even inanimate objects would appear to have the breath of life. To Bialik, again, it is expressed in a silent language: No sound, but splendid shades of color and ­v ision –​­ pictures of enchantment, language of God’s thoughts to ones he chooses, for the artist to find meaning in dream beyond words, language of images: a broad strip of blue sky, clouds pure white and dark, the tremble of wheat, the power of the cedar, the flutter of a dove, the eagle outstretched, the roar of light, sea of flame sunset and sunrise…30 This language of natural beauty through which God communicates with his chosen ones is remarkably like that of the ‘­sense sublime’ in Wordsworth’s ‘­Tintern Abbey’:          And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused,

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  161 Whose presence is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky… It is likely that loss not only sharpened their perceptions of the natural world but also gave them exceptional consciousness of childhood as the source of their emotional growth, the very ­God-​­given foundation of their being. To Bialik, childhood memories are ‘­the ­heaven-​­sent building blocks of what I am, God’s merciful gift for my weak and tender littleness and dumb pining’. Wordsworth, too, exults in the living treasure of childhood memories, and addresses a paean to the lord of life That giv’st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion! Not in vain By day or starlight thus from my first dawn Of Childhood didst Thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human Soul.31 The joys of a stable childhood, being brief, are idealized. To both poets, childhood memory is touched with visionary holiness. ‘­Those first virgin visions’, writes Bialik, ‘­fresh from the hand of their Creator, are the essence of life. What follows are flawed second editions’. The disappointment is equally sharp in Wordsworth, in the Immortality Ode (­1802): The Youth who daily farther from the east   Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,   And by the vision splendid   Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Love of Nature engendered by childhood vision is the seed of profound spiritual experience in later life. Wordsworth returns to Tintern Abbey A worshipper of Nature… Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer ­love – ​­oh, with far deeper zeal Of holier love… Bialik, too, makes his pilgrimage to Nature, seeking a form of mystical union (­devekut) much as Hasidim would do following the example of the Baal Shem Tov: I wandered the forest for hours in meditation, dodging golden snares, till I came to the Holy of Holies…32

162  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony The religious forms and meanings which both poets found in natural objects point to their need for substitutes after their parents’ deaths: air, rocks, trees, grass, all natural things, have a living spirit, usually maternal, fused with the life of the world. Bialik’s Hasidic background kindled this pantheistic tendency, for Hasidism, with its kabbalistic influences, would have taught him that a holy spark exists even in lifeless things. Clouds, for example, are often alive theologically in his poetry, ‘­pure white angels’, ‘­fragments of the holy throne’, ‘­meditation of heaven’, or the ‘­c elestial court’. In the same way, the awesome clouds which hover above the Alps and Mount Snowdon are, to Wordsworth, ‘­features/­of the same face’ of the ‘­m ind… that broods over the dark abyss’.33 The memory of Eden also had its dark, nightmarish side, hinting at times at the breakup of their families. Bialik recalls ‘­the faraway scream of drowning, the groan of murder in the forest’; and Wordsworth, in the ­Two-​­Part Prelude, tells of the drowned man of Esthwaite and many other disasters. Both poets were ‘­Foster’d alike by beauty and by fear’,34 and like other Romantics depicted pleasure and pain as inseparable. Bialik felt terror to be a part of beauty, enhancing it. His childhood haunts were ‘­fi lled with my sweet fears’,35 as Wordsworth consciously and with excessive zeal, he thought, set out to confront terrifying beauty and love: I too exclusively esteemed that love, And sought that beauty, which, as Milton sings, Hath terror in it…36 Fear and misery of family breakup are reflected, finally, in the preoccupation, shared by Wordsworth and Bialik, with loss of childhood paradise and of vision. Midlife accompanied artistic crisis: shortly before reaching 40, both poets stopped writing poetry of childhood. In fact, after 1808, when he was 38, Wordsworth’s poetic inspiration deserted him; and after 1911, Bialik, at exactly the same age, practically stopped writing poetry, except for children. They mourn not only the ‘­v isionary gleam’ of childhood but also the premature loss of childhood itself. My vision gone, my spirit a stranger: we drink the golden cup but once, the vision gone forever; the blue sky, green grass, the earth’s hidden light, radiant face of divine creation, once seen by the c­ hild –​­ gone forever.37     – ​­But there’s a Tree, of many, one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone:

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  163   The Pansy at my feet   Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream?38 Deprivation suffered by both poets after being orphaned is suggested further in the feeding imagery they use to describe the natural world, and in their tendency to become incorporated in inanimate objects. In ‘­Tintern Abbey’ and Immortality Ode, Wordsworth writes of Nature as mother or nurse feeding him all his life. The landscape of his youth was an ‘­appetite’ for meditation. At Tintern Abbey, he finds ‘­life and food / For future years’ –​ ­the food of ‘­lofty thought’. But even as a child, he writes in The Prelude, he   held unconscious intercourse With the eternal Beauty, drinking in A pure organic pleasure from the lines Of curling mist.39 Similarly, Bialik, as always more earthy and less abstract than Wordsworth (­a mathematics student at Cambridge University), writes of the natural world as a source of food. Earth, my mother, wide and ­full –​­ open your breast to me, a poor yearning soul.40 The Carmel and Sharon raised me, spoiled me with breast spilling milk.41 … the soft and delicate in the folds of the earth and her bosom pant like sucking children longing for rain…42 In his later, more ambitious poetry, such as Dead of the Desert – ​­‘­On craggy hills among the clouds we drank/­like eagles from freedom’s source’ – and ​­ ‘­The Pool’ – ‘­ ​­Breezes, sweet and cool, like baby tongues/­on mother’s cheek, licking the milky mist…’ – ​­Bialik uses feeding imagery with greater sophistication. Wordsworth, in The Prelude, remembers his youth, when he walked beneath the stars, his ‘­body from the stillness drinking in/­A restoration like the calm of sleep’.43 There were mysterious sounds at night: ‘­Thence did I drink the visionary power’.44 Nature and books were to him ‘­the firm habitual quest/­Of feeding pleasures’.45 The deity he envisaged through a misty gap at the summit of Mount Snowdon was ‘­the emblem of a mind/­That feeds upon infinity’.46 As for memories connected with his father’s death, he ‘­thence would drink/­As at a fountain’.47

164  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony Wordsworth as a child, ‘­fostered alike by beauty and by fear’, had alarming moments of incorporation into Nature: I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes.48 **** Michelangelo’s sculptings of mother and child are extraordinarily powerful and revealing images of incorporation, with literal union of the two bodies. Michelangelo was orphaned at the same age as Wordsworth and Bialik: he lost his mother at 6.49 He told his colleague, Giorgio Vasari, that his art was born at his mother’s breasts: Giorgio, if my brains are any good at all it’s because I was born in the pure air of your Arezzo countryside, just as with my mother’s milk I sucked in the hammers and chisels I use for my statues.50 Michelangelo before age 17 unites mother and child physically in ‘­Madonna of the Stairs’; and he merges the child’s face and arms with the mother in the Virgo Lactans in the Medici Chapel. But the summit of Michelangelo’s art is the Milan Pietà, unfinished at the time of his death, where the son’s body is embedded in his mother’s arms, and mother and son are one. Literally, as in Bialik’s ‘­The Pool’, ‘­all of him grows within her’. Wordsworth evidently overcame his fear of union with the external world and, as he wrote in the Immortality Ode, came to love Nature as a substitute mother: Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother’s mind,   And no unworthy aim,   The homely nurse doth all she can To make her ­foster-​­child, her ­inmate-​­man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came… Bialik is sharply alive to traumatic sources of the obsession with being fostered and fed by Nature. In Aftergrowth, he writes: Exile was decreed upon me thirty days before my birth: I was entrusted to the breasts of a gentile w ­ et-​­nurse in the neighboring village. The

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  165 ­ et-​­nurse’s breasts were beginning to dry up, if you’ll excuse my menw tioning such a thing, and when I used to yell for milk she would stuff my thumb into my mouth for me to suck. When I was taken away from there I had crooked legs, a swollen belly and eyes that bulged like two glass balls. Besides which it was my habit to chew charcoal and to suck my thumb.51 The preoccupation with feeding continues in Aftergrowth, when the little boy tries to milk the wall at home: In the lower part of the wall, near the corner, I saw a swollen place that looked like a nipple. That was obviously the right spot. The only thing necessary was to make a little hole and stick in a tube, and milk would promptly gush forth like an overflowing fountain.52 Though details are best taken with a grain of salt, the poet clearly felt himself to be deprived. My mother would bear me in mind, but always as an afterthought. “­Oh dear, dear, the baby hasn’t eaten yet… The baby hasn’t been washed yet… Where’s the baby?53 In a fragment of autobiographical reminiscence, Bialik mentions ‘­my aged ­wet-​­nurse, a gentile, shrivelled and toothless’.54 It may also be that the trauma of separation from the mother after his father’s death is reflected in the symbolism of inadequate feeding. The poet reviles his mother’s poisonous treatment of him: From womb to trash heap I was hurled like dung, swaddled in rags. My mother, veiled, mourning, cupped me her withered breast to suck its poison. From then a viper nested in my breast.55 Bialik’s depictions of incorporation into Nature at times recall Wordsworth. In ‘­The Pool’, the pool is a mother who ‘­silently gives suck’ to the roots of the forest but also contains its infant masculine reflection:           … perhaps he has a secret dream that not his image or his roots [lit. ‘­h is sucker’] within her ­lie –​­ but all of him grows in her. In a storm, however, the pool changes, becoming ‘­like a panicked infant on a terrored night’. Elsewhere, Bialik writes of the ‘­garden that sucks and gives suck’ and of a tree joined to the earth like a sucking child, as ‘­h idden

166  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony nourishing mysteries of earth enter his flesh,/­he absorbs their strength and sucks at their plenty’.56 In one of Bialik’s earliest memories, notably bright, warm, and mischievous, the poet’s soul is ‘­incorporated’ into food: I was a chubby baby of two and a half, stumbling along with dirty shirt trailing from my neck. One summer evening, mother was making cheese and curd, surrounded by bottles and jugs of wood and earthenware. I stole softly on uncertain legs behind her to a pitcher of curd, pushed in my dirty hand and came up with fresh golden curd, shining in the twilight that came in through the window. Stuffing it into my mouth, I swallowed it. The curd melted in my mouth, and smeared itself all over my lips and cheeks. Even the tip of my nose enjoyed a taste. I spooned with my hand and licked it, spooned and swallowed quickly. The melting of the curd in my mouth and the swallowing gave me great pleasure and a curious satisfaction, as if my soul too were melting and being swallowed in the sweetness of it. Mother sensed what was happening and turned her head towards ­me – I​­ was caught. She looked at me, ladle in hand, laughing. I watched her with cunning and shame, my sticky hand glued to my lips, my elbow suspended in ­m id-​­air. “­My jewel, my kaddish, my garden of Eden, my world to come!”57 But in Aftergrowth, the predominant impressions of childhood are of deprivation, loneliness, and immersion in fantasy. The child constantly ‘­enters’ inanimate objects such as trees or stones, and later, books: My soul entered like some possessing spirit into the deeps of each thing, and dwelt amid trees and speechless stones, absorbing all they contained and giving nothing in return.58 In this respect, Bialik’s imagination was remarkably like that of the young Wordsworth, grasping at walls or trees as parts of his being.59 In Bialik’s ­semi-​­biographical short story, ­Me-​­Ahore ­he- ​­G ader (­Behind the fence, 1909), a young man, Noah, imagines himself incorporated into a t­ ree – ​­‘­He felt he had grown in that tree for ages, grown like one of the leaves’ – ​­triggering a childhood memory of women milking ­cows – ​­and of his mother: Tzz… ­tzz – ​­thin white streams of milk. Up rises the white foam in the mugs. The finger itches to be ­there  – ​­it’s warm… the world smells of milk… and suddenly mother appears in the courtyard… carrying a white pitcher of milk.60 Tortured with lust for a girl, Marinka, Noah finds his way to an empty lot and throws himself into a pit covered with grass and shrubs: ‘­The grass hid him. He lay prone, his cheeks and fingers pressed into the loose moist soil.

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  167 His soul returned to its root. He was like a plant among plants’.61 In a s­ emi-​ ­biographical fragment, an adolescent becomes ‘­like a plant among plants’.62 And again, in Aftergrowth, the child ‘­enters’ the ­stove-​­mouth: ‘­My eyes and heart were fixed on the flame. I sat watching until the fire took hold. At that moment, I thrust the whole of me, all my soul into the fire’.63 Another version of this story is set during the period of the poet’s mourning for his father when he was about 7: he imagined a tiny woman pulling him into the stove: ‘­She grabbed me suddenly by the sides of my torn, faded cotton shirt and started to pull, pull, pull me into the furnace. I was almost strangled. I wanted to scream ‘­Mother!’ but I could not’.64

Orphanhood Bialik’s orphanhood and separation from his mother are related in various prose fragments and in the poems ­Be-​­Yom stav (­On an autumn day), Shirati (­My Poetry), and Yatmut (­Orphanhood). ‘­My Poetry’ ends with a metaphor of the critical role his mother played in his creative life. Here, too, as we have seen, the mother is incorporated into the child: her tears fall in the dough, and as she feeds her child the warm bread, salty with tears, ‘­her sighs entered my bones’.65 Orphanhood was Bialik’s chief poetic work in the last q ­ uarter-​­century of his life, the first time he confronts squarely the childhood events which largely determined his l­ife – ​­his father’s death and the separation from his mother. The first part of Orphanhood, Avi (­My Father, 1928), was evidently written as an independent poem; five years on, in 1933, Bialik added Shiva (­Mourning) and Almenut (­Widowhood), recalling the poverty which forced his separation from his mother, trying to imagine her feelings on the last night,     … looking deep into my eyes, as if seeking my judgment, kissing me over and o ­ ver – ​­struggling for words to tell me, halting, crying, that she wasn’t strong ­enough –​­ she had to take me to my grandfather. Predah (­Separation, 1934), Bialik’s last poem, hints at his later feelings in the words of consolation he gives his ­long-​­dead mother: Don’t sorrow for sending me away, tomorrow when you visit father’s grave, tell him your grief until he understands, and he believes you and forgives you… The poem and the poet’s life end with the mother and child arriving in Zhitomir, the grandfather’s town, where she will say goodbye. The child does

168  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony not yet know what the separation will mean. The poet leaves us with his innocent ­child-​­like impressions: Astonished by the houses, palatial on both sides, I, tiny as a grasshopper, moved between the walls in this vast city with its bright, gorgeous morning look. Mother and I walked down streets and alleys and ­market-​­places, through gardens and fenced enclosures, I, astonished by all these new, secret things, and tired too. By noon we crossed the town, to the ­timber-​­merchants’ district, to grandfather’s house. This is not yet a separation, a form of death, but a deceptive prelude to bitterness and fury, to a life whose artistic expression is compared by the poet, looking back, to a scroll in the dust.

Scroll in the dust And if you find the scroll of my heart rolling in the dust,         Say this: There was a man pure, simple, tired, weak. And this man lived innocently, he shied away, in silence he took – ​­with neither blessing nor c­ urse –​­ whatever came. And the man went out in innocence, he didn’t go a stubborn way; from petty things he didn’t run, he didn’t hope for greatness, and what was hidden he didn’t seek. And if greatness came, late, ­unwanted – ​­on the king’s ­h ighway –​­ he’d stand and watch, astonished and bow his head and move on. And if what was hidden came, late, knocking on his door he would not take it in,

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  169 despising as one the insolence of dogs and the rabbit’s righteous heart. And this man had a little attic with a tiny window, his alone, he knew no angel in it, no demon ruled it. In time of trouble he had one prayer, he would go up there and sink down before the window      trembling, ­ burning –​­ praying in silence. And the prayer lasted his life but God did not want it. What he didn’t want was given him, and the one thing he ­asked –​­    he didn’t find. Till his last day this man never lost hope of mercy. Heart and soul he prayed,    prayed and died in the middle of prayer.66

Childhood loss Bialik’s poetry of loss has unique significance to Jewish nationalism, but yearning and searching and, at times, a sense of incorporation of the lost person are familiar among other ­similarly-​­bereaved writers. The poet seeks a lost person in objects of the natural world: And I still don’t know who or what you are, though your name trembled on my lips, and at night you burned in my heart like a coal. I cried restlessly, I gnashed my pillow, my flesh longed for your memory. All day long, between letters of the Talmud, in a shaft of light, a bright cloud, in my prayers and my purest thought, in my bitter s­ uffering –​­ I searched only for you, only you, you, you…67 Rousseau, who lost his mother at birth, valued moments of solitary communion, s­ elf-​­forgetting, and harmony with the natural world. He alludes to

170  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony one such moment in Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire (­1786): on an island in the lake of Bienne in 1765, he hears the sound of the waves, ‘… a sweet and deep reverie takes hold of his senses, and he loses himself with delicious intoxication in the immensity of this beautiful system with which he feels at one’.68 As we have seen, Wordsworth, who lost his mother at seven, describes in ‘­Tintern Abbey’ (­1798) a similar joy in the contemplation of Nature, and a similar tendency to imagine himself incorporated into objects of the natural world.69 Byron, who lost his father at 3, writes in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (­1816) of a feeling of oneness with the natural world: I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me… Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them? Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure passion?70 To Byron’s contemporary, Thomas De Quincey, the loss of a sister when he was 7 was a trigger for searching the natural world for signs of her: ‘­Into the woods, or the desert air, I gazed, as if some comfort lay hid in them. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks’.71 Edgar Allan Poe, who lost his mother at 3, describes in the story ‘­Ligeia’ (­1838) a sense of incorporation of a lost person into Nature: … subsequently to the period when Ligeia’s beauty passed into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt always aroused within me, by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it, but let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly growing v­ ine—​­in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven (­one especially, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books.72 The sense of incorporation with Nature need not be l­oss-​­related; yet, in literature, this association is often strong. Emily Brontë, who lost her mother in infancy, describes in Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (­1847: ch. 33) a comparable yearning for the lost person, everywhere: … what is not connected with her to me? And what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags!

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  171 In every cloud, in every t­ree—​­filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by ­day—​­I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and ­women—​­my own ­features—​­mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her. Tennyson in the opening pages of In Memoriam (­1851) writes of a massive bereavement which finds an outlet in a sense of incorporation into a yew tree: Old Yew, which graspest at the stones That name the ­under-​­lying dead, Thy fibres net the dreamless head, Thy roots are wrapped about the bones. And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee. In a dream recounted by Gérard de Nerval in Aurélia (­1855), a woman guides the poet into a paradisal garden, where she is incorporated into natural things such as a hollyhock and a shaft of light, until she is transfigured into Nature: …the whole garden blended with her own form, and the flowerbeds and trees became the patterns and flounces of her clothes, while her face and arms imprinted their contours on the rosy clouds in the sky.’ He sees to his horror that he is losing her: “­Don’t leave me!” he cries. “­For with you Nature itself dies”—​­but the garden is now a graveyard.73 Dickens creates Pip in Great Expectations (­1861: ch. 44) as an orphan bereaved of both parents, yearning for the cold unattainable Estella, her image projected onto the whole natural world: You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen s­ ince  – ​­on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. Walt Whitman wrote ‘­As I Ebb’d With the Ocean of Life’ in a time of grief for his father (­died 1855); he describes a sense of union with a natural world which he is a part of but can never understand, in imagery of lines of drift

172  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony and ­debris – ​­‘­The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe…/ These little shreds standing for you and me and all’ – on ​­ the seaward side of Long Island (­Paumanok), where the poet was born in 1819: Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds and the ­sea-​­gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of ­salt-​­lettuce, left by the tide… Amid this detritus, the poet finds the source of his poetry, in the ebb and flow of life, and in death and union with the lost beloved. Union with Nature is for the poet union with the eternal father on the shores of his birthplace: I too Paumanok, I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been   wash’d on your shores, I too am but a trail of drift and debris, I too leave little wrecks upon you, you ­fish-​­shaped island. I throw myself upon your breast my father, I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me, I hold you so firm till you answer me something. Kiss me my father, Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love, Breathe to me while I hold you close the secret of the murmuring I envy. Kenneth Graham in The Wind in the Willows (­1908: ch. 7) portrays searching for a lost individual in the animal world. Rat and Mole spend a night anxiously scouring the local fields and woods for a lost baby otter. They find him, alive to their relief, amid the silent song of the wind in the willows at the gates of dawn. In an island of green, a holy of holies of Nature, in a state of mystical illumination, they worship the awesome presence of the divine: Sudden and magnificent, the sun’s broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level ­water-​­meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn… they stared blankly, in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realized all they had seen and all they had lost… The landscape of The Wind in the Willows is in the countryside near Cookham, Berkshire, where Graham, aged 5, was sent by his alcoholic father after his mother’s death in 1864, to be brought up by his aunt, and

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  173 introduced to the river and boating by his uncle, the local curate. The chapter, ‘­The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’, appears to draw on this moment of sorrow and insight, when Nature gave consolation for irreparable loss. D.H. Lawrence, in poems written at the time of the death of his mother in 1910 as well as in his novel, Sons and Lovers (­1913), depicts a desperate searching for the lost loved one. Grief brought a numb detachment from the world, as when in Sons and Lovers, Paul Morel, a s­ emi-​­biographical portrait, is struck after his mother’s death by his indifference to the first snowdrops of spring;74 but Lawrence in his late poems, written shortly before his own death in 1930, radiates a live current of emotion connecting him with ‘­earth’s lapse and renewal’ (‘­Shadows’): And if, as autumn deepens and darkens I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms And trouble and dissolution and distress And then the softness of deep shadows, folding, folding Around my soul and spirit, around my lips So sweet, like a swoon, or more like the drowse of a low, sad song Singing darker than the nightingale, on, on to the solstice And the silence of short days, the silence of the year, the shadow, Then I shall know that my life is moving still With the dark earth, and drenched With the deep oblivion of earth’s lapse and renewal. Albert Camus, in The Myth of Sisyphus (­1942), describes a quest for unity and harmony in the natural world, which appears to derive in part from childhood loss and chaos: … here are trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart ­relaxes – ​­how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel?75 Finally, in the writings of the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, there is lifelong searching in the natural world for a lost someone: I look for you, I look for your image among the medals that the grey sky models and abandons, I do not know who you are but I owe you so much that the earth is filled with my bitter treasure. What salt, what geography, what stone does not lift its secret banner from what it was shielding? What leaf on falling was not for me a long book of words addressed and loved by someone? Beneath what dark furniture did I not hide the sweetest

174  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony buried sighs that sought signs and syllables that belonged to no one?76 Neruda in his Memoirs suggests a biographical reading of this poem and others, for he too was abandoned, ‘­born from death’s rattle’: My mother, Doña Rosa Basoalto, died before I could have a memory of her, before I knew it was she my eyes gazed upon. I was born on July 12, 1904, and a month later, in August, wasted away by tuberculosis, my mother was gone.77 **** Not all poets react to grief with suicidal despair or in language of oneness with the natural world.78 Yet, for many poets, as we have seen, union with Nature is felt through attachment to human beings; and destruction of Nature can be felt as violence against ­people – even ​­ of murder. Nor need loss be a prerequisite for an attachment to Nature, but loss can heighten the need for a secure mooring in objects of the natural world, and this seems to have been the case with Wordsworth and Bialik. In exploring ­similarities – ​­the lost paradise of childhood, the search for healing peace in early memories, the loss of vision, the attachment to Nature and to parental objects, the preoccupation with feeding and ­incorporation – biographical ​­ parallels are inescapable. Childhood bereavement and family breakup were motivating forces and focal points in their art. In Bialik’s poetry, loss kindles the urge for union with ­Nature – and ​­ reunion of a nation with its motherland. Bialik’s loss and separation from his mother gave the stamp of conviction to his ­g rief-​­stricken portrayals of national loss and the yearning to return to the land of Israel.

Notes 1 On loss and separation in literature, see Aberbach (­1989). 2 Bialik’s early upbringing evidently gave him a taste for vulgarity. Shimon Rawidowicz (­1983) recounts in his diary on meetings with Bialik that in Berlin in March 1923 the poet, speaking in Yiddish, had been emphatic in the need to use Hebrew for everything: ‘­to shit in Hebrew, to scream, to rob, to commit adultery…’ (­43). In a conversation in 1929, Bialik was similarly earthy in speaking of the national movement as an instinct as basic as having a shit (­ibid., 95). Ravidowicz could hardly believe his ears: in parenthesis, he exclaims, ‘­Oy, Oy! Is this Bialik?’ 3 Bialik (­1937: i 1­ 58–​­9). In a draft of this letter, Bialik mocks relatives who would come by ‘­to have pity on the orphan and to beat him in the name of Heaven’; he attributes their sadism to envy: none of their children shone in their studies as he did (­Bialik 1971: 240). Once he could bear it no longer and escaped, managing to return to his mother: ‘­She wept, gave me some porridge and ­m ilk – ​­and took me back to grandfather’ (­ibid., 246). Bialik recalled a family wedding after his

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  175 father’s death, when he danced like a l­unatic – ​­‘­my heart longed to join a circle, to cleave to something, to belong’ – but ​­ no one would dance with him, and he was slowly pushed outside, alone, where his mother found him, still dancing, and took him home (­Fichman 1946: ­380–​­1). 4 Bialik (­1971: ­225–​­6). Bialik came to realize that his grandfather’s harsh puritanism and disapproval of childhood joys hid a deep love for him. The old man did not just imprison the boy; he also set him free by encouraging his intellectual gifts and his mastery of the Hebrew language. His enormous private library provided the boy’s main schooling, which he explored on his own, apart from the usual heder schooling and private tutoring. Years of study made Bialik an outstanding talmudist, recognized in his admission to the Volozhin yeshivah which until its closure in 1892, was a major center of talmudic study. His talmudic studies also made Bialik an expert in Jewish legend (­aggadah). The grandfather provided conditions for his traumatized grandson to grow intellectually; Bialik’s scholarship gave his Hebrew style depth and originality, which later Hebrew poets rarely match. 5 Bialik (­1937: i 159). On Bialik’s suicidal thoughts while living with his grandfather as a child, see Ravnitzky (­1946); see p. 157 above. The child associated the stove in his grandfather’s house with a desire for oblivion: ‘­Here, by this warm fire… if my eyes were to close forever, if I slept an eternal ­sleep – could ​­ there be greater pleasure?’ (­Bialik 1937: i 162). Bialik’s wife, Manya, attributed his misbehavior as a child to his orphanhood: he once climbed a tree and cried, ‘­Fire! Fire!’, alarming the neighborhood, but high up he was out of reach of punishment (­1963: 11). An actual fire after his father’s death, when he felt ‘­the whole world was being destroyed’, inspired the opening of Scroll of Fire (­Bialik 1935: ii 30). See pp. 119–20 above. 6 On incorporative elements in Bialik’s poetry, see pp, 159–60, 165–6, 169. In a letter to Klausner, he sought to correct a misconception his poetry might create: ‘­my mother never traded in a market’ (­Bialik 1937: i 184). In portraying childhood, the poet has poetic license. 7 On Orphanhood, see pp. 167–8. 8 Syrkin (­1968: 307). 9 Bialik (­1937: i 3). 10 Bialik (­1938: ii 46). 11 Lo herani Elohim (­God did not show me, 1911). Bialik was painfully aware that his artistic obsessions were sometimes incompatible with his public role as a poet of national revival. His confession in 1900 to J.H. Ravnitzky that ‘­Songs of revival are lies’ (­Bialik 1937: i 138) is echoed in the despairing end of ‘­The Burden’ (­Davar, 1904): With a cry of revival and the whoops of players we’ll stagger into the grave. 12 Hem mitna’arim me’afar (­They shake the dust, 1907). 13 Dinar: a valuable Roman coin, as opposed to the nearly worthless perutah (­p enny). A literal translation reads: ‘­I sought your perutah/­and lost my dinar’. 14 Ve haya ki ya’arikhu ­ha-​­yamim (­A nd it shall be when days grow long, 1908). ­Bialik parodies the prophetic style: ‘­A nd it shall be’ (­Isaiah 2: 1); ‘­The sea won’t run away’ (­Psalms 114: 3); ‘­Hunger grows’ (­A mos 8: 11); ‘­Isn’t that his donkey braying?’ (­Zachariah 9: 9). For parallels in the poetry of T.S. Eliot, see p. 154 above. 15 On Bialik’s suicidal thoughts while living with his grandfather as a child, see p. 154 above. 16 The gloomy presence of Bialik’s mother was remarked upon by Bialik’s acquaintances. Ravnitzky described her lying on a couch for days, groaning in misery (­Glicksberg 1945: 85).

176  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony 17 On possible reasons for Bialik’s silence (­shtika) after 1911, including his mother’s death, see Aberbach (­1988: ­87–​­9). 18 Lifne Aron ­ha-​­Sefarim (­Before the Bookcase, 1911). 19 Mi ani ­u-​­mah ani? (­W ho am I? 1911). In 1916, in wartime Odessa, the poet confessed his emotional burden to Simon Dubnow in language reminiscent of ‘­W ho am I?’: “­Fame imposes obligations” – ​­this shakes me to the bone, for I do not want duty and responsibility, and if the Almighty chooses a hollow reed like me for his fl ­ ute – who ​­ am I and what power have I? (­Bialik 1938: ii 174) 20 The Prelude ii ­294–​­5. Quotes are from the 1850 edition unless indicated otherwise. 21 De Selincourt (­ed.) (­1967: i 3). 22 Owen and Smyser (­1974: iii 372). 23 Ibid. This childhood attempt at suicide foreshadows Wordsworth’s later inner life of occasional sadness and fear, which, Coleridge wrote (­Griggs 1966: 491), was more troubled even than his own. Wordsworth alludes to his emotional turmoil in ‘­The Leech Gatherer’ (­1802), with its lines on Thomas Chatterton, a poet who committed suicide at 17; and the poet unexpectedly learns fortitude from an encounter with a leech gatherer on a lonely moor, who for all his ­bent-​­back decay and suffering, remains a child of nature, like a huge stone on a hill or a ­sea-​­beast sunning itself on a rock: ‘­I could have laughed myself to scorn to find/­In that decrepit Man so firm a mind’. 24 On ‘­Nutting’ in the context of subject of childhood loss in literature, including the perception of Nature as a maternal substitute, see Aberbach (­1989). 25 In ‘­To a Butterfly’, too, Wordsworth recalls the cruelty of children: ‘­A very hunter did I rush/­Upon the prey:—​­with leaps and springs/­I followed on from brake to bush’. Bialik had similar recollections of children behaving cruelly (­Glicksberg 1945: 57, 113). 26 The Prelude i 133; ­Vi-​­Y hi mi ­ha-​­ish (­W hoever be the man, 1911). 27 Wordsworth and Bialik share the view of Nature as a moral good and the city as a source of pollution and corruption: see, for example, Wordsworth’s Michael (­1800), on London, and Bialik’s Yenaser lo ­ki-​­levavo (­Let him saw, 1926), on New York. 28 ‘­No words’ (­en kol) alludes to the story of Elijah (­I Kings 18: 29; 19: 12). ­Elijah, harbinger of the Messiah in Jewish legend, appears also in ­Ha-​­B rekha (­The Pool). See p. 17 above. 29 The Prelude ii ­234–​­7; ­242–​­4. 30 ­Ha-​­B rekha (­The Pool, 1904). 31 The Prelude i ­430–​­4. 32 ­Ha-​­B rekha. 33 The Prelude vi ­568–​­9; xiv ­70–​­2. 34 Ibid., i 306. 35 In Ehad ehad (­One by one, 1915) and Aftergrowth, ch. 1. 36 The Prelude xiii ­224–​­6. 37 Ehad ehad. 38 Wordsworth, Immortality Ode (­V ). 39 The Prelude i ­589–​­92. 40 ­B a-​­Sadeh (­In the field, 1894). 41 Iggeret Ketanah (­A short letter, 1894). 42 ­Mi-​­Shire Kayitz (­Summer songs, 1896). 43 The Prelude iv ­386–​­7.

Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony  177 44 Ibid., ii 330. 45 Ibid., iv ­278–​­9. Bialik, similarly, writes of feeding insatiably in books and of being ‘­swallowed’ by books (­Bialik 1937: i 160). Bialik’s language of incorporation often brings to mind the idea of mystical union in devekut, central in Hasidic belief (­for a comparison between the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, and Krishnamurti, see Aberbach [1993]. For other instances of incorporation into Nature associated with childhood loss, see Aberbach (­2020: ch. 7). 46 The Prelude xiv ­71–​­2. ­ ature-­​­­as-​­mother as re 47 Ibid., xi ­384–​­5. An interpretation of this imagery of N flecting Wordsworth’s attachment of the poet to his sister, Dorothy, is borne out insofar as the poet regarded his sister as a m ­ other-​­surrogate. In The Vale of Esthwaite, composed by Wordsworth at the time of his reunion with Dorothy after a t­ en-​­year separation starting with their mother’s death, he declares his love for Dorothy as a displaced love for their mother: ‘­I fondly view/­A ll, all that Heav’n has claimed, in you’. 48 De Selincourt (­1947: iv 463). For other literary examples of incorporation of the poet with other objects, see pp. 169–74. 49 On the significance of childhood loss in Michelangelo’s art, see Aberbach (­1982) and Liebert (­1983). 50 Vasari (­1976: 326). 51 Bialik (­1939: 55). 52 Ibid., 72. 53 Ibid., 56. 54 Bialik (­1971: 245). 55 Hirhure Laila (­Night meditations, 1894). 56 Givole eshtaked (­­Last-​­year’s stalks, 1903), Yenaser lo kilevavo (­Let him saw, 1926). 57 Bialik (­1971: 217). 58 Bialik (­1939: 56). 59 De Selincourt (­1947: 463). See p. 164 earlier. 60 ­Me-​­Ahore ­ha- ​­G ader (­Behind the Fence, ch. 6) (­Bialik 1975: 1­ 00–​­1). 61 Ibid., ch. 9: 115. 62 ­B e-​­Vet abba (­In father’s house), Bialik (­1971: 192). 63 Bialik (­1939: 76). 64 Bialik (­1971: ­237–​­8). 65 On ‘­My Poetry’ in the context of Bialik’s poetry of loss and separation, see p. 154 above. 66 ­Ve-​­Haya ki timtze’u, 1910. 67 Ayekh? (­W here are you? 1906). There may be an echo here of the famous Hasidic song, ‘­A Dudele’, by Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev: ‘­W here will I find you, and where will I not find ­you—​­you, you, you, you…’ 68 Rousseau (­2001: 71). 69 On Wordsworth’s childhood tendency to be incorporated into objects, see p. 164 above. 70 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (­Canto III, lxxii, lxxv). 71 De Quincey, Suspiria de Profundis (­1845) (­De Quincey 1966: 137). 72 Poe (­1975: 113). 73 Nerval (­1958: ­130–​­1). 74 Compare Coleridge’s ‘­Dejection Ode’ in which the poet is numb to the sky, clouds, moon, and stars: ‘­I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!’ 75 Camus (­1979: 24). Camus (­­1913–​­60) describes a sense of chaos and a quest for meaning familiar in descriptions of early loss: he never knew his father, who was killed in World War I, and was raised in poverty by his mother in Algeria.

178  Bialik, Wordsworth and the romantic agony 76 El Abandonado, ‘­The Abandoned One’ (­Neruda 1976: 225). 77 Neruda (­1977: ­7–​­8). 78 To W.H. Auden, in ‘­Funeral Blues’ (­1938), loss drains the world of beauty and meaning: The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can come to any good.

9 Bialik and Freud Childhood screen memories

her sighs entered my bones… Bialik (­1901)

As we have seen, Bialik incorporated his childhood into that of the nation, through ancient myth and legend, in the rabbinic tradition and in his own invention. He attached greater importance to childhood, both personal and national, than any Hebrew poet before him. In this respect, he follows other cultural nationalists. From the time of Herder in the late 18th century, nationalists and scholars of nationalism stressed the value of national origins and cultural survivals; at the same time, the Romantics looked to the Child as ‘­father to the Man’, as Wordsworth put it. By the early 20th century, the work of Sigmund Freud roused greater public awareness of the significance of individual childhood and childhood memory in social life and the formation of character and the creative imagination. Freud (­who himself claimed that he was simply repeating the insights of the great creative writers who preceded him) understood well the Jewish cultural attachment to the past, in ancient biblical and rabbinic texts but he also sought insight in the intimacies of personal memory, using childhood as a portal to the unconscious. Freud studied his own memories as well as others and first applied the expression ‘­screen memory’ (­Deckerinnerung) to a memory of his own, in an essay on screen memories (­1899). How might Freud’s insights into his own childhood memory throw light on similar memories of Bialik’s?

Freud’s Deckerinnerung I see a rectangular, rather steeply sloping piece of ­meadow-​­land, green and thickly grown: in the green there are a great number of yellow ­flowers – ​­evidently common dandelions. At the top end of the meadow there is a cottage and in front of the cottage door two women are standing chatting busily, a p ­ easant-​­woman with a handkerchief on her head and a children’s nurse. Three children are playing in the grass. One of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-10

180  Bialik and Freud: childhood screen memories them is myself (­between the age of two and three); the two others are my boy cousin, who is a year older than me, and his sister, who is almost exactly the same age as I am. We are picking the yellow flowers and each of us is holding a bunch of flowers we have already picked. The little girl has the best bunch; and as though by mutual agreement, w ­ e – the ​­ two ­boys – ​­fall on her and snatch away her flowers.1 The scene is Freiburg, Freud’s birthplace and home until the age of 3, when his family moved to Vienna (­1859). Freud revisited Freiburg only once, when he was 16, and stayed with family friends. He fell in love with their daughter, Gisela, but was too shy to tell her. At this time, the memory returned. In his analysis, Freud explains the theft of flowers as a screen for a rape fantasy directed both toward his cousin Pauline and Gisela: ‘­Taking flowers from a girl means to deflower her’.2 Other elements in Freud’s life during the Freiburg period might also be reflected in the memory, particularly his close relationship with his nanny, who was dismissed for theft, and with his mother who had tuberculosis, for which she received treatment in a spa in Roznau, in Moravia.3 The violence in the memory might be linked to these circumstances. A fragment of conversation between Freud and his ‘­patient’ elucidates the psychological tactic of using a childhood memory both to screen out and to give expression to harsher realities: FREUD:  it

is precisely the coarsely sensual element in the phantasy which explains why it does not develop into a conscious phantasy but must be content to find its way allusively and under a flowery disguise into a childhood scene. PATIENT:  But why precisely into a childhood scene, I should like to know? FREUD:  For the sake of its innocence, perhaps. Can you imagine greater contrast to these designs for gross sexual aggression than childhood pranks?4 This mixture of innocence and experience, revelation and concealment, is found also in a childhood memory of Bialik’s in Aftergrowth, with remarkable similarities to Freud:

Bialik’s screen memory ‘­I follow as Feigele picks flowers in her white dress flitting b ­ ird-​­like from flower to flower, a sheaf in her arms! Suddenly she starts b ­ ack – ​­a dead snake in the grass. ‘­Don’t be afraid! He’s dead, just look!’ Fearlessly I pick the snake up. I often see them in our garden. ‘­Drop it, drop it!’ she cries out retreating in a start. ‘­Throw it away!’ Gripped by a cruel bravado, I snap the snake ­whip-​­like at her making her run yelling, and I pursue her, and the flowers scatter from her hands one by ­one – ​­blue, yellow and white. The

Bialik and Freud: childhood screen memories  181 dying sunlight penetrates her thin dress and earlobes. I chase her, snake in hand. Suddenly she vanishes. I keep running fast toward the setting sun. How close it is, beyond that hill! A hand seems to grip me, and I am on top of the hill. I look up petrified. Fire! Fire! everywhere. Streams of fire and mountains of fire, palaces of fire and forests of fire. Fire catches fire in the fire: and fire consumes fire. Red fire, white fire and green fire. Horsemen of fire and horses of fire fly about, burning lions in hot pursuit. And behold! the dread and glorious God descending in fire. My heart perishes for dread. I hide my face and flee’.5 These ‘­childhood deflowering’ memories of Freud and Bialik both date from periods of traumatic loss and separation. Apart from the illness of Freud’s mother and the loss of his nanny, there was also the death of his younger brother, Julius, when Freud was 18 months old, i.e. a year before the events in the memory allegedly took place. The nanny appears in Freud’s memory, chatting by the cottage door: the violence in the memory might screen anger at the nanny (­or mother) for ‘­abandoning’ the child when forced to leave him. Bialik’s memory also has underlying associations of loss. It is set in the Volhynian village where he lived until age 5, when the family moved to the larger town of Zhitomir. This poet remembered this move, which dates from the ­late-​­1870s, as the end of childhood paradise, culminating in the loss of his father and separation from his mother. The image of the setting sun, as in Alyosha’s memory in The Brothers Karamazov (­1880), suggests impending darkness in the poet’s life, a major life upheaval, a traumatic loss. Alyosha’s mother, knowing she is about to die, offers her son to the Virgin Mary in a moment of anguish and radiance that determines his life as a monk: ‘­suddenly a nurse runs in and snatches him from her in terror’.6 The full extent of the trauma is screened by the radiance, the most vivid part of the memory, but the anguish remains, though mastered in the service of God. Writers drawing on childhood memories might themselves be unable to say how much is real, and how much comes from a later time or from the imagination. Wordsworth in The Prelude warns of the unreliability of childhood memory: I cannot say what portion is in truth The naked recollection of that time And what rather may have been called to life By ­after-​­meditation.7 To Freud, however, a ‘­screen memory’ can be real or a fabrication with the force of reality in the inner life: in either case, the memory, like a dream, is a window into the truth of this inner life.8 A biographical fragment of Bialik’s suggests that in some form the scene in Aftergrowth actually occurred: ‘­Once I chased two little girls in a field, a snake writhing in his hand. The sun went down in a flow of blood across the green space’.9 Bialik and Freud describe little

182  Bialik and Freud: childhood screen memories girls gathering flowers attacked by boys, causing the flowers to fall. Bialik’s memory, however, is emotionally more complex, with clear links with poems such as Scroll of Fire. A moment of almost sadistic desire ends in terror. The girl’s disappearance (­and of the boy’s excitement toward her) should perhaps be attributed to, or connected with, the f­ather-​­like deity, as the two scenes are juxtaposed. The memory recalls the opening of Scroll of Fire, the destruction by fire of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE; the poem turns to the ruin of a young man, the poet, through love for a woman. As in the memory in Aftergrowth, there is a moment in Scroll of Fire when the woman vanishes (­this happens also in Bialik’s ‘­The Legend of Three and Four’). Earlier, the young man sees her bathing naked in a pool but, as in a midrash on the biblical story of the failed seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife, he is held back by moral scruples. At the climax of the poem, the young man scales a cliff (­as the child climbs the hill) to reach and preserve the last remnant of holiness from the Temple, the ‘­ruined lock’ of flame, but as he grasps it he sees the woman’s reflection below and plunges down into the ‘­river of destruction’. The girl in Bialik’s childhood memory might be seen as a foreshadowing of the woman at the top of the cliff in Scroll of Fire; she lives at the top of a hill looking down to the poet’s house in the valley below. The intense idealization of the woman in Scroll of Fire might be linked, as elsewhere, to the poet’s separation from his mother as a child.10 Such idealizations can exist in the poet’s mind only as long as they are not objects of sexual attention: when they become sexual objects (­suggested in the pursuit with the snake and by the snakes of desire), they vanish. Elsewhere, Bialik writes of snakes as the expression of an inner psychological state, a torment of rage and shame.11 These feelings evidently derive largely from the time after the poet lost his father and was separated from his mother. He never forgot his maltreatment by relatives at the time, and he likened his young self to a murdered tree: ‘­w ith their rough hands they tore my tender branches from the roots and threw them down… now I am dry and withered’.12 This imagery is the subject of the next chapter. The bitterness of deprivation, of being robbed of childhood, of being unloved and unable to love, haunted Bialik all his life.

Notes 1 Freud (­1899: iii 311). On the background to this memory, see Jones (­1953). The memory, ostensibly related by one of Freud’s patients, but the disguise is transparent and the ‘­patient’ was Freud himself. On screen memories of writers, see Aberbach (­1983). 2 Freud (­1899: iii 316). 3 Jones (­1953: i 17, 173). The mother’s illness may have been exacerbated or even brought on by the death of her second son, Julius, when Freud was 18 months old, a year before the events in the memory took place. 4 Freud (­1899: iii 317). 5 Bialik (­1939: ­123–​­5). This is among a group of childhood memories in Aftergrowth chs. 9­ –​­15, published 1­ 918–​­19. Though Bialik was suspicious and skeptical of psychoanalytic literary interpretation (­see Ovadiahu 1969: 110, ­129–​­30),

Bialik and Freud: childhood screen memories  183 psychoanalysis in its emphasis on individual psychology is closer to Bialik’s outlook as a poet than Zionism, with its collective values. See p. 203 below. Psychoanalysis in Russia began in the time of Nicholas II (­see Miller 1998); the first translation of The Interpretation of Dreams was by Nikolai Osipov in Russian (­1904) and the psychiatrist Moshe Wulff (­later president of the Israeli Psychoanalytic Society) practiced in Odessa in ­1911–​­14. More generally, no literature was more closely attuned to Freudian t­hought – ​­and no modern ­non-​­Jewish literature had more influence on ­Bialik – ​­than Russian literature. On Aftergrowth, see pp. 121–5, 160 above. 6 Dostoyevsky (­1978: 17). 7 The Prelude iii ­645–​­8. 1850 edn. 8 Freud’s insight applies to national as well as individual memories. His own imagination as a young man was deeply affected by the Jewish past, though he, not unlike Bialik, regarded himself as an ‘­i nfidel Jew’ (­Freud 1927: 170). In 1886, he wrote to his fiancée a declaration recalling the passion of Bialik’s Scroll of Fire: ‘­I have often felt as though I inherited all the defiance and all the passion with which our ancestors defended their Temple and could gladly sacrifice my life for one great moment in history’ (­E. L. Freud 1970: 202). From his childhood Jewish education, Freud was taught Hebrew, Bible, and rabbinic lore, and he remembered his Hebrew teacher, Samuel Hammerschlag, with great affection (­Jones 1953: i 19f.): on the eve of his departure from ­Nazi-​­occupied Vienna in 1938, he compared himself to Yohannan ben Zakkai who, in a story told in the Talmud (­G ittin 56) and recounted by Bialik in Sefer ­ha-​­Aggadah (­Book of Legends), encountered the future emperor, Vespasian, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, and persuaded him to let Jamnia (­Yavneh) be the new center of Torah study (­Jones 1957: iii 221). To Freud, as to Bialik, ­anti-​­Semitism was the strongest argument for political Zionism. After seeing Herzl’s play Das Neue Ghetto (­1895), Freud had a dream (‘­My son, the Myops …’), related in The Interpretation of Dreams (­1900), describing the need to remove one’s children from a­ nti-​­Semitic Rome and alluding to the classic picture of the exiled Jews, ‘­By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept’ (­Psalms 137). The dream refers to Freud’s awareness of being in golus (­exile), subject to what he calls the geseres, the sufferings decreed by the gentile world, and concern about his children’s future. Freud had an acute sense of the Jewish past. In a letter to his son Ernst shortly after his arrival in London in 1938, Freud wrote: ‘­I sometimes compare myself with the old Jacob who, when a very old man, was taken by his children to Egypt’ (­E.L. Freud 1970: 442). Though Freud and Bialik evidently never met, they were both on the board of governors of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Freud’s niece, Tom Freud, did illustrations for Bialik’s children’s stories. On Freud as a transitional figure in modern Jewish history, see Aberbach (­2003b). 9 Bialik (­1971: 244). The child’s familiarity with dead snakes is attested in another biographical fragment: ‘­Each Friday afternoon, when father came back from one of the forests [Bialik’s father was, at one time, a timber merchant] he would go out with his hatchet to kill the snakes that lived in the cracks of our house’ (­ibid.). 10 Similarly intense idealizations of women are found among other writers who suffered severe loss in childhood: e.g. Dante, Teresa of Avila, Rousseau, Keats, Poe, Tolstoy, Nerval, and Neruda (­Aberbach 1989). 11 Snake imagery is prominent in Scroll of Fire: I saw you and my lust burst out like crushed snakes from a hole, writhing and pulling, in hunger and thirst, toward you, eyes lit with strange fire.

184  Bialik and Freud: childhood screen memories In a draft of an unfinished poem, the poet again writes of crushed snakes, within, as a psychological condition: these snakes are filled with shame and rage (­Bialik 1971: 228). 12 Bialik, letter of 1891 (­1937: i 32). On the poet’s detested relatives, see ibid., ­158–​ ­9. Bialik’s writings are full of similar damaged genital imagery, suggesting a problematic sex life, whether owing to psychological or physical causes, or both: dried palm branch and citron, ruined garden and island, withered blossom, seed and pea, smoldering brand, scarred hill, broken key, useless bow and quiver, ruined fortress, as well as crushed snake. See pp. 191, 199 note 32 below.

10 Childlessness and the waste land Bialik and T.S. Eliot

… you did not see, my love, how I slapped and struggled at your window like a ­terror-​­stricken dove. Bialik (­1900/­01)

… neither let the eunuch say: Behold I am a dry tree Isaiah 56: 3

The motif of childlessness emerges in the late works of Bialik and Eliot, though imagery of ­infertility – ​­the desert, waste land, and drought, the withered flower and dry tree, melancholy in spring amid a general mood of negation, ruin, and failure, the loss of hope and the desire for ­death – ​­recurs in various guises and meanings throughout their works. The language of negation and waste land is widely interpreted as reflecting the spiritual condition of modern humanity, but it is also linked to the motif of childlessness in the writings of both poets.

Childlessness Childlessness appears in Bialik’s legends, collected in ­Va-​­Yhi ­ha-​­Yom (­And it came to pass, 1934). These are based mostly on traditional folk tales, especially the ones telling of King David and King Solomon in talmudic and midrashic aggadah, but include good deal of the poet’s own invention. In several of these stories, Bialik portrays the pain and frustration of barrenness which, at times, seems to echo and allude to his poetry, with its imagery of loss and infertility: Once there was a man, just and righteous and poor, and the Lord gave him much wealth and property, but no children. And the man was old and sad and deeply distressed, and he said, “­W hat’s the use of all my wealth if I have no son to revive my spirits in old age and to bear my name after my death?” He and his wife pined and prayed to God every day, and cried for children. And when he went to the synagogue and DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-11

186  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot heard the children chattering and reciting in school, his heart would overflow with longing and his soul would go out to them.1 Another story tells of the childless husbands of Ruth and Orpah: The Lord did not bless these matches, and withheld children from the two sisters. They passed the days estranged, unhappy, in the home of their widowed ­mother-­​­­in-​­law [Naomi]. Mahlon and Khilion, too, took no comfort in their wives after their father’s death, and withered their days away like two flowers fainting in summer drought. After ten years of silent agony, they died.2 Bialik follows the story in the book of Ruth: the only unbiblical material in this passage is the absence of desire and of childlessness, the ‘­two flowers fainting in summer drought’, linked with his poem on the couple who live in constant torment of frustration, longing and isolation: And on these islands we remain,   friendless, like two flowers in a desert, two lost souls searching    for an eternal loss in a foreign land.3 In Eliot’s works, childlessness through abortion is alluded to as part of the moral waste land of ­post-​­World War 1 E ­ urope – ​­‘­W hat you get married for if you don’t want children’;4 but the theme of childlessness is pronounced in his play The Confidential Clerk (­1953). Although each of the older characters has had a child, everyone is, in a sense, childless. Two of them do not even know that they have children; another has lost a son in battle; yet another has pretended not to be a parent. At the beginning of the play, Sir Claude Mulhammer explains to his retiring clerk, Eggerson, that his new clerk, Colby Simpkins, is to be introduced to his wife Lady Elizabeth, as ‘­Mr. Simpkins’, not as ‘­Colby’: his wife, Sir Claude adds, has a strong maternal instinct ‘­which has always been thwarted’, to which Eggerson replies: ‘­I’m sure it’s been a grief to both of you/ That you’ve never had children’. His childlessness has induced in Sir Claude an overwhelming feeling of having failed in life, despite his worldly success. His ambition was to be a potter, and his yearning to create ‘­life itself’ out of china or porcelain transparently reveals a desire for children. The frustrated wish for children may be glimpsed also in The Elder Statesman (­1958), Eliot’s last play, in which the yearning for ordinary family life, ‘­love within a family’, is frustratingly absent: ‘­This love is silent’.

The child and the poet Practically everyone who knew Bialik was struck by his sensitivity for children, by their response to him and by his ability to comprehend and to

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  187 enter their world. In the Orthodox Jewish world into which Bialik was born, childlessness was a curse: ‘… it was a dreadful thing for a Jew to die without leaving behind at least one son to say Kaddish for him at the appointed time’.5 Bialik’s protégé, Eliezer Steinman, recalled that … as soon as Bialik came down the steps of his house, the local kids would gather round him. One would try to knock his cane from his hand, another would leap on his back, this one would jump up and pull his moustache, that one would grab his hat and provoke him into a wrestling match. Shouting and cheering, they would escort him from yard to yard and out into the street. People would stop and watch in astonished admiration as Bialik fooled about, jumping, bending, making faces, extending his arms to fight the troop of kids… Once a goat came wandering by in the middle of a fight. Bialik leaped onto the goat and went riding about to the cheers of the ­m ischief-​­makers. The g­ rown-​­ups burst out laughing, “­Ah, Bialik, marvellous. Marvellous!” Their exclamations caught Bialik’s ear, and looking confusedly around, he slid off the goat and quickly disappeared down an alley.6 Bialik’s friend, the poet and critic Jacob Fichman, adds to these impressions: His love for children was full of rare tenderness. He would do anything for a child. He would sit for hours composing rhymes for them. He was the friend of all the children of his friends. His good humor would emerge in all its abundance when he played with and entertained them. For years he remembered things they said. If a child was sick, he would suffer, and each day he would want to know how the child was doing. He could not bear the suffering of children. The sight of children doing work beyond their power would rouse his infinite pity.7 Finally, Mordekai Ben Ami (­Rabinowitz), who as head of the Odessa Jewish Education Committee had brought Bialik to Odessa in 1900 to teach children, describes Bialik’s parental aura with children: Among children Bialik was reborn, transformed into another person, as if after years of wanderings he had returned to his ­life-​­source. All the great love hidden in his heart he poured out on children. He shone in their presence like a happy father. I have never seen anyone who loved children so deeply and tenderly as he. And how wonderful, too, was the childish simplicity with which he expressed his love, radiating a natural warmth, like the love of a merciful father.8 Eliot’s feeling for children for children was more subdued but he was, as his second wife, Valerie, said, ‘­a naturally paternal man who should have had a large family’.9 In their somewhat similar careers as ­poets-­​­­turned-­​­­editors-­​­­and-​­publishers,

188  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot Bialik and Eliot may have slightly compensated for their desire for children by ‘­adopting’ culture: Bialik by expounding the idea of a cultural ingathering (­kinnus) of neglected Jewish writings through the ages;10 Eliot by publishing diverse works from many countries in the Criterion and by bringing together fragments of world culture in his poetry. Both poets regarded their writings as progeny;11 and both found much pleasure in writing for children, perhaps as an expression of a desire for children.12 Most of Bialik’s poetry from 1911 to his death in 1934 was for children, and he poured into this work the love which he wanted to give to children of his own: I will arise and go to the children who play innocently by the gate. I will mix in their company, learn their talk and ­chatter –​­ purify myself in their breath, wash my lips in their purity.13 In the end, there could be no compensation. Despite their achievement and fame, Bialik and Eliot were afflicted by a strong sense of failure and disappointment. As we have seen, the infertile landscape in their poetry might be the metaphoric landscape of personal infertility: the desert, the dry tree, the ruin, thunder without rain, melancholy in spring, the loss of hope and desire for death which accompany these images, and others might reflect the emotional state of being childless. Bialik’s childlessness contributed to a sense of inferiority apparent in the mood of negation in his works. Though there are occasional bright spots and poems of affirmation, the primary tone is struck by the words ‘­not’ or ‘­nothing’. Bialik’s description of himself as ‘­nothing, a nobody’ echoes his poetry (‘­no poet, no prophet’).14 Eliot’s works are also characterized by negation: ‘­I cannot hope to turn again’ (‘­Ash Wednesday’, 1930), to the belief that one must ‘­go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy’ (‘­East Coker’, 1940). In ‘­Ash Wednesday’, the mood of negation is linked with the poet’s conviction that he is hopelessly cut off from fertility. Ultimately, in the Four Quartets, the fertility of Eternity, ‘­neither budding nor fading/ Not in the scheme of generation’, transcends human fertility.

Symbols and disguises of childlessness Bialik and Eliot were fascinated by the subtleties of revelation, concealment, and deception in language, for, as Eliot put it, ‘­there may be personal causes which make it impossible for a poet to express himself in any but an obscure way’.15 In an essay of 1915, Bialik put forward the view that ‘­language in all its forms does not reveal its hidden meaning… but serves as a partition, hiding it’.16 In his poetry, too, he hints that something was purposefully left out, perhaps what was most i­mportant – ‘­ ​­he kept one secret hidden’.17 He confesses the deceptive impression of transparency in his poetry: Therefore he reveals ­h imself –​­ to be unseen, to deceive you.

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  189 In vain you search the recesses of his ­verses –​­ these too but cover his hidden thoughts.18 Both Bialik and Eliot were understood, not unjustly, as spokesmen for their time. Both present an interconnection of personal and social suffering. Bialik’s remarks on ‘­national’ poetry in a 1907 essay are applicable to himself and his poetry: The private individual “­I” and the general national “­I” are swallowed up and blended one with the other, and you can’t tell which came first and which is the more important.19 In a similar vein, Eliot wrote in his essay on Tennyson’s In Memoriam, It happens now and then that a poet by some strange accident expresses the mood of his generation, at the same time that he is expressing a mood of his own which is quite remote from that of his generation.20 Bialik was given to severe depression, with suicidal thoughts;21 and Eliot’s poetry, too, is characterized by occasional loathing and horror of life: ‘­I should be glad of another death’, says the narrator of ‘­T he Journey of the Magi’ (­1927); and ‘­Waiting for the death wind’, the old man in ‘­A Song for Simeon’ (­1928) is weary of his own life and of the prospect of future generations: ‘­I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me’. Eliot’s enigmatic ‘­personal causes’ and Bialik’s ‘­h idden thoughts’ might be seen in their imagery of vegetable infertility to symbolize childlessness or some form of sexual impairment. Such language is frequent in literature from the Hebrew Bible to modern times. The Bible portrays various forms of punishment for disrupting the divine natural order: on the personal level, loss of loved ones and of property; on the national level, loss of sovereignty and exile. Both personal and national suffering are described in imagery of waste land: infertility threatens an end to human life on earth. Grief and infertility pervade much prophetic literature, and biblical echoes of the waste land recur in literature to modern times. Jeremiah’s childlessness, for example, represents national loss and barrenness and brings home the futility of having children on the eve of mass slaughter and exile by the Babylonians; the death of Ezekiel’s wife is a symbol of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, to which the Judeans were ‘­wedded’ in faith.22 The image in the book of Isaiah of a ‘­d ry tree’ signifying childlessness reappears in many guises in literature: in the Midrash, the image of the dry tree describes Sarah in her barrenness.23 Such imagery was common in pagan agricultural societies in which there was a belief that human sexual behavior is tied to the fertility of the land. The prophet Hosea uses images of dried

190  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot vegetation when he calls down a curse of childlessness against the Kingdom of Israel: Ephraim is beaten, his root dried up, he will bear no fruit. If they raise sons, I will bereave them, every one!24 Shakespeare borrows this imagery, for example when King Lear, addressing Nature as source of fertility, curses his wicked daughter, Goneril, with the rage of a prophet: Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase, And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her…25 Macbeth uses similar imagery, and similar associations of sin, in speaking of his childlessness: Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown And put a barren sceptre in my gripe.26

Infertility and marriage The marital life of Bialik and Eliot is reflected in their poetry. Robert Frost’s description of his wife as ‘­the unspoken half of everything I wrote’ might be applied to the wives of Bialik and Eliot. Bialik was married from 1893, when he was 20, to his death in 1934. He and Manya were evidently devoted companions. In conversation in 1930, Bialik praised her: ‘­There aren’t many women as loving and devoted as she. She also had great sensitivity and tact. More importantly, she’s truthful and modest. She doesn’t give herself airs, like the wives of many famous men.’27 Yet, as was customary among Eastern European Jews, they had not married for love but through a m ­ arriage-​­broker. Manya Bialik writes in her memoirs that during their engagement in Zhitomir, Bialik would forget her name or confuse her with her s­ ister – and ​­ he almost forgot to attend their wedding!28 The poet’s marital life was deeply affected by his orphanhood and separation from his mother when he was 7, by suppressed anger and frustrated yearning, and the need for maternal love.29 Devoted to his wife filially (­he addresses her as ‘­Mother’ in his letters), he admitted that she ‘­suffered a great deal from my paroxysms of stormy rage’.30

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  191 In a poem written during his engagement in 1893 and originally dedicated to Manya, the poet reveals his hopes and fears of marriage. His beloved has restored his hope but has also brought from oblivion traumatic childhood memories. He recalls his lost childhood, his despair, and desire for death. Obscure anxieties cloud this poem. Bialik alludes to the biblical story of the childless Sarah who, overhearing that she would be granted a son, asks herself mockingly, ahare beloti hayta li edna? (­After I’m shrivelled up [i.e. after the menopause] shall I have pleasure? Genesis 18: 12).31 The poet’s feelings toward his beloved are ambivalent: she ‘­heals the wounds of my heart’, but creates fresh wounds. Again, the poet plays on biblical imagery of sexual incapacity, alluding to the Deuteronomic law, ‘­He whose testicles are crushed [petzu’a daka] or whose penis is cut off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord’ (­23: 2): What use the life you breathe in me,    wounded to despair? (­petzu’a ad daka)­32 The poem ends with this appeal: Put my weary soul at ­rest –​­    tell me, ‘­I love you.’ I’m not dreaming now, my sister,    let me drink from the gold cup you filled… In other poems, too, infertility is associated with a barrier between a man and a woman. In a poem written after several years of marriage, the poet’s beloved sends him a letter with this anguished cry: No! don’t you dare pluck the flower planted in our hearts   by God!33 The poet evidently wants a Platonic bond: Too saintly to sit by me, be my God and angel. I’ll pray to you, worship you.34 Bialik admitted that this poem came to him during his engagement, on his way to see his future wife.35 In another poem of distance between man and woman, the poet is outside in the dark, the woman in a lighted room inside, by the window. Each looks

192  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot toward the other: the poet sees her through the glass, but she does not see him, only the loss reflected in her eyes: Outside in the dark I saw you silent, desolate tonight, I lurked outside your room, I saw your eyes searching bewildered    in the window,     for your lost s­ oul –​­ searching recompense for your youthful lovingkindness. You did not see, my love, how I slapped and struggled at your window    like a ­terror-​­stricken dove.36 The lines ‘­searching recompense/­for your youthful lovingkindness’ (­gemul hesed ne’uraikh) allude to the ‘­marriage’ between God and Israel in the book of Jeremiah (­2: 3):    Thus says the Lord: I remember you the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness in a land not sown. However, whereas the husband (­God) in Jeremiah remembers what he has once had but l­ ost – his ​­ bride’s (­Israel’s) devotion and l­ ove – in ​­ Bialik’s poem, chillingly, the woman searches for what she has evidently never had. This implies that the bond between the man and the woman has not been consummated. The agonizing barrier between a man and a woman and the motif of infertility recur: ­L ast-​­year’s stalks Stalks of ­last-​­years roses    still lean and cling to the walls of your h ­ eart –​­ My beloved! look: a new spring    dances in the garden among the fl ­ ower-​­beds and trees! And the spade already starts    to turn the earth, bed after bed; soon new flowers will spring

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  193    up and climb the grids of the fence. And the shears already start   to leap from tree to tree, and prune the ­plants –​­ My beloved! the withered ones    will bite the dust, the fresh ones will live. Do you hear how the smell    of the fresh green shoots wafts with the smell of myrrh? That’s how the orchard grows,    sucking, giving suck, living with its countless plants. Toward evening, the lovely innocent   little girl, the gardener’s daughter, gathers up the cuttings of the s­ hears – ​­and at night   ­last-​­year’s stalks go up in fire.37

Waste land and human infertility Poets from George Herbert to T.S. Eliot explore imagery of waste land in relation to society or themselves, or both. Herbert, in ‘­The Collar’, is agonized by the seeming infertility of his clerical calling: Is the yeare onely lost to Me? Have I no bayes to crown it? No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted? All wasted? The language of infertility is frequent in the poetry of William Blake: ‘­I am like the tree torn by the wind’38: The Stars Sun Moon all shrink away A desart vast without a bound And nothing left to eat or drink And a dark Desart all around.39 Henry David Thoreau sought a world of Nature touched only by celestial wildness, not human hands; in 1862, dying of tuberculosis and childless, he wrote ‘­Wild Apples’ celebrating the fantastic variety of wild apples, and

194  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot concluding with a quote from the book of Joel describing a withered harvest, lost to plague, an image not just of death as part of Nature but also, it seems, of Thoreau’s infertility and impending death.40 The dying Gerard Manley Hopkins, in 1889, alludes to his sense of impotence: See, banks and brakes Now, leaved how thick! Laced they are again With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes Them; birds ­build—​­but not I build; no, but strain, Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes. Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.41 Thomas Hardy’s ‘­The Darkling Thrush’ is a similar confession: The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.42 In the poetry of Bialik, as in Hopkins, Nature’s fertility contrasts with the infertility of the poet: Like a fallen branch Like a fallen branch across a gate sleep comes to me: My fruit has fallen, what use my branch or tree? The fruit’s fallen, blossom f­ orgotten –​­ leaves ­remain –​­ one troubled night, they’ll fall earthward slain. ­ fter – ​­more dreadful nights alone, A no sleep or rest at all. I’ll bang myself against the dark, smash my head on the wall. Spring will sprout again, and I, upon my bough I’ll hang in g­ rief –​­ a scepter bald, no flower his, no blossom, no fruit, no leaf.43 Bialik’s ­father-­​­­i n-​­law was a ­t imber-​­merchant, and the poet in his early years, before moving to Odessa in 1901, spent much time in forests. The kind of deforestation described by Chekhov in Uncle Vanya was familiar

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  195 to Bialik, and the sight of c­ ut-​­down trees filled him, like Astrov, with melancholy: In the thick of the undergrowth and in hidden pits, lay many silent spectres of uprooted trees, their l­imb-​­like roots still exposed. Some stuck out like ancient tombstones, headed with wide, round, ­chopped-​­down trunks, in memory of the trees that once bloomed… and are no more. ­Formerly—​­so they ­said—​­the place thundered with shadow and green. Now it’s sunken in silence, the silence of the graveyard.44 The waste land is the setting for much of Bialik and Eliot’s writings.45 Like his imagery of deforestation, Bialik’s waste land or wounded land seems to have been based partly on childhood memories. The Ukrainian landscape where he was born had great hills of sand and asphalt ‘­stretched out with exposed limbs like giant creatures whose skin was flayed from their bones, revealing the living flesh on their ribs, glinting with redness’.46 These ‘­g iants’ recur in Bialik’s depiction in Dead of the Desert of the mythical warriors of rabbinic lore, who have tried and failed to conquer the Promised Land: The desert stretches without life, without sound, without end, the jubilant voice of the giants lost to the end of time, their tumultuous footsteps gone forever. Sandhills and crags remain where they trod.47 The poet felt at times like a man crossing a desert, a recurrent image in his dreams: ‘­Walking is hard as splitting the sea. Wheels and legs sink halfway in the sand’.48 Scroll of Fire (­1905) uses rabbinic legend to portray a group of young men and women stranded on a desert island: ‘­Three days they circled the island, with nothing to eat or drink, silently they moved in misery, eyes fixed on the burning sand’.49 Equally deathly and hopeless is Eliot’s landscape: ‘­If there were the sound of water only…/­But there is no water’ (­T he Waste Land); the poet knows he will never know the ‘­one veritable transitory power’ and cannot drink ‘­There, where trees flower and springs flow’ (­Ash Wednesday); in The Four Quartets, too, there is only ‘­dead water and dead sand…/­The parched eviscerate soil’ (‘­Little Gidding’). Despite occasional promise of fertility, hope for the poet is defeated, there is only the mockery of thunder, ‘­dry sterile thunder without rain’.50 World War I created a sense of societal waste land, its moral corruption exposed in sexual behavior. F. Scott Fitzgerald follows Eliot in The Great Gatsby (­1925: ch. 2) in mirroring corruption of the heart with infertility of the land. The ‘­valley

196  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot of ashes’ on the road from Long Island to Manhattan is home of Tom Buchanan’s mistress, and a fitting image of a loveless, childless marriage: This is a valley of ashes, a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. In Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover (­1928), Clifford Chatterley, crippled in the Great War and unable to have children, finds an objective correlative for his distress in the deterioration of the woodland on his estate, where there is ‘­nothing but a ravel of dead bracken, a thin and spindly sapling leaning here and there, big sawn stumps, showing their tops and their grasping roots, lifeless…’, the sight of which calls to Chatterley’s mind his own infertility: ‘­I mind more, not having a son, when I come here than any other time’.51 The war left the memory of cruelty and bloodshed amid ­large-​­scale environmental destruction. Ernest Hemingway, in A Farewell to Arms (­1929: ch. 2), describes a forest on the Italian front in World War I: The forest of oak trees on the mountain beyond the town [Gorizia, in northern Italy] was gone. The forest had been green in the summer when we had come into the town but now there were the stumps and the broken trunks and the ground torn up… Hemingway’s characters, such as the s­ emi-​­biographical Nick Adams, who returns home traumatized from the war, can be described as similarly torn and stunted. In ‘­Big ­Two-​­Hearted River’ (­1925), Adams seeks a kind of Wordsworthian healing in the Michigan countryside where he went fishing as a child. Starting from human marks of ruin and a town burned to the ground, he escapes his memories in this natural world, where ‘­He felt all the old feeling […] Nothing could touch him’. In a new version of a return to Eden, he ­re-​­enters a world pure and uncorrupted by human contact. While Bialik’s marriage was at least a companionship, Eliot’s first marriage was a disaster shadowing much of his poetry. The poet C. Day Lewis described the physical and mental illness of Vivienne Eliot as background to much of the despair and infertility in his writing: … a long ­drawn-​­out private tragedy which darkened his middle years left a deep impression on his poetry: the rawness, the shuddering distaste,

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  197 the sense of contagion, the dry despair which emerge from certain passages of ‘­Ash Wednesday’, for instance, and The Family Reunion, are traces of it.52 Stephen Spender wrote, similarly, that the illness of Eliot’s wife ‘­made marital relations between them difficult’.53 The fierce tension in the Eliot household is sensed in Eliot’s writings in a trail of allusions to the murder of a woman.54 As an ­Anglo-​­Catholic, Eliot could not divorce his wife. After their separation in 1932, he remained married to her until her death in 1947. Only afterwards did he marry again, this time happily. In works written during Eliot’s second marriage, he began openly to confront the theme of childlessness and the desire for children.

The waste land and society Conscious as they were of their use of language to obfuscate, Bialik and Eliot themselves attached great importance to the purely personal meaning of their work. Bialik wrote in an autobiographical letter that all his works were rooted in personal experience, while Eliot famously put The Waste Land down as ‘­the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life’.55 Personal difficulties may be detected at the root of the waste land imagery in both poets, yet both give compelling portrayals of a society breaking down, in its established social, political and religious life.56 The crisis of ­faith – for ​­ Bialik, conditions in Russia during and after the pogroms of ­1881–​­84 and ­1903–​­06; and for Eliot, Europe devastated by the First World ­War – is ​­ aptly expressed in language of the waste land. Bialik felt that the violence and injustice of the age, such as the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, called divine retribution into ­question – ‘­ ​­Heaven! Beg mercy for me/­if you have a God, and he can be reached’,57 and he sought to gather the viable fragments of tradition (­kinnus) into the growing Jewish national movement; Eliot was driven by the collapse of civilization in World War I to take refuge in faith, eastern as well as Western and, likewise, to shore the fragments of tradition against ruin. Bialik and Eliot survey the damage done to their respective religious traditions, the change from faith to doubt, security to insecurity, affirmation to denial. Bialik confesses ambivalence toward traditional talmudic study, in the poems, ­Ha-​­Matmid (­The Talmud Student, 1896/­97) and Lifne aron h­ a-​ s­ efarim (­Before the bookcase, 1910). The poet empathizes with the Talmud student who, like himself at one time (­in the yeshivah of Volozhin), devotes himself totally to study, though he is also emblem of the infertile tradition he upholds: Must every blossom of joy and desire    be jailed, and die before it spreads its leaves and buds?

198  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot Yet, in the national realm, change is possible: I will not forget how strong the grain, how healthy the seed buried in your soil; how great a blessing if warmed by the sun…58 Eliot’s writing, similarly, represents a struggle to find spiritual mooring amid radical change. To Eliot, who became an A ­ nglo-​­Catholic in 1927, belief gives hope of transcendent fertility, even in ‘­the quiet of the desert’ (‘­Ash Wednesday’): ‘­Teach us to care and not to care/­Teach us to sit still/­ even among these rocks,/­Our peace in His will’. During World War II, Eliot remained in London despite the bombings, and the poetry he wrote in this crisis expresses national feeling, in language simpler and easier to understand than his ‘­modernist’ poetry.59 Bialik and Eliot’s use of waste land imagery to convey modern civilization owed much to personal trauma. They expressed with conviction and power the barren state of the society as they saw it. That they made art out of personal tragedy, and used it for social ends, is a tribute to human resilience and courage.

Notes 1 Sefer Bereshit (­The book of Genesis, 1927/­8), Bialik (­1958: 352). On the motif of infertility in the writings of Bialik and Eliot, see Aberbach (­1984). 2 Megillat Orpah (­Orpah’s story, 1926), ibid., 285. 3 Im dimdume ­ha-​­hamah (­At twilight, 1902), see p. 118 above. 4 In the manuscript of The Waste Land, this line is in the handwriting of Eliot’s wife, and was evidently inserted by her with Eliot’s approval. 5 Samuel (­1973: 39). In the rabbinic saying, ‘­He who has no son is like a dead man, ruined’ (­B ereshit Rabbah 45). 6 Steinman (­1951: 4­ 0–​­1). Bialik’s wife Manya, spoke similarly of his unbounded love for children, behaving with them as though he were a child (­Glicksberg 1945: 24). 7 Fichman (­1946: 438). Some of Bialik’s personalized poems for children are collected in the ‘­Tosafot’ (­Addenda) of his Collected Works (­1958: ­381–​­92). 8 In Lachower (­1955: i ­306–​­7). 9 Personal communication to David Aberbach from Mrs. T.S. Eliot (­Aberbach 1984: 288). This view is corroborated in Eliot’s poetry, plays, and letters. See Hollis (­2022: ­267–​­270). 10 On kinnus, see pp. 3, 15, 18 note 11, 20 note 43, 50, 54, 94, 122, 124 above and pp. 103, 197, 209 below. 11 On writing as children, see Bialik (­1971: 148), Bialik (­1935: i 25); Eliot (­1975: 99). 12 See Bialik’s Shirim ­u -​­Fizmonot ­li-​­L adim (­Poems and Songs for Children, 1934) and Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (­1939). 13 Halfa at panai (­Your spirit passed, 1916). 14 See Bialik (­1955: 40) and Shaha nafshi (­My spirit is bowed, 1923); another example of the low s­ elf-​­image in Bialik’s poetry is in Scroll of Fire: the young man in this poem, reminiscent of the poet, has ‘­nothing but a frightened soul’. Bialik wrote Shaha nafshi in reaction against the celebrations of his 50th birthday, in

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  199 1923. In a speech at the time, he admitted some satisfaction at his success but felt this was inflated, as he was no more than ‘­an ordinary Jew’ (­Bialik 1971: ­343–​­4). At the end of his life, in Ramat Gan, Bialik confessed to his wife, Manya, ‘­they exaggerated my importance’ (­Manya Bialik 1963: 31). 15 Eliot (­1975: 150). 16 Giluy ­ve-​­K hisuy ­be-​­L ashon (­Revelation and concealment in language, 1915), (­Bialik 1958: 191). 17 Ahare moti (­A fter my death, 1904). 18 Gam ­be-​­Hitaroto ­le-​­Eynykhem (­Even when he reveals himself, 1931). 19 Shiratenu ­ha-​­tze’ira (­Modern Hebrew poetry, 1907), (­Bialik 1958: 234). 20 Eliot (­1975: 243). 21 On depressive and suicidal elements in Bialik’s life and writings, see pp. 52 note 17, 95, 154, 157 above; p. 213 below. 22 Jeremiah 16: ­1–​­4; Ezekiel 24: 15f. 23 Isaiah 56: 3; Bereshit Rabbah 53: 1. 24 Hosea 9: 16. 25 King Lear I iv ­274–​­9. 26 Macbeth III i ­61–​­2. 27 Glicksberg (­1945: 28). Manya’s younger sister was married to Jan (­Ya’akov) Gamarnik, a major figure in the Red Army, who died in Stalin’s purges and herself died in prison in the USSR. 28 Ibid., 19; Manya Bialik (­1963: 10, 12, ­30–​­1). 29 On Bialik’s orphanhood, see ­Chapter 8 above. 30 Bialik (­1955: 122); Ovadiahu (­1969: 35). 31 Manginah ­le-​­ahavah (­A song to love, 1893). 32 An earlier poem, Gesisat Holeh (­Dying Man, 1890?), is more highly suggestive of a sexual wound: … a root of dust, a withered flower… a nest of thorns and thistles, an empty shell. At my loins the staff of an ­oppressor -​­ Is this the tree of life?

(­Bialik 1971: ­94–​­5)

Similar imagery of sexual disability and disease is frequent in Bialik (see p. 184 note 12 above), with associations of drought, dried vegetation, and waste land, and also of burning, dripping, and painful scabrous wounds. Sexual experience in Bialik’s writings (­e.g. in ‘­Hungry Eyes’, Scroll of Fire, and ‘­Behind the Fence’) is usually disastrous: ‘­How great the price I paid for your flesh’ (­s ee p. 103 earlier). 33 Mikhtav katan li katva (­She wrote me a short letter, 1896/­7). The later poem, Im dimdume ­ha-​­Hamah (‘­At twilight’, 1902), develops the image of a failed relationship symbolized by withered flowers. See p. 118 above. 34 Such idealizations recall the image of the Shekhina, the feminine presence of God, in rabbinic literature and Kabbalah. See Scholem (­1974: ­229–​­33). 35 Goren (­1949: 35). 36 Halayla aravti, 1900/­1. 37 Givole eshtaked, 1903. The growth and burning of the flowers are stated to be symbolic, taking place in the beloved’s h ­ eart  – recalling ​­ the menstrual cycle, uninterrupted by fertility. On a reading of this poem as referring to the younger generation of Hebrew poets who were challenging Bialik’s allegedly ­out-­​­­of-​­date poetry, see Zemach (­1966: 1­ 5–​­22). The gardener, however, brings to mind the gardener in Spenser’s ‘­Garden of Adonis’ in The Faerie Queene: he represents Time. Parallels might be found also in Marvell’s ‘­Damon the Mower’ and Blake’s ‘­Garden of Love’ and ‘­I laid me down upon a bank’.

200  Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot 38 Tiriel (­1789). Compare Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel (­1818), who, as a result of his creation of the monster, has ruined his life, and no longer takes pleasure in the natural world: ‘­I am a blasted tree’ (­Vol. 3, Ch. 2). 39 ‘­The Mental Traveller’ (­c. 1803). 40 On Thoreau’s use of the book of Joel, see Aberbach (­2021: 106; note 24). 41 ‘­Thou art indeed just, Lord’ (­Jeremiah 12: 1). Compare this untitled poem by Hopkins: Trees by their yield Are known: but I­  –​­ My sap is sealed My root is dry. Hopkins shared with Bialik exceptional sensitivity to the loss of trees (­see note 43 below): ‘­The ashtree growing in the corner of the garden was felled. It was lopped first: I heard the sound and seeing it maimed there came at that moment a great pang and I wished to die and not to see the inscapes of the world destroyed any more’ (­Hopkins 1959: 230). This sensitivity to loss appears also in the poem, ‘­Spring and Fall’: ‘­Márgarét, áre you grieving/­Over Goldengrove unleaving?’ Hopkins’ sensitivity to a damaged environment recalls ­Jean-​­Jacques Rousseau, who loved w ­ ell-​­tended gardens and woods as a mark of enlightenment, and confessed that nothing saddened him like the sight of ‘­bare, barren countryside’. In Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire (­1786), Rousseau (­2001: 71). Rousseau’s sadness amid barren land might reflect also guilt and regret at giving his children up for adoption. 42 Compare Hardy’s ‘­Neutral Tones’: ‘­a few leaves lay on the starving sod;/—​­They had fallen from an ash, and were gray’. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice’s dream of entering the fertile garden of wonderland ends with her awakening, her sister ‘­gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face’ (­ch. 12). 43 Tzanah lo zalzal, 1911. Bialik was reportedly highly sensitive to landscapes of ruin and infertility and wrote this poem after seeing a broken branch (­Fichman 1946: 368, 410). Imagery of infertility appear also in Bialik’s poems for children: ‘­In a corner, widower and ­orphan—​­/­a pale lulav, an etrog with cut stem./­My garden is ruined, its stalks crushed,/­its ways untrodden’ (­Avim Hoshrim [Clouds ­ ance—​­/­my blossoms have falldarken, 1932]). ‘­How can I rejoice,/­how can I d en,/­my pods are empty’ (­­B e-​­G inat ­ha-​­Yarak [In the Vegetable Garden, 1933]). 44 Similar imagery of ­cut-​­down trees appear elsewhere in Bialik’s writings. See Aberbach (­1984: 294). On deforestation and ‘­stumps’ of human relationships in Uncle Vanya, see Aberbach (­2021: ­141–​­2). 45 Just as vegetable infertility can symbolize childlessness, so also vegetable fertility can symbolize the birth of a child. In ‘­Thumbelina’, a childless young wife wants a child more than anything else in the world. She goes to a fairy who gives her a barleycorn seed and tells her to plant it. When she does so, a flower grows, and out of the flower a little girl emerges. 46 In a draft of a letter to Joseph Klausner, 1903 (­Bialik 1971: 236). A similar memory appears in Bialik’s mythical autobiography, Aftergrowth: ‘­Part of the mountain side had long since broken away, leaving a red scar, like living flesh’. 47 Bialik (­2004: ­60–​­2). 48 Bialik (­1975: 178). 49 In Scroll of Fire, Bialik adapts a talmudic aggadah from Gittin 57b. 50 Bialik, Kiru ­la-​­Nechashim (­Summon the sorcerers, 1906); Eliot, The Waste Land (­1922). On infertility with the taint of human corruption (­through use of pesticides), see Rachel Carson:

Childlessness and the waste land: Bialik and T.S. Eliot  201 On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any ­pigs – ​­the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. (­Carson 2000: 22) 51 Lawrence (­1960: ­43–​­4). James Joyce, in Ulysses (­1922), sets Leopold Bloom’s Zionist interest in land reclamation against his own infertility and impotence, the death of his son, Rudy, soon after birth, and his wife’s infidelity. His musings on the Dead Sea in the ‘­Calypso’ episode have bearing on his own sense of deadness and ­distance – ​­as a Jew and a modern U ­ lysses – ​­from home: ‘­A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters… the grey sunken cunt of the world’. 52 C. Day Lewis, The Times obituary for T.S. Eliot, 5 January 1965. 53 Spender (­1973: 52). 54 For murders of women in Eliot’s writings, see ‘­Eeldrop and Appleplex’; ‘­Sweeney Agonistes’; The Family Reunion I ­428–​­33; The Cocktail Party II i 759. 55 Bialik (­1971: 243); Valerie Eliot (­1971: 1). 56 As Bialik does (see pp. 2, 6, 7-8, 58-9, above; 211 below), Eliot uses imagery of the Hebrew ­prophets – ​­the dry tree, the shadow of the rock, the handful of dust, the dry bones, the drought, the stony ­r ubbish – ​­to convey the crisis of faith of his age. Eliot’s use of Dante, too, Jones (­1966) points out, is an indirect borrowing from the Hebrew Bible, particularly the prophetic vision of Sheol (­the Netherworld). 57 At the start of World War I, Bialik confronted the implications of a G ­ od-​­less world in the poem Hetzitz ­va-​­Met (­He looked and died, 1915), turning an aggadic parable on the dangers of mystical contemplation (­Hagigah 14b) into an allegory of human helplessness in a cold universe. In the same period, Bialik explored similar Angst in his essay, Giluy ­ve-​­K hisuy ­be-​­L ashon (­Revelation and Concealment in Language, 1915), suggesting that language, far from revealing one’s inmost feelings, did the opposite, serving as armor or charm against chronic anxiety, covering existential gaps through which dark chaos is glimpsed. 58 Imagery of infertility in Bialik’s poetry is counterparted by his commitment to the flourishing of the N ­ ation – ​­exemplified by its return to the soil and the revival of agriculture in the land of Israel. Among Bialik’s activities was his commentary on Zera’im (­Seeds), the Order in the Mishna dealing with agriculture in the land of Israel. 59 On Eliot’s ‘­national’ poetry during World War II, see Aberbach (­2015: Appendix c).

11 The artist as ­nation-​­builder Bialik and Yeats

… only an aching heart Conceives a changeless work of art. (­Yeats, ‘­Meditations in Time of Civil War’ 1923)

Bialik and his older contemporary W.B. Yeats (­­1865–​­1939) demonstrate the power of artists in the creation of modern national culture.1 Among the Irish and the ­Jews – ​­as with many other struggling p ­ eoples – the ​­ cultural nationalism of their great poets was in some ways as important as political nationalism. As national poets, Yeats and Bialik differ greatly from their early 1­ 9th-​­century predecessors, such as Petőfi, Mickiewicz, and Shevchenko. Their relationship to the nation is more complex and ambivalent: the failure of the widespread European revolutions of ­1848–​­49, the decline of liberal idealism in the late 19th century and the growth of totalitarianism shadow their work. Both speak for nations victimized by cruel religious and cultural prejudice. Both at times reject national aims, retreating to the private world of the lyric poet, aiming at ­self-​­expression and the creation of art. Yet, ultimately both were identified with their nation. They led literary movements inspiring and inspired by national revivals. Each spoke for a subject people with glorious, violent ­ethno-​­religious memories and legend but threatened by political subjugation and assimilation in powerful empires with dangerously attractive dominant cultures. Though not men of action, they extolled heroism and condemned ­cowardice – ​­inspiring ultimate independence from Britain: Ireland in 1921 and Israel in 1948. In common with other romantic cultural nationalists, Yeats and Bialik set the artist above the cleric as custodian of national culture. Breaking with failed traditionalism, unsure of political solutions, they fought for the moral regeneration of the nation, a humanist universalist culture, evoking a golden age of collective national memory. As innovators and virtuosos, they married European modernism to indigenous forms and themes. Their poetry belongs to the best in their cultures.

Bialik and Yeats as national figures Both poets became famous in the years prior to World War I and were instrumental in the creation of their national cultures. In Jewish and Irish history, no

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-12

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  203 poets have been more publicly engaged than Bialik and Yeats. Both were public nationalists and poetic skeptics, polymathic s­elf-​­taught intellectuals with no university education. Both were immersed in folklore and spent many years editing the myths and legends of their people; and both were deeply involved in the creation of a national theater, Bialik the Habimah, the first theater in Hebrew; Yeats, the Abbey Theater, his most lasting ‘­national’ achievement, and the center for a school of famous Irish playwrights. Though Yeats, unlike Bialik, took the occult seriously, their fascination with kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, is often seen in their poetry. Both placed fruitless love of women at the heart of their poetry and elevated private longing into hope for national revival. Active as a poet chiefly in Odessa in 1­ 900–​­11, Bialik wrote the first folk poems in Hebrew and some of the loveliest Hebrew children’s poems; he became a leading Hebrew publisher; as an educator, Bialik was regarded as a supreme authority; as poet, editor, publisher, and educator, he broadcast the concept of kinnus (­cultural ingathering) by which fragments of Jewish culture from many ages and lands of exile might be ‘­gathered in’ and unified as a modern secular national culture.2 Yeats founded literary societies, led occultist Celtic societies, wrote nationalist journalism and, briefly, under the influence of the dazzling Maud Gonne dabbled in revolutionary politics. He supported the nascent Irish Arts and Crafts movement and Horace Plunkett’s Agricultural Cooperative Society whose aim was to safeguard the economic and social basis of Irish rural society. After Irish independence in 1921, he became for a time a Senator and what he called in his poem, ‘­A mong School Children’ (­1921), ‘­a ­sixty-­​­­year-​­old smiling public man’. Bialik, unlike Yeats, remained an active public figure to the end of his life. When Bialik moved to Palestine in 1925, the center of Hebrew l­iterature –​ ­previously in Russia and, briefly, in G ­ ermany – moved ​­ with him. His home in Tel Aviv became virtually a shrine in his lifetime, in a street named for him; and he was forced to move to the suburb of Ramat Gan to escape the endless visitors. He was on the board of governors of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a founder of the Hebrew Writers Union in Tel Aviv and its important journal, Moznayim. He served on countless committees and was always ready to advise and help young writers. He was a representative at a number of conferences of the World Zionist Organisation and went on extended lecture tours to raise money for the movement.3 Yet, Bialik was no cipher of the national cause. In his poems, essays and letters, he expressed disillusionment and despair with political Zionism at every stage, from the foundation of the World Zionist Organization by Theodor Herzl in 1897 until the internal conflicts of the early 1930s.4

Conflict between the public and the private selves The cultural nationalism of Yeats and Bialik was a blood brother of revolutionary political nationalism. Independence confirmed their canonical

204  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats status. Yet, their national role is marked by irony and s­elf-​­effacement. Fiercely individualistic, they were suspicious of the very nationalism which unleashed their creativity. They would not have disagreed with Rabindranath Tagore (­whose writings Yeats knew well) in the view that nationalism could stifle creativity and encourage selfish materialism.5 Both poets felt national commitment jostling uneasily with purely private concerns, releasing both originality and guilt.6 Private trauma, though, mirrored national concerns up to a point. In particular, longing for a woman out of ­reach – ​­in poems such as Bialik’s Scroll of Fire (­1905) and Yeats’ ‘­No Second Troy’ (­1908) or ‘­Words’ (­1908) – ​­could express collective yearning for national wholeness. Chronic frustration, especially in Bialik, was enlisted in the national cause.7 Private obsession in each might be viewed as creative mainspring. Bialik became a national icon almost in spite of himself. His main preoccupations were personal: orphanhood, separation, neglect, suffering, alienation, childlessness, despair.8 No Hebrew poet has expressed childhood ordeals with such power and lyric beauty, building on biblical and talmudic Hebrew sources. His poems resonate with the yearning of Jews through the ages. His reluctance as national poet was virtually ‘­proof’ of Bialik’s authenticity; was not the prophet Jeremiah similarly reluctant? His acclaim as Jewish national poet provoked guilt and a sense of worthlessness and deceit. In his poetry, he is the perpetual unloved outsider. Yeats, too, felt himself an outsider from childhood. He belonged to the ‘­colonial’ Protestant minority which, after the British conquest of Ireland in the 17th century, had supplanted Ireland’s G ­ aelic-​­Catholic aristocracy. In his writings and public role, Yeats hoped to overcome this state of alienation. His English reworking of Ireland’s native Gaelic traditions and revival of the legendary heroic pagan Ireland symbolically wedded Protestant ‘­colonist’ and Catholic ‘­native’. However, what worked in literature did not work in social reality. Yeats’ cult of the aristocratic hero was alien to Catholic Ireland, whose populist nationalism was hostile to the ‘­superior airs’ of the Protestant Ascendancy. Yeats’ sense of failure as national poet led to his disillusionment with mass democratic values and attraction to eugenics and fascism. Bialik, who lived to see Hitler’s rise to power, was horrified by the growing threat to the European Jews.

Contexts of Irish and Jewish nationalism As we have seen, Bialik was the poet of a Zionist diaspora nationalism which aimed to return the Jews to their ancestral homeland. His early readership was mainly Russian Jews under Tsar Nicholas II (­­1894–​­1917). These Jews comprised the largest Jewish community at the time, about five million, mostly poor working class people, discriminated against and degraded, with only limited control over the land they inhabited in the Pale of Settlement, the area on the western frontier of the Russian empire to which they were confined by law under Tsarist rule.9 Bialik was attached to the world of the

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  205 Russian Jews, while Yeats as a Protestant with English roots, and writing in English, was somewhat alienated from Ireland: he longed to be poet of the native Irish seeking autonomy from British imperial rule in their homeland and a reversal of the land confiscations of the 17th century. He spoke for a rural society still traumatized by the Great Famine of the 1840s which had killed one million and turned Ireland into an emigrant country in rapid demographic decline. Different though their nationalisms were, Jews and Irish shared common ground as small nations with a long history of religious persecution, subject to a powerful imperial state. They can be categorized as ‘­chosen peoples’, seeing themselves as divinely separated from the world of power by their suffering which uplifted them for a higher, even messianic, purpose. Bialik and Yeats were influenced by this e­ thno-​­religious outlook. Each spoke for peoples victimized by imperial power and sure of the moral high ground. Bialik seemed to hold continually in his mind’s eye the entire history of Jewish tragedy, above all the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE; while Yeats mourned the destruction of Gaelic aristocratic culture by the English conquest in the 17th century and the failure of Irish revolts. Still, the cultural nationalism of Yeats and Bialik was as much an inner rebellion against established leaders as a cry against historical wrongs. Each spoke for a generation radicalized by its sense of victimization and destabilized by rapid social change. The new moral vision based on a revival of history and culture which they articulated gave direction to radical political activism.

Bialik, Yeats, and the struggle for cultural revival Bialik and Yeats were major poets in w ­ ide-​­ranging cultural revivals, challenging traditional authority and implicitly rejecting the existing political order, based on the imperial system.10 Both fought imperial efforts to assimilate their people, Bialik, the Jews in the Russian empire; Yeats, the Irish in the British empire. Both represented the middle ground, ­non-​­violent and based on the reassertion of a distinctive national culture. Yeats sought to revive Ireland’s ­pre-​­conquest Gaelic culture and combat the increasing assimilation of Irish society into industrial Britain. At the same time, there was a l­arge-​­scale constitutional nationalist drive, led by Charles Stewart Parnell (­­1846–​­91), for a Home Rule parliament with limited political autonomy. A catalyst of Irish nationalism was the agrarian crisis of the late 1870s which roused fear of another famine and led to a land war between the Catholic peasantry and Protestant landlords. Irish political nationalism was stimulated further by British democratizing reforms. Expanded educational opportunities opened up the civil service and the professions and devolved local government to the Catholic majority, resulting in a growing native middle class acculturated to British secular liberal ideals but ambitious for leadership of Irish society. Socially mobile Catholics, driven to nationalism by the continued ascendancy of the Protestant minority protected by the

206  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats British state, allied with the conservative Catholic Church to demand a parliament for the Catholic majority. After the scandal which wrecked Parnell’s life in 1891, a long ‘­civil war’ broke out between secular liberals and clerical nationalists, out of which new forms of Irish cultural nationalism emerged: ­Anglo-​­Irish literary and Gaelic revivalism, both with ­pre-​­conquest communitarian values. Support for Irish Home Rule was, nevertheless, far greater. However, between 1910 and 1914, the push to Home Rule was weakened by the irreconcilable aims of Irish democratization and the desire of both British Liberals and Conservatives to preserve British imperial dominance; and the outbreak of war in 1914 shelved Home Rule plans in the British government. A faction of the Gaelic revivalists allied with revolutionary nationalists to stage first a rebellion (­1916) then a war of independence (­­1918–​­21) that overthrew established Irish political leadership and broke the British hold on Ireland.

Personal dilemmas and national ‘­solutions’ The nationalism of Bialik and Yeats grew from problems of identity shared by their generation and also from personal trauma. Both poets had an unhappy family history and in early manhood underwent religious crisis. Deracination pushed both to poetry and to identification with a similarly unhappy national community. Though his family was from respectable landed stock, Yeats suffered much of his life from status anxiety. When he was a child, his father gave up law for painting. He moved his family from Sligo to London where he joined a p ­ re-​­Raphaelite community of artists. The young Yeats was swept from a stable rural world into the anonymity of a vast, insecure, alien metropolitan society. Poor, lonely, and Irish, he was mocked and humiliated by the English boys at school. He escaped by identifying with his father’s cult of the romantic artist as higher being, transcending the material world.11 Here is the kernel of Yeats’ later perception of the artist as the last aristocrat, struggling for ­self-​­mastery and in conflict with society, who by sheer will summons up ­life-​­forces that transform the nation. Alienated from English society, Yeats dreamed of leading a viable Irish national community. Like many young men from similar backgrounds at the ­fin-­​­­de-​­siécle, Yeats went through a religious crisis and a search for personal and collective meaning. Recoiling both from an ossified Christianity and the alternative mechanical scientific ideologies of progress (­including his father’s Darwinism), he was drawn to mystical and magical cults such as Theosophy and Rosicrucianism. After he and his friend George Russell founded the Dublin Hermetic Society and the Order of the Golden Dawn in the 1890s, he claimed to have rediscovered a cosmic force, e­ ver-​­present in ancient times but now forgotten except by an esoteric artistic elite. The task of this elite was to revive the ancient wisdom and cast out the deadwood of sectarian Christianity and of industrial materialism. A new millennium of harmony and progress would then come into being.

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  207 Abstruse, farfetched, even somewhat ridiculous, this spiritualism yoked to Irish nationalism propelled the young Yeats into missionary zeal for his cause. Already as a young man in London in the 1880s, Yeats (­like his father) identified with the Irish peasants in their land war against British imperialism, which he scorned as corrupt. On his family’s return to Dublin in 1885, he joined fellow Protestant revivalists on the Dublin University Review, including the folklorist Douglas Hyde. He studied Standish O’Grady’s ‘­Homeric’ History of Ireland, celebrating Ireland’s legends and heroes. He met the Fenian revolutionary John O’Leary, who became his mentor. O’Leary directed him to the Gaelic myths and legends of the Western Irish peasantry in which he ‘­discovered’ a ­pre-​­Christian pagan Druid cosmology, akin to theosophical doctrines. To Yeats, Ireland was a holy land and he was its magus. By the end of the 19th century, Yeats had a clear idea of his task as national poet: to give the political struggle a spiritual dimension in the overthrow of a corrupt cosmopolitanism and degenerate European industrial civilization.12 How was the enthusiasm of an intellectual coterie transformed into a forceful cultural revival? One answer lay in the fall of Parnell and the disintegration of the Irish political movements in the 1890s, worsening the struggle between religious and secular. To cultural nationalists, this internecine conflict was caused by divorce from Ireland’s Gaelic culture and misalliance with Britain. Consequently, Yeats, Eoin MacNéill, Douglas Hyde, and George Russell set up institutions to restore Ireland’s ancient legendary culture and language: the National Literary and Irish Literary Societies in 1891 and 1892, the Gaelic League in 1893, and the Irish Literary Theater in 1899. These organizations attracted a rising generation of educated middle class Catholics deeply frustrated in their ambitions for power and status by continued British rule in Ireland and by the control of nationalist politics by an older, ‘­failed’ generation.

Bialik and Yeats: the making of the national poet Bialik’s social and educational background was far removed from that of Yeats, but the pattern of national involvement is comparable. He like Yeats grew up in a world in which religion was primary. Both poets lived the shadow of national tragedy: Yeats, the potato famine and decimation of the Irish population in the 1840s; Bialik, rising violent ­anti-​­Semitism culminating in the Holocaust. Both found their way to a national role following severe religious crisis; both found themselves simultaneously belonging to the majority and to a minority within it. As Yeats found his nationalist mentor in John O’Leary, Bialik found his in Ahad Ha’am. Though it may be that the most authentic poetic voice of both Yeats and Bialik was that of the private lyric poet, the need for action, both personal and national, sparks much of their poetry. Like many late ­19th-​­century romantic intellectuals, Yeats and Bialik gloried in and lamented the inward nature of their creative

208  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats gifts which, they sometimes felt, reduced them to inaction from which they longed to escape through masterful action. Both were practical dreamers, their private obsessions not always w ­ ell-​­hidden behind the mask of national poet. Ellmann’s observation on Yeats applied also to Bialik: He spent much of his life attempting to understand the deep contradictions within his mind, and was perhaps most alive to that which separated the man of action lost in reverie from the man of reverie who could not quite find himself in action.13

National missions Yeats and Bialik aimed to overthrow fatalistic stereotypes produced not only by external powers but also s­ elf-​­imposed by their kinsmen. Bialik attacked Jewish passivity enforced both by ­anti-​­Semitism and also by Jewish tradition, and Yeats attacked the stage Irish image of the feckless, lovable Paddy propped up by the Church and by the Irish elite kowtowing to British imperial culture. Each sought to make a secular, activist high culture calling up memories and legends of ­heroism – the ​­ Irish chieftain Cuchulain, for example, or the Jewish revolutionary B ­ ar-­​­­Kokhba – ​­to stir the young to action.14 To Yeats as to Shelley, poetry is a great legislative power, the creator of values, a view shared by Bialik, absorbed from the Hebrew Bible. Both Yeats and Bialik saw themselves as teachers of the nation:15 the poet must write ‘­the book of the people’ (‘­Coole Park and Balleylee, 1931’), a phrase Yeats took from the blind Irish poet Anthony Raftery (­c. ­1784–​­1835). To Yeats as to Bialik, the nation makes possible the individual greatness of a poet: ‘­You can no more have the greatest poetry without a nation than religion without symbols’.16 Yeats was the more programmatic nationalist with a fully worked out ­fi n-­​­­de-​­siècle plan for Irish cultural nationalism. He believed that literature was the natural medium for this nationalism rooted in the Gaelic bardic oral tradition depicting a golden age of gods and heroes and uniting the community of listeners. This tradition had died with the collapse of native aristocracy. The bard was replaced by the Christian cleric and by the journalist, the apostle of English industrial print culture. ­Small-​­scale rural communities were being supplanted by mass urban class societies, driven and fragmented by a lust for power and wealth, exemplified in the rise of empires. Ireland, being impoverished and downtrodden, was morally superior to England, corrupted by greed and industry which blackened the countryside and men’s hearts: ‘­Ireland has taken sides for ever with the poor in spirit who shall inherit the earth’, Yeats declared on the 100th anniversary of the martyrdom of Wolfe Tone.17 Only the solitary romantic artist, Yeats believed, could keep alive the old aristocratic and spiritual ideals. The task of the poet, Yeats wrote memorably in his last poem, ‘­Under Ben Bulben’ (­1938), was to recall native history since the English conquest:

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  209 Sing the lords and ladies gay That were beaten into clay Through seven heroic centuries … Ireland itself was in danger of ‘­anglicization’ and social division. Yet, fragments of Ireland’s heroic culture survived in the oral traditions of the I­ rish-​ s­ peaking peasantry of the far western counties. This linguistic heritage had evolved a uniquely expressive and imaginative variety of English. Yeats believed the writer might reconstruct from its ­folk-​­fragments Ireland’s pagan ­life-​­force and stir up latent nationalism among the young E ­ nglish-​­speaking generation. This was his version of kinnus. Remade by a romantic elite, a heroic Ireland based on the land would emerge as a synthesis of English (­romantic) culture and the Gaelic heritage, reunited by the cosmology and ethos that preceded the sectarian divisions of Christianity. It was Ireland’s mission, once restored, to be an inspiration to a Europe grown weary of materialism and class conflict. Yeats called for a spiritual and communal ‘­­Anglo-​­Irish’ literature, and he opposed what he saw as the deadening realist forms of contemporary bourgeois England. The poet Samuel Ferguson (­­1810–​­86) gave him a model against which to react. Ferguson’s epic poetry, based on Ireland’s pagan aristocratic legends, aimed to nationalize Protestant gentry and middle class. Ferguson failed in Yeats’ view because his project and its proposed constituency were unnaturally yoked to British culture and politics. Instead, Yeats found his medium in the vibrant I­ rish-​­English vernacular, used by Douglas Hyde to catch the authentic idioms of Gaelic oral tradition. Yeats believed in the power of Irish theater, based on Gaelic legends and a new vernacular springing from the allegedly decayed Irish language, to stir a new generation of native ­English-​­speaking Catholics to nationalism. Theater could be the modern equivalent of the native institutions of oral communal ­story-​­telling. Yeats’ drama for the Irish Literary Theater was also influenced by Wagner and the Bayreuth Theater. His cycle of plays based on ­ re-​­modern Irish unity as Sieglegends of Cuchulain aimed to recapture p fried embodied German unity in Wagner’s remaking of the ­Nibelungenlied. With his chief collaborator Lady Gregory, Yeats hoped for an aristocracy of talent to plumb the Irish national soul. Bialik, too, yoked his poetic gift to the cultural and political regeneration of ancient traditions, preserved by an intellectual aristocracy. In talmudic folklore and legend, he found heroic ­life-​­energies which the Orthodoxy of ­ ational-​­culturalism has parallels his time seemed to lack. Much of Yeats’ n in Bialik’s work: the call for moral regeneration, the ­pseudo-​­mysticism and messianism translated into secular form and, above all, the high ­valuation –​ p ­ erhaps influenced ultimately by ­Herder – ​­of myth and legend.18 Like his contemporary revivalists, he was steeped in the classical idioms of Hebrew and its sacred writings. As indicated earlier, one of Bialik major achievements was the editing of the legends in the Talmud and Midrash. To Bialik

210  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats as to Yeats, the rediscovery of ancient fragments, including those of defeat and exile, was essential in the creation of a new national identity. This was not programmatic activity but a natural consequence of Bialik’s esteem for these works as a unique creation of the Jewish people. At the same time, like Yeats, he depicted the poet as a solitary dreamer communing with Nature (­e.g., in The Pool, 1905), and this, paradoxically, asserted the authenticity of his national role. Nationalism, he felt as Yeats did, freed the purely personal, ­dammed-​­up creative urges of the individual.

Yeats’ nationalist impact Yeats’ main active period as cultural nationalist was prior to independence, in ­1885–​­1913. Bialik’s was throughout his career from the 1890s until his death in 1934. We have seen that in the years just before World War I Yeats helped establish institutions for the creation of an Irish national literature. Both poets revived memories of a golden past but had deeper influence on young nationalists with their fierce attacks on the alleged moral decadence of their people. Yeats made an early impact through his patriotic plays Countess Cathleen (­1899) and Cathleen ni Houlihan (­1902), depicting romantic sacrifice and the ancient personification of Ireland as both mother and beautiful maiden, Cathleen. Even at this early stage, Yeats’ ­pre-​­Raphaelite interests and Rosicrucianism roused suspicion among traditional nationalists for whom St. Patrick and the Catholic ­Church  – not ​­ Gaelic ­myth  –​ e­ xemplified authentic national values. His theater, too, was controversial from the start. The leading Gaelic League intellectual Eoin MacNeill denounced its cult of aristocratic warriors as elitist and pagan; while James Joyce attacked it as vulgar and provincial: it staged ­Irish-​­language plays while neglecting contemporary European drama. Still, Yeats’ strident ­anti-​ ­British (­and ­anti-​­Boer) sentiments brought him the support of romantic militants such as Arthur Griffith. At the end of Cathleen ni Houlihan, the young hero abandons his bride to take part in the Irish rebellion of 1798 and offers his life for his country embodied by Cathleen. The lines ‘­They shall be remembered forever’ converted many young Irish to the national cause as similarly banal lines in Bialik’s early poems turned young Jews into Zionists, in some cases overnight. Yeats’ Cuchulain plays put onto the stage for the first time the ‘­ungovernable’ warrior hero, who in his battle with fate expressed the Nietzschean will to defy limits. Audiences could recognize in these plays the struggles of revolutionaries such as Patrick Pearse (­a Cuchulain devotee), whose heroic individualism led them to scorn the inhibiting checks and balances of democracy. More bitter and provocative were Yeats’ satirical verses written when the ­literary-​­linguistic revival lost momentum. Poems such as ‘­September 1913’ (­1913) spoke of dampened revolutionary ardor in the face of impending Home Rule. Its refrain, ‘­Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,/­It’s with O’Leary in the grave’, set the heroic Irish heritage of sacrifice against the

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  211 decadent reality of a petty bourgeois society governed by greed and hypocritical piety. This was the death of Irish nationalism. Yeats’ attack helped drive young cultural nationalists such as Pearse and MacDonagh from constitutional politics to revolutionary activism.19

Bialik and the struggle against Jewish powerlessness As we have seen, much of Bialik’s poetry reflects the spread of European ­anti-​­Jewish hatred and resultant militancy among young Jews of the generation after the Russian pogroms of 1­ 881–​­82. In 1899, he wrote a poem of revenge, which passed the censor only because it was entitled ‘­­Bar-​­Kokhba’, setting it safely at the time of the last Jewish revolt against Rome, in the ­2nd- ​­c entury CE.20 After the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, Jewish national feeling grew, and a national sense of shame and anger is expressed in Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’: ‘­If there is j­ustice – ​­let it come now!’21 The degree of victimization of the Jews was, at the time of the pogroms, far greater than the Irish, who were not subjected to systematic ­government-​­sponsored legal discrimination and ­government-​­tolerated violence.22 However, like Yeats, Bialik often depicted his people as incapable of national revival. In the direct, forceful style of the ancient prophets he attacked the status quo. He scourged those Jews who remained passive in the face of oppression and denounced those who abandoned their national roots: Will dew revive a dead leaf of a tree, or hyssop clinging to rocks, or a broken vine a dry flower? Can trumpet blasts and a raised banner    revive the dead?23 This righteous anger was expressed most famously in City of Slaughter, with its attack not on the perpetrators of the Kishinev pogrom but on the unheroic Jews, a small minority, who used the national tragedy to elicit sympathy and funds for themselves: ‘­Beg the pity of goyim!’24 Bialik offers an instructive illustration of Renan’s observation that ­nation-​­building often involves the distortion of history. Yet, far from being seen as defeatist, Bialik’s condemnation was often read as a call to arms, leading to the creation of Jewish defense groups in Russia: as we have seen, many members of these groups came to Palestine, where they helped create the Haganah, a s­ elf-​­defense organization which evolved into the Israeli army.

The nation as mask Yeats and Bialik, driven in their nationalism by purely personal experiences and emotions, faced the dilemma of projecting such emotions onto the national cause, raising their art far beyond nationalist propaganda while

212  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats exposing themselves to the charge of being driven by purely personal motives. Yeats’ vision of an aristocratic Ireland led by s­ elf-​­sacrificing seers rejecting materialist values can be seen as a reaction of a member of a declassé landed family forced for much of his early career to eke out an insecure existence as a journalist in the literary marketplace. His celebration of romantic, sometimes tragic, individuals who brought high moral ideals to a life of action regardless of mass opinion was derived from his longing for heroism despite being a shy, insecure intellectual. Yeats made his service to Maud Gonne a metaphor for his thwarted dedication to Ireland. He cast her as heroine queen in his nationalist plays, Cathleen ni Houlihan and Countess Cathleen, and he used her in his poetry, fusing the dilemmas of nationalist politics with his sexual frustration. All this is surprisingly close to some of Bialik’s poetry, in which the poet’s guilt at using national trauma as an outlet for purely personal obsessions is a major theme.25 The image of a woman yearned for but emotionally out of reach is an overriding image both for the poet’s private failures and for the Jewish people ­vis-­​­­à-​­vis their motherland and the lofty biblical ideals always beyond human reach. Faced with the irreducibly personal aspect of his verse, Yeats rejected sentimental nationalist propaganda. He particularly disliked the Young Ireland poets, beloved of political nationalists. Their poetry, in his view, seemed to come largely out of external political motives rather than inner passion. Yeats demanded from art an original inner vision welling up from intensely felt experience and expressing communal consciousness. Were private obsessions of the artist compatible with public nationalism?26 By encouraging writers such as Synge and, later, O’Casey because they were good, Yeats not only subverted his original aristocratic ideal of the artist but also the possibility of a coherent, b ­ road-​­based cultural movement. By defending the principle of ­self-​­expression, Yeats also came into conflict with former supporters such as Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne, and George Russell, who were antagonized by the corrosive satires of Synge and others as they appeared to attack Ireland, Irish institutions, the Irish family and the Church. In 1903, Maud Gonne dashed his romantic hopes by marrying her fellow revolutionary John MacBride. Yeats, ‘­starved for the bosom of his faery bride’ (­a pun on ‘­MacBride’?), pondered deeply thereafter the responsibility of the artist to personal authenticity rather than to a public cause. In ‘­No Second Troy’ (­1910), Maud Gonne, transformed into a modern Helen of Troy, shocks the poet with the power of love and beauty to bring violence and destruction. Yeats found greatness in qualities that unsuited him for Maud Gonne, for he was less a man of action than of meditation. Rejected by his muse, he could feel more fully the force of Ireland’s defeats and failures. Bialik was similarly torn between the simultaneous need to defer individuality to the nation and to realize himself as a private lyric poet. His ‘­national’ poems are few, belong to his early period and are not among his best, though they had much influence. It is true that communal bereavement

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  213 and infertility in his work, given sharp historic focus in biblical and midrashic images of the destruction of the Temple and the loss of Jewish national independence, struck deep chords with his generation who themselves felt orphaned.27 Yet, these collective memories were driven also by childhood loss. Bialik chastises his people using the same epithets with which he criticizes himself: they are dry as a tree, withered like grass, rotten from head to foot.28 Like the beggars in City of Slaughter, the poet uses national trauma for personal ends. A prevailing theme in Jewish liturgy is the yearning for national renewal and for a lost land associated with the nation’s childhood. Such yearnings fill Bialik’s poetry of his childhood, though he rarely identified the nation’s hopes as his own. Early lines dating from 1894 are exceptional: I too have power enough. In open spaces set free my imprisoned strength! A weak nation will ­blossom –​­ my rotten bones will flourish like grass.29 Though he revered his nationalist mentor, Ahad Ha’am, Bialik went his own way as a poet. The lacerating guilt that resulted entered his poetry. He remained to the end of his life deeply ambivalent about the degree to which Zionists read into his poems of private trauma a call for national renewal. He was far less a poet of hope than of ­almost-​­suicidal despair, as in his poem responding to the First Zionist Congress in ­1897–​­ Do you see who lurks behind the door,    broom in hand? The caretaker of ruined ­temples –​­ Despair!30

Yeats’ reception as national poet Yeats and Bialik had very different receptions as national poets. Yeats, longing to be Ireland’s national poet, was rejected by Irish nationalists; Bialik, guiltily ambivalent about his national role, was nevertheless elevated against his will by Zionists into a national institution. These ironic twists of fate affected their creativity. Why did Yeats in his lifetime fail as a national poet? Yeats hoped to create a sophisticated national culture, open to the world. Ireland, though, had little market for high culture. Her best artists (­including Yeats) left for ­London or Paris. His theater survived through the selfless dedication of writers and actors, financed between 1904 and 1910 by an English patron, Annie Horniman. His cultural nationalism outraged mainstream Catholic opinion which unfairly perceived his works as a blow for the Protestant Ascendancy. In fact, Yeats had begun by rejecting his own caste as philistine and

214  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats unpatriotic and looked to convert the best of the young Catholic middle class to a nonsectarian Irish nationalism. But the new Catholic intelligentsia, many from poorly educated rural backgrounds and imbued with ‘­memories’ of sectarian persecution, remained profoundly ethnocentric and suspicious of secular High Culture. They had little understanding of Yeats’ sophisticated ­neo-​­pagan vision and felt threatened by Synge’s plays championed by Yeats which satirized Catholicism, patriotism and family in the name of freedom. They embraced rather the Gaelic League and its vision of Ireland as a superior rural ­Irish-​­speaking peasant community whose golden age was in the Middle Ages. To Irish Catholics, this image of Ireland was an insula sacra of Christian values which could prevail against the spread of English materialist values. The campaign of the Gaelic League to revive a culturally separate democratic nation legitimated its drive to overturn the economic, social, and political power of the alien Protestant elite and to assume leadership in Ireland.31 Its leaders denounced Yeats’ project as a Protestant ploy to hijack leadership of their cultural revival and divert it towards apolitical aestheticism or, worse, a decadent European ­neo-​­paganism. Some of this criticism was just. Yeats’ nationalism had something of the arrogance and ambivalence of the Protestant settler minority, protected by English colonialism, their privileges based on spoliation and religious exclusion. Yet, in common with other Irish Protestants periodically since the 18th century, Yeats turned away from British interests and became an Irish nationalist. Why did these Protestants become Irish nationalists? The answer lies, perhaps, less in their love for Ireland than in disillusionment with England. The condescension shown them by England drove them to identify with aspects of Irish heritage, particularly in the legendary pagan aristocratic period. If in British eyes, they were facsimile aristocrats, in Irish eyes they could be true aristocrats. In his alienation from increasingly urban industrial Britain, Yeats was typical of this Protestant minority. He found his main allies within his own class of ­reform-​­minded ­Anglo-​­Irish Protestants, such as Lady Gregory, ­co-​­founder of the Abbey Theater; Sir Horace Plunkett, leader of the Irish agricultural ­co-​­operative movement; and Sir Hugh Lane, a Plunkett supporter and patron of the arts. Unable to submit to a populist Catholic Irish democratic identity, they pioneered the idea of a new Irish rural nation blending traditions of conqueror and conquered. In the circles of the elite, Yeats somewhat quixotically created from above a heroic Irish nation while asserting the artist’s independence from political constraints. Throughout the period ­1885–​­1913, Yeats oscillated between these vexing opposites, dancing on the crossways of the chameleon heart, concerned less with growing into the Nation than in withering into the Truth, breaking with Irish nationalism for the higher responsibility of the artist; leaving Dublin for London, then drawn back to the nationalist fray by crisis in Ireland. All things considered, then, it is not surprising that his reception among Irish Catholics was a damp squib.

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Bialik: public success, private despair In Bialik’s case, the pressure of ­anti-​­Semitism increasingly united the highly diverse international Jewish communities and made possible the idea of a national movement and modern Hebrew culture, and a Jewish national poet.32 However, in Bialik, conflict between the artist and the nationalist was more extreme than in Yeats. Whereas Yeats was attacked for using the nation as a vehicle for ­self-​­seeking interests, Bialik seems to have attacked himself in his own ­poetry – ​­above all in Scroll of Fire – for ​­ doing the same. The contrast between his public role as selfless servant of a cause and his consciousness of the private springs of his inspiration filled him with guilt. At times, Bialik expressed this guilt openly: ‘­my tears are false’.33 In 1909 for the first time Bialik visited Palestine, whose Jewish population looked to him for inspiration and hope. They did not care to know that most of his main work came out of private, not national, obsessions. During a public reading in Jaffa from a story of his depicting a sexual liaison between a Jewish boy and a Christian girl, his audience stopped him, demanding national poems instead. In 1923, during the international fanfare which marked his 50th birthday, Bialik wrote of the ‘­burden’ of public love.34 Still, the conflict between Bialik’s private concerns as an artist and his public role did not seriously affect his image as national poet. Bialik played this role, committed to his cause. Even those who might have questioned Bialik’s authority were generally overwhelmed by his unrivalled poetic gift. Also, from the time Bialik started writing in the early 1890s until his death in 1934, the number of Hebrew speakers and readers grew steadily. The great milestones in the history of Jewish ­nationalism – ​­the foundation of the World Zionist Organisation by Herzl in 1897 and the Balfour Declaration of ­1917 – created ​­ an atmosphere of political dynamism and cultural ferment in which Bialik had a highly receptive readership. These forces ensured Bialik’s success as national poet; by the 1920s he could make substantial sums of money from his writing.

Yeats’ failure as national poet Yeats’ readership was infinitely larger than Bialik’s, but his circumstances as an aspiring national poet were less fortunate. By 1910, the Protestant reform movement, including Yeats’ plans for the Irish Theater, had run to ground for lack of popular support. Even his theatrical protegés had subverted his original aristocratic hopes, establishing a largely realist, demotic view of Ireland. To Yeats, the last straw was the rejection in 1913 by the Dublin City Council of Hugh Lane’s offer of his priceless collection of paintings on condition that they house it suitably in a separate gallery. Yeats responded with poems such as ‘­September 1913’ declaring his disillusionment with Ireland. He then left for England. This break marked the end of Yeats’ major period as a n ­ ational-​­cultural leader and the beginning of his conversion via

216  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats Ezra Pound to poetic modernism. He used his new stark and direct form of verse to respond to the Easter Rebellion of 1916, ‘­Easter 1916’, praising the rebellion for heroic, even mythical qualities while recoiling from its stony fanaticism: ‘­too long a sacrifice/ Can make a stone of the heart’. Precisely when Yeats, defeated in public life, turned from activism to immerse himself in his craft, he found a voice whose c­ rystal-​­sharp tones expressed the psychological transformation of Ireland, anticipating independence: I write it out in a v­ erse –​­ MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. After independence in 1921, Yeats returned to Ireland where he was made a Senator of the Free State. During the subsequent civil war, he wrote of his despair at internecine strife and his hope for reconciliation. He became involved in several cultural ventures, including a revived Abbey Theater, and found new controversy defending Sean O’Casey’s plays. But the national culture promoted by the new Irish state was oppressively puritanical, populist, and G ­ aelic-​­Catholic. Large sections of the Protestant community ‘­returned’ to England. Yeats himself retreated to a private Ireland, an idealized conservative ­Anglo-​­Irish tradition of Berkeley, Swift, Grattan, and Burke. He even flirted with fascism in the 1930s.35 His last years were spent mostly out of Ireland, and he died in France in 1939.36 The great irony of Yeats’ career was that his failure as national poet drove him to write some of his finest poetry which w ­ as – ​­outside ­Ireland –​ u ­ niversally accepted as the achievement of Ireland’s national poet, the first Irish Nobel laureate for literature (­1924). His poetry in romantic fashion transforms his public failures into universal triumphs of the human spirit. In ‘­Coole Park, 1929’, for example, he celebrates his cultural efforts and those of his dearest associates, Lady Gregory and John Synge, as the last stand against modernity of the heroic folk tradition starting with Homer. In prose, this is blarney; in poetry, sublime. In poems such as ‘­Sailing to Byzantium’ (­1926), he elevates his doomed struggles as a metaphor for the eternal battle of the creative imagination against death. And in a sense, Yeats was right: there is no question of victory, but by confronting and defying his fate and recording his struggles in art, the poet can achieve a form of immortality. Yet, the poet’s adjuration to the sages of the past to ‘­gather me/­Into the artifice of eternity’ has no mention of Ireland or of his hopes for Ireland. His homeland here is art. An irony similar to Yeats’ is apparent in Bialik’s poetry: he made some of his best poetry (­e.g., Scroll of Fire) out of the guilty conflict between his

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  217 collective prophetic identity, the voice of rage and justice, and the soft, private voice of the lyric poet bewailing his losses, of mother and father, of love and youth. In a poem of 1901, the poet confesses: One world alone is m ­ ine –​­ The one in my heart.37 Bialik’s weakest poems included the purely national ones, which date from his early period, p ­ re-​­1900. Yet, the perception of Bialik was more important than the reality. Political figures as diverse as the moderates Weizmann and ­Ben-​ ­Gurion, the extremists Jabotinsky and Begin and the Zionist Orthodox rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook greeted him as the reincarnation of a biblical prophet and symbol of national resurrection, moving the nation to political action. And so he was. He expressed the rage of the persecuted, the hopes of a people emerging from powerlessness and the sense of a great dislocated past which it was possible, in some form, to recover. Perhaps most important to Bialik’s national role, as to Yeats’, was the creation of superb language which roused national consciousness and pride even when it did not aim to, and even when it condemned the nation for pettiness, cowardice, ­passivity, and hypocrisy. The act of ­creation – ​­never mind the ­content – was ​­ part of and stimulated creative, revolutionary nationalism which fed it in turn.

Yeats and Bialik: national poets It is unlikely that either Yeats or Bialik read the other or knew of their lives and circumstances. Their careers exemplify tensions general to cultural nationalism, between romantic visionaries and ‘­political’ activists. Whereas Bialik and Yeats committed themselves to exploring the individuality of the nation in all its disconcerting complexities, the focus of an Ahad Ha’am and an Arthur Griffith was more on the construction of simpler ideal types (­even stereotypes) to create national feeling. The idea of a ‘­national poet’ may be seen as a contradiction in terms.38 Indeed, prior to Yeats and Bialik, there is no comparable sense of conflict in their ­literatures – ​­perhaps in any ­literature – between ​­ the solitary artist and the national figure. The poetry of Yeats and Bialik raises complex questions about the relationship between the artist and the nationalist, about the meaning of national art and the constraints imposed as well as the creativity released by nationalism. Yeats’ poetic achievement was greater than most other 2­ 0th-​­century poets, though in his lifetime, his social and political impact was more modest. Yeats expresses the attraction and pride of belonging to a nation whose legends and culture are powerful tools for overcoming rootlessness and transforming individual concerns into something of wider, more permanent importance. Yet, no poet, however gifted, can go against the ethnic grain to construct a nation. Yeats was rejected by the Irish as Bialik never was rejected by the Jews. Still, Yeats chose not to live the life of the cosmopolitan

218  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats romantic. Repeatedly in his poetry, he came back to Ireland, to the end, in ‘­Under Ben Bulben’ (­1938), celebrating ‘­the indomitable Irishry’. In the long run, though, Yeats had an impact on Irish culture comparable with that of Bialik on Jewish culture. His international recognition as an Irish nationalist and one of the great poets of the 20th century made it impossible for Ireland to ignore him. Since the Gaelic revival failed to produce a vital national culture, Yeats’ project to create a distinctive Irish literature in English has appeared increasingly plausible and viable. In particular, the Abbey Theater has shown through the high quality of its dramatists and the controversies it has excited the potential for Irish cultural nationalism in English. In his reflections on the competing demands of personal conscience and national duty, Yeats was true both to his poetic calling and to his ­self-​­constructed national role. His career underscores the contribution of the minority Protestant community to Irish identity. His glorification of pagan Irish heroes of legend denies any single sectarian definition of the nation and has particular value in an island in need of a unifying ideology but wracked by divisions between its different religious and cultural traditions. His individual voice as rebel against disunity and mediocrity in his ‘­blind bitter land’ (­and Dublin a ‘­blind and ignorant town’) – ​­a voice originating in the same tradition of prophetic dissent in which Bialik ­wrote – is ​­ the conscience and direction of Irish national culture. Judging from his poetry, Bialik’s life was a failure, full of longing and deprivation, of loss and impotence. His poetic career seems to have been cut short by trauma and ambivalence: after 1911, he practically stopped writing poetry, except for children. Yet, as a poet, Bialik has a unique place in a moment of unparalleled change in Jewish and world history. He can be read with pleasure by philosophers as well as by children learning Hebrew. Over a hundred of his lyrics have been set to music. His poems of loss and longing, articulated in the powerful symbols and rhetoric of the biblical tradition, resonated with the hopes and fears of his people. His influence on contemporary and subsequent Hebrew poets was enormous. In the history of cultural nationalism, he had unparalleled success. A decade and a half after his death, the people whom he lambasted and lamented, who at the time of his birth had no territory of their own nor a political organization to achieve one, created an independent state. Yeats and Bialik represent a new type of national poet, after the collapse of liberal universal hopes in the end of the 19th century and the rise of hostile rival nationalism leading to World War I. In their originality as poets, they assert national uniqueness. Their ­self-​­doubt as national figures, too, could be seen as a reflection of the multifaceted, conflicted identity of an evolving nation state. In a nation’s struggle for independence, nothing its great poets write can be purely private. The creative powers of national poets can be set free by the national movements of which they are a part. The poet’s inner life as well as the nation’s history and legends are enlisted in the national struggle for ­self-​­determination.

The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats  219

Notes 1 I am grateful to John Hutchinson, formerly of the London School of Economics, with whom I collaborated in an article (­Hutchinson and Aberbach 1999), which became in changed form the present chapter. On Yeats in the context of modern national literatures and political movements, see Aberbach (­2015). 2 On kinnus and its parallels in modern national literature, see pp. 3, 15, 18 note 11, 20 note 43, 50, 54, 94, 103, 122, 124, 197, 209. 3 On the extent of Bialik’s celebrity at the time of his ­fund-​­raising mission to America in 1­ 926 – ​­including a meeting with President Calvin Coolidge at the White ­House – ​­see Brown (­1994). In New York, Bialik lived at the exclusive Ansonia Hotel and was given ‘­­red-​­carpet treatment’; among his many public meetings, he addressed a capacity crowd of over 2000 at the newly built Mecca Temple (­now New York City Center) on 55th Street. 4 On the Jewish national background to Bialik, see p. 220 note 30 below. It may be that to the extent that both Bialik and Yeats were disillusioned with national politics, they were prepared to put up with British rule as the lesser of two evils. Bialik shared with Yeats a lack of enthusiasm for the end of British rule and after he moved to Tel Aviv in 1925 tended to support the ­pro-​­British Weizmann rather than the militant Jabotinsky. Yeats naturally identified with the ­A nglo-​ I­ rish Protestant landed class, which was mostly loyal to the Empire. On Irish cultural nationalism, see Hutchinson (­1987), Lyons (­1979), Garvin (­1987), and Kiberd (­1995). For a life of Yeats, see Foster (­1997, 2003). 5 On Tagore’s views on nationalism, see Aberbach (2015: 70–1). 6 On private trauma as a motivation in national poetry, see pp. 169–74 above and pp. 221–3 below. 7 On exile and the quest for love in Bialik’s poetry, see p. 118 above. The Palestinian A ­ rabic poet Mahmoud Darwish writes similarly of exile in the language of frustrated love: ‘­You alone are the exile, miserable one./­No woman to hold you to her breast’ (­Darwish 2003: 141). 8 On loss in Bialik’s poetry, see pp. 153ff., 167–8 above. 9 On the social and historical background to Bialik’s poetry, see the Introduction and Chapter 1 above. 10 On the Tsarist background to Bialik’s national role, see Chapter 2 above. 11 On Yeats’ masks, see Ellmann (­1969). 12 On Yeats’ study of esoteric literature, see Lyons (­1979). On the rediscovery of Ireland’s Celtic past, see Sheehy (­1980). Yeats’ enthusiasm for the Indian poet Tagore evidently had less to do with Tagore’s national role as a poet under British imperial rule than with his moralistic outlook representative of Eastern civilization, from which Europe could learn (Aberbach 2015: 21–2, 70–1). 13 Ellmann (­1969: 2). 14 On mythical and historical heroes similar to ­Bar-​­Kokhba and Cuchulain in other national poetry, see Aberbach (2015: 19, 64, 72, 103). 15 On national poets as educators, see p. 5 above. 16 Ellmann (­1968: ­15–​­16). On the idea that a poet’s greatness is linked to national identity, see Aberbach (2015: 293–4). 17 Ellmann (­1968: 115). 18 On myth and legend in national poetry, see Aberbach (­2015). 19 On Pearse’s revolutionary nationalism, see Edwards (­1977). 20 See p. 96 above. On censorship as a challenge to national poetry, see p. 52, note 17 above. 21 Al ­ha- ​­Shehitah (­On the Slaughter, 1903), (­Bialik 2004: 78). See pp. 97, 135 above. 22 Though Bialik’s ‘­Poems of Wrath’ of ­1903–​­06 expressed the feelings of a suffering people, it should be remembered that at the time there were still Irish men

220  The artist as nation-builder: Bialik and Yeats and women alive who remembered the virtual genocide in Ireland during the potato famine in the 1840s, a far worse catastrophe than anything the Jews experienced from the time of the Black Plague in the 14th century until the Holocaust. 23 Akhen Hatzir ­ha-​­Am (­Surely the people is grass, 1897). See p. 213 above. 24 ­B e-​­Ir ­ha-​­haregah (­City of Slaughter, 1903), (­Bialik 2004: 82). 25 On guilt in Bialik’s national poetry, see pp. 139, 204 above; and pp. 212, 213, 215, 225 below. 26 On the paradox among national poets of being public spokesman and private artist, see p. 125 above and the Conclusion below. 27 On the interconnection of personal and national grief in Bialik, see pp. 6, 121, 174 above; 223–4 below. 28 National poets frequently attack their own people, a phenomenon which originates among the biblical prophets. see pp. 13, 60, 107 above. 29 Iggeret Ketanah (­A Short Letter, 1894), (­Aberbach 1981: 48). In the same period, Bialik wrote one of his ­b est-​­known poems, Birkhat Am (­Blessing of the People 1894), the opening of which became virtually a national anthem: May all our brothers’ hands who grace the dust of our land, wherever they are, be strong. Do not give up, in joy and song, come together to the nation’s aid! 30 Al levavkhem ­she-​­Shamem (­On your desolate hearts, 1897). Mikra’e Tziyon (­On the First Zionist Congress), written shortly after, acknowledges the Congress as an expression of the ‘­faithful tears’ of national longing in desperate times, but as such reads more like an elegy than a poem of hope and revival: ‘­From the ends of the earth you brought no songs/­but ancient laments’. In other poems of this period, which he later regretted, Bialik, influenced by the skepticism of his ideological mentor, Ahad Ha’am, mocked Herzl as yet another false messiah. See p. 40 note 13 above. Bialik’s responses to later Zionist congresses tended to despair: On Hem mitna’arim me’afar (­They shake the dust, 1907)  – ‘­ ​­Their Temple stands/­but God has left’ – after ​­ the Eighth Congress in 1907 (­see p. 155 above); Shaha nafshi (­My spirit is bowed, 1923) – ‘­ ​­I’m no poet, no prophet/­but a ­woodchopper’  – ​­after the Twelfth Congress in 1922; and Re’itkhem shuv ­be-​ ­kotzer yedchem (­You see again your powerlessness, 1931) – ​­‘­Again your weakness shows,/­and my heart fills with sorrow’ – after ​­ the Seventeenth Congress, in 1931. see p. 151 note 54 above. Bialik’s persistent attacks on the Zionist movement for weak leadership and lack of direction recall his own sense of a void in being fatherless and lacking guidance. See above p. 154. The poem Re’itkhem shuv ­be-​ ­kotzer yedchem was written after Avi (­My Father), Bialik’s fullest account of his father’s death when he was a child. 31 On the Gaelic League, see Garvin (­1987: ch. 5) and Hutchinson (­1987: ch. 8). 32 On Jewish resistance to Zionism, see Aberbach (­2013: ch. 7). 33 Dimah Ne’emanah (­Faithful Tear, 1894). See p. 225 below. 34 Shaha nafshi (­My spirit is bowed, 1923). See pp. 198 note 14, 220 note 30 above, and p. 225 below. 35 On Yeats and fascism, see Cullingford (­1981) and O’Brien (­1988). 36 Yeats’ death in 1939 did not trigger the mass public grief which Bialik’s death caused in 1934: the Jewish world mourned for Bialik in a way reminiscent of Herzl in 1904, as for a unique charismatic figure, with much of the Jewish population of Eretz Yisrael attending his funeral in Tel Aviv, where schools and public buildings were closed, and traffic was stopped. 37 Yam ­ha-​­demama polet sodot (­The sea of quiet spits secrets, 1901). 38 On the view of ‘­national poet’ as a contradiction in terms, see Aberbach (­2015).

Conclusion Damaged archangels and charismatic national poets

The private individual “­I” and the general national “­I” are swallowed up and blended one with the other, and you can’t tell which came first and which is the more important. Bialik (­1907)

The archetypal charismatic, Max Weber wrote, is the biblical prophet, and so it is not entirely surprising that the renaissance of Hebrew language and literature as part of Jewish nationalism was led by Bialik, a charismatic poet who, in some of his most powerful and influential works, spoke with the voice of a prophet. Bialik shared with many other writers the experience of childhood loss.1 He writes of the death of his father when he was 6 and his separation from his mother soon after as the pivotal crisis of his life, motivating his creativity and his public role. As an orphan, Bialik could best speak for his ‘­orphaned’, uprooted people. He could express their sense of victimization and ruin, their sorrow, anger, and frustration, and their longing to be reunited with an idealized ancestral motherland. Bialik is unusual as the correspondence between his public role and his inner life is clear. Bialik belongs to a group of national p ­ oets – each ​­ a ‘­damaged Archangel’, as Charles Lamb called C ­ oleridge – ​­who emerged from the time of the French Revolution to World War II, as a direct result of the rise of European nationalism during this period. Coleridge in some ways foreshadows Bialik’s guilty ambiguity in his national role. In ‘­Fears in Solitude’ (­1798), written in fear of a French invasion of England, Coleridge proclaims like a biblical prophet the sins of his own ­people – ​­including the sin of slavery, first denounced by the prophet Jeremiah2: Like a cloud that travels on, Steamed up from Cairo’s swamps of pestilence, Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003357018-13

222  Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint With slow perdition murders the whole man, His body and his soul! The picture of national guilt appears again, in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (­1798), coupled with personal guilt; and Coleridge later, notably in ‘­Dejection Ode’ written as a confession to his b ­ ride-­​­­to-​­be, Sara Hutchinson, in 1802, explores loss and grief (­he, like Bialik, had lost his father in childhood and been separated from his remaining family): A Grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A stifling, drowsy unimpassion’d Grief That finds no natural outlet, no relief In word, or sigh, or t­ ear –​­ This, Sara! Well thou know’st Is that sore Evil, which I dread the most, And oft’nest suffer! From Byron on, the charismatic poet exemplifies the damaged individual striving to heal or renew the self wedded to a public role. By becoming one with the Nation, the poet defeats alienation, grief, and inner division.3 ‘­Nationalism’, wrote Isaiah Berlin, ‘­is the direct product of wounds inflicted on a sense of common nationhood, or common race or culture’.4 Language and culture often shore up weak nations, and the wounded poet can, perhaps, best give expression to national wounds. Byron found consolation for his own physical and emotional infirmities through hopes for the revival of Italians, Greeks, Irish, Poles, Armenians, and Jews, whose national condition in the early 19th century could be described in various ways as crippled. Byron’s s­ elf-​­image was largely determined by his father’s disappearance and death (­a possible suicide) when he was three. In ‘­Childish Recollections’ (­1806), he describes one of the emotional consequences of this loss as a need to ‘­seek abroad the love denied at home’. Poets who suffer severe trauma or disability, especially in c­ hildhood  – ​­there is a long list apart from Byron, including Burns, Solomos, Shevchenko, Leopardi, Pascoli, Shawqi, and ­Bharati – might ​­ identify with a wounded, humiliated nation, long for it to be healed and revived, and work to rediscover (­or invent) lost national unity. Byron’s Scots background might have inclined him to sympathy with nations w ­ hich – like ​­ Scotland at Culloden in 1­ 746 – had ​­ suffered humiliating defeat by a persecutory power. For Byron, however, and most ­19th-​­century national poets, including Bialik, identification with the nation meant acceptance of moral ­responsibility – not, ​­ as in the case of D’Annunzio, a Dionysian letting go. To Bialik, Jewish nationalism was above all expressed in Hebrew literature and language, not politics and militancy. Bialik is particularly close to poets such as Kollar, Petőfi, Prešeren, and Yeats, whose sufferings in failed relationships become emblematic of a

Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets  223 national longing for revival. Kollar’s life model for his lament for the Slavs in his sonnet collection Daughter of Slava (­1824) was the daughter of a German Lutheran pastor whom he met while studying at Jena. Petőfi idealizes his wife in his poetry as symbol of the Hungarian nation. Prešeren in his sonnets mixes his unhappy love for Julija Primic with his ­ill-​­fated homeland, Slovenia, under Habsburg rule. And as we have seen, Yeats’ ambivalent romanticization of Ireland drew on the poet’s unrequited passion for Maud Gonne, actress and revolutionary nationalist. The psychology of the national poet may be compared with that of political and religious charismatics who overcome personal disabilities and inner divisions by becoming one with the nation.5 Individuals with similar family background, or life crises or comparable emotional problems, may be drawn to one another, even in the absence of verbal communication. Is this principle applicable to the relationship between ­individuals – ​­including national ­poets  – and ​­ groups? The intersection of personal and national pain may stimulate creative instinct, wedded to national hopes. The wounded Self can be regenerated through the Nation. Nationalism can give a damaged personality a sense of belonging to a wider family and, in a few, the gift of transforming mass trauma, alienation, and weakness into a feeling of community and power. The pull of nationalism is often felt most by those whose stable social world has collapsed: ‘­yearning to belong to a durable community, they turn to the transhistorical nation as the only available replacement for the extended family, neighbourhood and religious community’.6 National poets communicate power and unity, warning of the danger of weakness, disintegration and betrayal of national ideals precisely by those (­the religious and political leaders) who should make the nation strong. Loss is no prerequisite for national identification and creativity, yet many national poets suffered severe loss in childhood, as Bialik did. They identify with a wounded, humiliated nation, long for it to be healed and revived and work to rediscover (­or invent) lost national unity. In some cases, poets find their relations with women to be uncannily like the national condition: ‘­To love all, first love one’, writes Ibsen in Brand. In the Bible, marriage (­of the prophets Hosea and Ezekiel, for example) can represent the troubled ‘­marriage’ of God and Israel. Bialik, too, portrays the woman yearned for but emotionally out of reach as an overriding image for the poet’s private failures and those of the Jewish people ­vis- ­​­­à-​­vis their motherland and for the lofty biblical ideals beyond human reach. An irony of modem Jewish history is that Bialik, whom Weizmann called a giant of the Zionist movement, and who was hailed in his lifetime and until the present day as the poet laureate of the Jewish national renaissance, had painfully ambivalent feelings about this ­role – ​­reminiscent of those of biblical charismatic leaders such as Moses and ­Jeremiah – ​­to the point of rejecting it. Instead, he saw himself in the humble role of an artist struggling with his personal agonies.7 Though he appeared in his poetry to be the virtual incarnation of a Biblical prophet (­Maxim Gorky, who read him in

224  Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets Jabotinsky’s Russian translations, called him a ‘­modern Isaiah’), there were times when he cynically dismissed his public role. The poet accuses himself of fraudulence in some of his major poems.8 His friendship with Joseph Klausner, who later became professor of Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University, was undermined by this ambivalence. ‘­As a poet’, Klausner wrote, ‘­Bialik did not take certain ­nationalist-​­Zionist obligations as seriously as I thought was right and proper for him’.9 Indeed, as we have seen, Bialik’s poetry of fierce nationalism is marked with personal trauma. Scroll of Fire, for example, begins with the end of ancient Jewish statehood, the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, but abandons national catastrophe for the ruin of one man, apparently the poet himself, by the fire of passion. The Hebrew reading public tended to overlook the idiosyncratic aspects of Bialik’s art. The lopsided view of him was strengthened by his reputation as a charismatic political and cultural figure. He was one of the most influential Zionist leaders, frequently attending their congresses and going on ­fund-​­raising missions. Political rivals, such as the moderate Chaim Weizmann and the militant Ze’ev Jabotinsky, were agreed in their reverence for Bialik. Bialik was also an important man in Hebrew publishing, and in the field of Jewish education was looked upon as a ­pre-​­eminent authority. He ­co-​­edited the legends and folklore of the Talmud in the mammoth Sefer ­ha-​­Aggadah (­Book of Legends, 1­ 908–​­10), an achievement comparable with what Yeats did for Irish folk literature and myths.10 Together with these activities, Bialik produced some of the loveliest children’s poems in Hebrew, and many of his poems have been set to music. Bialik, in short, had a charismatic appeal to everyone, from distinguished philosophers to small children learning to read Hebrew and to everyone he spoke in his own language.11 Few poets have had such success as servant and spokesman of a nation, the representative of its cultural life and hopes. Yet, Bialik’s poetry rarely expresses hope. City of Slaughter, for example, is known to have inspired Jewish defense groups in East European towns, but the poem itself is pessimistic to the point of despair. Bialik’s mature poetry has little of the Jewish ‘­w ill to live’ for which he is commemorated in the traditional stereotype; we have seen that in many of Bialik’s poems, the opposite is true.12 Bialik’s art, like that of T.S. Eliot, was taken up by a movement which preferred to ­ignore – ​­or remained ignorant ­of – ​­the private, psychological reasons for writing, necessarily giving it instead a predominantly ­socio-​­political interpretation. At the start of the 20th century, the growth of Hebrew literature was unavoidably bound up with the rise of Jewish nationalism, so that a Hebrew writer was generally expected to write about national themes. Though in a remarkably short time, there would be an eruption of Hebrew talent, in the 1890s (­when Bialik began to publish verse), really good Hebrew poetry was scarce. In fact, not long beforehand, Judah Leib Gordon, the leading Haskalah poet, had lamented that he might be the last Hebrew poet. Prior

Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets  225 to Bialik, Hebrew poetry was associated chiefly with the distant past. In a ­ ell-​­known possibly apocryphal joke, Gordon and Heinrich Graetz, author w of History of the Jews (­completed 1871), met in a spa and introduced themselves. Graetz asked Gordon what he did: ‘­I am a Hebrew poet’. Graetz then quipped, ‘­W hen did you live?’ Gordon was afflicted with ­self-­​­­doubt – ‘­ ​­For whom do I toil?’ (­Lemi ani amel) – ​­echoed at times by Bialik in poems of solitude and abandonment. Yet, born 40 years after Gordon, Bialik was part of the ­post-​­1881 ‘­generation of revival’ (­dor ­ha-​­tehiyah). By becoming the first great original artist in modern Hebrew poetry, Bialik automatically became a cultural hero, with accompanying responsibilities. The guilt that these responsibilities brought upon him was exacerbated by his close relationship with Ahad Ha’am, an older man who as the foremost thinker of cultural Zionism was his guiding ideological lodestar, and whom he loved as a father. Ahad Ha’am, worried about the future of Zionism, called Hebrew writers to forgo free creativity and harness their energies to the national cause. Whether Ahad Ha’am’s influence stunted Bialik’s creative growth is debatable; but as a poet, Bialik went his own way, in openly autobiographical confessional lyrics with not a trace of nationalism. Bialik had no ambitions to become a national institution, but this is exactly what happened in his lifetime. He shunned the idea of being celebrated by the people and suffered acute ­self-​­reproach over his status as national poet, feeling it to be undeserved. His first visit to Palestine, in 1909, started a wave of B ­ ialik-​­mania; and to his disgust, he was mobbed by crowds of enthusiasts who saw him as their prophet of revival. The Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook set the tone for his reception, greeting him rapturously in the name of the people: ‘­Sing from now, poet beloved to us, of the salvation of a people and its God, waken your harp. Be filled with the power and beauty to sing for us a song of the land, a song of rebirth’.13 To his wife, Bialik wrote from Jaffa, ‘­The people regard me as someone worthy of respect, but I know that I am a nobody’.14 The international celebration of his 50th birthday in 1923 weighed similarly on his conscience. He wrote at that time, ‘­My spirit is bowed to the dust/­Under the yoke of your love’; and he complained, with bitter humor, that he was used as a coin vulgarly jangling in the national coinbox.15 His view, expressed in work published posthumously, of his poetry as illegitimate offspring, ‘­hybrid children of mixed seed… fruit of harlotry’,16 might, among other things, reflect his guilt at writing personal poetry mistakenly thought to be national. To all appearances, as we have seen, Bialik played the role of national poet to the hilt. His best poetry, written mostly in Odessa in the years 1­ 900–​­11, was ‘­national’ both in its enormous impact upon the Jews and, to some degree, in its intent. His poetic genius and rare knowledge of Hebrew sources, gained through his talmudic education, thrust him in the vanguard of Jewish writers who believed that if the nation was to be resurrected the language would have to be revived. He was adulated accordingly. The emotional climate which he helped to create was a

226  Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets windfall for political Zionism. Many Jews, raised to believe in the holiness of Israel and the Hebrew language, were as much under his spell as under that of Theodor Herzl.

Public poet, private trauma As is often the case among national poets, Bialik’s most deeply personal obsessions might be seen at the root of his identity as national poet. His charismatic appeal can be attributed to aspects of his work, which seem, on the surface, to have the least to do with nationalism. The great blows to Jewish nationhood have traditionally been expressed in imagery of bereavement and in a tone of loss remarkably like that in Bialik’s poetry. Bialik’s longing for his childhood and for his mother (­who while still alive was, nevertheless, out of reach) seems to have corresponded with the national longing for Zion, for the imaginary lost paradise of the nation’s childhood, for a land which, like the mother, still existed, but seemed equally beyond reach. Partly for this reason, he spoke to his ‘­orphaned generation’ with particular conviction. And indeed, national defeat and exile is a form of bereavement, for a bereaved person, especially an orphan deprived of a secure home, knows most intimately the resulting confusions, the instability, and the terrors. In their private lives, the biblical prophets are emblems of national tragedy: the unfaithfulness of Hosea’s wife symbolizes national unfaithfulness; the death of Ezekiel’s wife both represents and is represented by the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Judah in 586 BCE. National calamity in the Bible is also portrayed in images of infertility: the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah is depicted in images of barren fields and vineyards, rotten fruit, leaves, and roots. In Ezekiel, the fall of Judah is related both in imagery of infertility and bereavement: Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard… but the vine was rooted up in fury, hurled to the ground; the east wind dried it; its fruit was stripped, its stem withered; fire ate it.17 Bialik chastens his people in the same language he uses of himself: they are dry as a tree, withered like grass, immobile, useless, rotten from head to foot. One of the persistent themes in Jewish liturgy is the yearning to renew the days gone by, a motif prominent in Bialik’s poetry of childhood. The hope for national renewal for ‘­a new heart and a new spirit’, dates from the time of the exile of the Israelite nation by the ­Babylonians – ​­when it became politically impotent and spiritually an orphan. Bialik occasionally, though

Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets  227 not frequently, identified the nation’s hopes as his own: in one poem, the poet imagines himself cutting out his heart and hammering it, filling it with new strength.18 For the most part, a halo of sadness and pain hovers over Bialik’s work. The hope for the renewal of the ­self – as ​­ of the ­nation – ​­often seems defeated. Yet, at times, Bialik saw more clearly than most the spiritual revival of his people in the land of Israel Over the centuries, the land had become a wasteland, with no topsoil, greenery or trees, a skinless body, a skeleton…. Wherever they went, Jews transformed the land… covering it with grass, vegetation, trees…19 More clearly than most poets, Bialik bears out Lionel Trilling’s contention that ‘­the elements of art are not limited to the world of art… anything we may learn about the artist himself may be enriching and legitimate’.20 Bialik is the principal subject of his poetry, a Romantic tormented by what he had lost in life and could never regain. In l­ife-​­long mourning for his childhood, he spoke meaningfully to a people in perpetual mourning for its lost nationhood. The elegaic tone of his poetry is that of the Jewish people in exile. Bialik’s private agony mirrored national trauma in such an extraordinary way that the two became intertwined and inextricably linked in the poetry.

Notes 1 On charisma and loss, see Aberbach (­1989, 1996). 2 On the sin of slavery as cause of the destruction of the Judean state in 585 BCE, see Jeremiah ch. 34. 3 On Bialik in the context of charisma as a general phenomenon, in literature, politics, and the media, see Aberbach (­1996). On Bialik’s place in the growth of modern nationalism and the emergence of charismatic national poets, see ­Aberbach (­2015). 4 Berlin (­1996: 256). 5 On charisma as an outgrowth of personal trauma, see Aberbach (­1995b, 1996). 6 Smith (­1998: 97). 7 On charismatic phenomena in Jewish history, see Aberbach (­2020). 8 On guilt at being a fraud in Bialik’s poetry, see p. 225. 9 Klausner (­1937: 114). Klausner was the recipient of the Bialik’s first attempt at an autobiography, in 1903 (­Bialik 1937: i ­157–​­73; there were also a number of unsent drafts [Bialik 1971: ­231–​­44]), and it must have been clear to him that Bialik had no ambition to be a ‘­national poet’. The poet made no attempt to disguise that he was more the tormented artist than the public figure. Klausner, Ahad Ha’am, and other cultural Zionists ‘­khapped’ him, or, as Alter (­1969) puts it, ‘­k idnapped’ him (­and Tchernichowsky) for a public role. Yet, Bialik wrote his letter in Kishinev, amid the scenes of slaughter after the pogrom, and evidently unknown to himself, was about to write City of Slaughter, where the rage and yearning afflicting his inner life from childhood would be transformed into a national voice. 10 On Bialik and Yeats as national poets, see ­Chapter 10. 11 The creative genius of aggadah, Jewish legend and folklore, in Bialik’s view is that it speaks to everyone at their own level, according to their understanding (­Bialik 1935: ii 54). Bialik evidently had a similar aim in his own work.

228  Conclusion: damaged archangels and charismatic national poets 12 On depression and suicide in Bialik’s life and writings, see above, pp. 154–8. 13 Ungerfeld (­1974: 259). Bialik’s public image as a poet of national revival extended to his ­non-​­Jewish readers. In ‘­The Backbone Flute’ (­1915), written for his ­Jewish lover, Lily Brik, the Russian poet Mayakovsky (­1961: 29) paid tribute to his Hebrew compatriot: The vision of your bereft countenance rose; Your eyes made it shine on the carpet As if some new Bialik had conjured A dazzling Queen of Hebrew Zion. Mayakovsky revealingly links this hopeful ideal with suicidal thoughts, should the beloved not reciprocate the poet’s love. Oscillation between high ideals and ​­ suicidal ­i mpulses – characterizes ​­ Bialik’s writings. See dark ­despair – including pp. 154, 157, 189, 223 above. 14 Bialik (­1955: 40). 15 Shaha nafshi, 1923. 16 Bialik (­1971: 148). 17 Ezekiel 19: 10, ­12–​­13. 18 Iggeret Ketanah (­A Short Letter, 1894), ­Mi-​­Shire ­ha-​­Horef (­Winter Songs, 1904). The poet compares the return to the land of Israel to reunion with a long lost mother (­Bialik 1935: i 159); and he refers to the revival of the Hebrew language, ‘­blossom, flower, and fruit’ (­ibid., 164). 19 Ibid., ­154–​­5. Already in Man and Nature (­1864), the pioneer environmentalist, George Perkins Marsh, describes the deforestation, neglect, desertification, barrenness, and destruction of the environment in ­Palestine – a​­ s of many other parts of the ­world – ​­over the centuries, ‘­traces of which still meet the traveller’s eye at every step’ (­370). During the ­half-​­century prior to Israeli independence in 1948, archaeological evidence established that in the struggle to avoid desertification and keep the land fertile, human behavior is more important than climate. 20 Trilling (­1970: 61).

Afterword: In memoriam

Most of those instrumental in the growth of this book are long dead; and my acknowledgment of their many kindnesses must take a valedictory form, in which some of the circumstances in which the book evolved might be remembered. This book began life in the period of shock during and after the Yom Kippur war in 1973, when Israel was threatened with destruction by the onslaught of several Arab armies. Hebrew literature with its 3,­000-​­year history, seemed at the time, as it often has, the embodiment of the Jewish will to live, asserting an ancient Jewish cultural/­national identity denied by Israel’s enemies, with roots in the Hebrew Bible in the ancient land of Israel. I came to Oxford in Michaelmas 1975 from a ­well-​­run ­three-​­year B.A. degree in English Literature at University College, London, mostly poetry, from Beowulf taught by Randolph Quirk, via Shakespeare and Milton with Frank Kermode, to T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats, supervised by Stephen Spender, with history of the English language taught by David Crystal, and modern literature by A.S. Byatt. Among teachers of such distinction, it was possible to feel that the UCL English Department was at the center of the world. In the shadow of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the memory of the world wars and the threat of nuclear war, and the ­still-​­recent Holocaust, I took for granted that nothing could be more important in fighting the destructive element in modern history than the healing creativity of literary civilization; though later on it seemed this potent faith, central in ­pre-​­Holocaust Jewish culture as well as humanistic studies, was an anachronistic, even dangerous illusion. My first term at Oxford deflated this lofty literary ideal chaotically. From a quiet, comfortable room looking over a London garden, I found myself in a cramped, noisy room in Brewer Street, off St. Aldates (­somewhat appropriately, though, being located, as I was astonished to find, at the heart of the old ghetto, beside Christ Church college, built over the synagogue ruins after the English Jews were expelled by Edward I in 1290), where my room was adjacent to the building entrance and the communal kitchen, my solitary window opened on to a brick wall, a pay telephone was attached to the wall outside my door, and the temperature was usually too cold or too

230  Afterword: In memoriam hot. I had friends in London, but we went separate ways. Shortly after the Michaelmas term began, my original thesis ­topic – ​­on the influence of the Hebrew Bible on the poetry of Edmund ­Spenser  – ​­was turned down. My supervisor had a stroke and could function effectively neither as supervisor nor as teacher; and sadly he died soon after. In this academic limbo, I was on my own. Yet, these disastrous turns, and the uncertainty and panic which followed, gave me a taste for launching out on my own, directionless and borderless but free, into a variety of fields. The thesis topic I eventually stumbled upon was a comparison of Bialik and Wordsworth: apart from fascinating similarities in their poetry of childhood and Nature, there was shared trauma: both had suffered complete family breakdown by age 7, passing unhappily into the care of grandparents. By the Hilary term 1976, this thesis was approved, with supervision not just in Hebrew (­David Patterson) but also in the English literature (­Francis Warner) and in psychological approaches to literature (­Anthony Storr). I moved to Iffley, where I worked in vastly improved conditions: a large room overlooking a garden and the 1­ 0th-​­century church, and I would cycle to Oxford on the towpath racing the boats on the river. Thanks mainly to David Patterson, founder of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford was a hub of Jewish scholarship. Working on my thesis as a Junior Fellow at the Centre, I came into daily contact with eminent scholars and writers. Isaiah Berlin, a Senior Fellow of the Center, had recently retired from Wolfson College, which he had founded and headed for several years; Isaiah, I heard, had met Bialik when the poet visited London in 1931; and this was how we first got together, but apart from the most recent crises in Israel, the main subject of our c­ onversations –​ w ­ hich continued after I left Oxford, until Isaiah’s death in ­1997– ​­was the relationship between Russian Hebrew culture and the great Russian ­writers – Pushkin, ​­ Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, most of whom I had not read. Isaiah had much respect for Bialik and other Hebrew writers, but the literature that mattered most to him was Russian, and he impressed upon me the importance of reading this literature, not just as background to modern Hebrew literature, but for itself. Oxford attracted distinguished overseas scholars and writers, mostly from Israel and the United States. Among these was the Hebrew novelist, A.B. Yehoshua, who took a particular interest in my work as he was writing his first novel, The Lover, set against the Yom Kippur war, in which Bialik’s poetry is part of the story. Yehoshua read the first draft of my chapter on childhood loss in Bialik and Wordsworth and offered to get it published in Moznayim, the journal of the Hebrew Writers Association in Tel Aviv, which 45 years later has kindly granted permission to reprint it in this book: it appears as Appendix 1, pp. 234-245 below. The poet T. Carmi was visiting Oxford from Jerusalem at the time, editing The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, still the best anthology of Hebrew

Afterword: In memoriam  231 poetry from ancient to modern times. Carmi’s criterion was chiefly aesthetic, so he omitted Haskalah ­poetry – ​­Bialik would have ­disagreed – ​­and worried over which poems by Bialik to include as he was spoiled for choice. His anthology illustrates marvelously a subject of our mutual interest (­and of ­Chapter 4 in this book): the continuous development of Hebrew poetry from ancient to modern times. While doing archival work on Bialik in the National Library in Jerusalem, I met Gershom Scholem, Bialik’s protégé, founder of the modern study of Jewish mysticism, whose work illumines kabbalistic elements in Bialik’s poetry. As Isaiah Berlin was a living link with Jewish life in p ­ re-​­revolutionary Russia, Scholem was a survivor of early 2­ 0th-​­century Germany. I could see at first hand Bialik’s fascination with Scholem as a totally assimilated German Jew who had come to Jewish learning and Zionism against the wishes of his family and had broken with them as he refused to be a German patriot and to serve in the German army in the Great War. I also made contact with Dr. John Bowlby in London, a pioneer of child and adolescent psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic and author of what was to become a major 3­ -​­volume study of attachment and loss; and Mattie Harris, a child psychotherapist in charge of training at the Tavistock Clinic, who lived in Oxford and invited me to take part in a baby observation seminar she ran there. Harris had herself done an English degree at UCL, and she saw my literary background as a source of insight into emotional experience and the unconscious mind. Harris and Bowlby became mentors, encouraging me to train in child psychotherapy at the Tavistock; and Isaiah Berlin covered my fees with grants from his Humanitarian Trust. I trained while working as a nursery nurse for the London Borough of Barnet and writing a book on loss and separation in literature, for which Bowlby wrote the Foreword. I am grateful to Yale University Press for permission to reprint it as Appendix 2, pp. 246-248 below. My interest in the relationship between loss and charisma was later to take me to the LSE Sociology Department, headed by Eileen Barker, a specialist in the sociology of religion, where I wrote a book on Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media and, influenced by Anthony D. Smith, expanded my interest to national poets generally, in National Poetry, Empires and War. ­ uch-​­admired colleagues and collaborators in this area of study were Other m John Hutchinson, Athena Leoussi, and John A. Hall. But I jump ahead. In my graduate work at Oxford, I came to understand that Hebrew literature, even to some extent in its modern, secular forms, is generally more closely allied to moral purpose and political change than most literatures. Concern with social justice, a fundamental principle in the Hebrew Bible, characterized the exiled Jews wherever they lived. Hebrew traditionally shuns depiction of inner reality as pure art, for its own sake, detached from practical ­religious-​­social and psychological aims. The idea that textual meaning and aesthetics are purely subjective is anathema pre-​­ modern Hebrew literature. Among ancient distinctions between to ­

232  Afterword: In memoriam Hebraic and Greek civilizations is the rejection of aestheticism in Judaism: a beautiful object should be appreciated not simply because it is beautiful but because it has moral power, testifies to the grandeur of divine Creation, and teaches a more rewarding spiritual life. A literary work should change the ­reader – ​­for the better. Bialik was a prime example of a poet who made things happen and changed people’s lives. Looking back nearly a ­half-​­century, I can see I was indeed drawn to teachers such as Kermode, Ellmann, and Storr (­and later John Carey), who saw literature not just as a reflection of social and political change but as an instrument of change. In his biographies of Yeats and Joyce, Ellmann showed that the art could not be separated from the artist; and he had no doubt that in the case of Bialik, too, the life and work were intertwined, and a source of fascination. Though my thesis progressed, it seemed to outrun my capabilities. Bialik was at the intersection of many cultural and social forces, which I did not fully understand: Zionism and European literature, the Romantic and the Modern, the world of faith and of secular assimilation. Bialik was a Russian Jew and I knew little about Russian Jewish history; Bialik was a Hebrew poet in Russia, and I knew little about Hebrew literature in Russia, and elsewhere; Bialik drew on the ­full-​­range of Hebrew language in its 3,­000-​ y­ ear history, but my knowledge of the history of the language was weak; Bialik was a national poet, and I knew little about nationalism and national poetry; Bialik had charismatic appeal, but I could not explain what this meant and why it was important; Bialik was the poet of an increasingly impoverished, persecuted people, and I knew little of poverty and of ­anti-​ ­Semitism. And about childhood bereavement, which Bialik so movingly portrays, what did I know? My graduate years at Oxford were the last moment before personal computers and word processors, and I would paste and edit drafts of my thesis in a ­loose-​­leaf photograph album, and type it up on a portable Olivetti bought by my mother with green stamps in Baltimore. To no avail. The many rewritings I did over the next decade were all turned down, dozens of times in all. I could paper a f­ air-​­sized room with rejection letters. For many years after, I quarried the thesis, breaking it down into a sein Hebrew), in Midstream, Encounter, ries of articles, after Moznayim (­ Prooftexts, International Review of ­Psycho-​­Analysis, Hebrew Union College Annual, and, later, Nations and Nationalism, but was unable to put it back together again as a coherent scholarly work. Commissioned out of the blue by Peter Halban, on the strength of the article in Encounter (­then the most prominent literary/­political journal in England), to write a short popular book on Bialik to launch his Jewish Thinkers series in 1988, I gave up the struggle with the scholarly work I had tried for so long and failed to write. Fifty years later, I revisit the seemingly incoherent fragments long ­past –​ a­ nd the ghost of my 2­ 2-­​­­year-​­old self. The Oxford thesis survives at the core of this book, particularly the recognition of childhood trauma as a driving

Afterword: In memoriam  233 force in Bialik’s creativity, but with better understanding of the literary and historical background, in Europe and especially in Russia, as well as the literature of loss, of charisma, of nationalism, of poverty, and of the environment: subjects of separate books, which inadvertently prepared me to write this book. Throughout my work, I had the loving support of my wife, Mimi, whom I met while writing my Oxford thesis, and to whom this book is dedicated, and our children, Gabriella, Shulamit, and Jessica; and for their practical help in guiding this book to publication, I thank the Routledge editorial ­team – ​­Euan ­Rice-​­Coats, ­Ann-​­Kathrin Klein, S. Karthikeyan, Joe Whiting, and above all, Oliver Leaman. The book evolved in tandem with courses I taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and Cornell University in ­1982–​­6 and at McGill University from 1986 to 2022, which helped clarify my thinking on texts I used, in which Bialik was often included, both in Hebrew and in translation. I had the privilege of developing over a dozen courses with a wide variety of topics and a curriculum of what Goethe called Weltliteratur, literature from many countries with lasting humanistic significance. Above all, I valued the freedom I had during my years at McGill to discuss the texts in this book in depth with my students, and it is chiefly for them, and future generations of students, that the book is written finally, in gratitude. January 9, 2023

Appendix 1

Bialik and Wordsworth: the poetry of childhood (Hebrew)1

Appendix 1  235

236  Appendix 1

Appendix 1  237

238  Appendix 1

Appendix 1  239

240  Appendix 1

Appendix 1  241

242  Appendix 1

Appendix 1  243

244  Appendix 1

Appendix 1  245

Note 1 This article was originally published in Moznayim in 1977.

Appendix 2

John Bowlby, Foreword to David Aberbach, Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis1

The first task for a psychotherapist is to see the world through the eyes of the person he is trying to help, to put himself into the other’s shoes. Only then can he hope to share, if only in small measure, the problems of his patient or to understand why he thinks and feels as he does. The reason is clear. Our own outlook has been shaped by that unique pattern of family relationships that we happen to have encountered during our life, not least during the early years, whereas our patient’s outlook has been shaped by some other equally unique pattern. Although sometimes there is overlap between the patterns, more often they are quite different, perhaps to an extreme degree. Those fortunate enough to have lived their years of childhood and adolescence in a stable and reasonably happy family will find it difficult to imagine what it is like to grow up amid the distorted or hostile relationships that occur in some families or amid the emotional devastation of others. Similarly, someone who has had experience of one version of distorted relationships will find it difficult to imagine what it is like to have experienced some other version. Each of us sees the world through his own private spectacles and finds it hard to believe other peoples’ spectacles are not the same. Hitherto the clinical literature has not been very helpful. Much of it is empty of relevant accounts; and, even when a clinician recognizes the need to record the world his patient lives in, too frequently his pen is not equal to the task. This is where the artist scores. As a person whose primary task it is to describe what it feels like to be in some carefully defined human situation, he has both the time and the skill to recreate the situation and to tell us how one person was affected by ­it — how ​­ he thought and felt at the time, how he acted, how he extricated himself or failed to extricate himself, and how perhaps it permanently altered his ways of thinking and feeling about other people. Whether in prose or poetry, the great names in literature are those who are able to give us insight into the worlds of other human beings, as well perhaps as into our own. Nevertheless, complementary though the study of literature is to the study of personality development and psychotherapy, few in either field

Appendix 2  247 are ­well-​­versed in the other, whilst systematic efforts to bridge the divide are fewer still. The work of the Scottish psychologist Alexander Shand in The Foundations of Character first published in 1914 remains a conspicuous exception. Seeking to understand the emotional roots of human personality, Shand drew on the work of British poets and French prose writers, and in doing so wrote a remarkably insightful chapter on grief and mourning. It was reading this chapter many years ago when I was first working on the psychological processes following separation and loss that led me to realize that a disbelief that death has occurred and an urge to search for and recover the lost person are integral features of normal mourning. Since this profound truth had hitherto escaped clinicians, the field of psychology and psychotherapy are thus deeply indebted to literature. David Aberbach’s book, I believe, will go a long way towards repaying that debt. Deeply steeped in literature of many and diverse kinds, he is familiar also with the findings of current clinical studies of how human beings, both young and old, are affected by separation and loss, and with the different circumstances that either mitigate the adverse effects or else aggravate them. Thus equipped, he is able to show how varied is the creative writing that has been influenced by l­oss — the ​­ loss of a parent during childhood or adolescence, the loss of a spouse, the loss of a brother or sister, or the loss of a c­ hild — and ​­ also how devastating can be the effects of mass disasters, of which in living memory none compare to the Holocaust. Creative writing, he points out, can attempt many t­ hings — to ​­ express feelings that are almost inexpressible, to understand what is almost unintelligible, to accept what is at the limit of the bearable, or to restore in symbolic form what cannot be restored in another way. Even in its expression of despair creative writing expresses a search for a way forward. For some readers the chapters tracing the effects of loss on the ideas expressed by ­well-​­known philosophers and mystics will hold special interest. As the author points out, even if the ideas themselves were not born of loss, the tendency of those who have suffered loss to emphasize certain ideas in preference to others can hardly be due to chance. Another chapter with broad social implications is the one in which light is thrown on the personal backgrounds of those whom circumstances throw up to become charismatic characters. For many readers, including clinicians, the results of Aberbach’s researches will provide a revealing insight, not readily available elsewhere, into how deeply, how adversely, and for how long a time, a human being can be affected by the loss of parental care during childhood or adolescence. In the examples quoted one author after another records either explicitly or implicitly, but always vividly and movingly, his personal experiences. For those who have themselves sustained a loss, to read of the experience of others may be of help, if only by the assurance that they are

248  Appendix 2 not alone in how they think and feel. For those more fortunate reading this book may give a glimpse of how the world looks through another’s spectacles.

Note 1 This foreword, written by John Bowlby, was originally published in David ­Aberbach’s Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis (­Yale University Press, 1989).

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Bialik’s Life and Character

Note: Bold denotes a quote or significant passage. Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes absent-minded 190 aggadah, use of 117–32 Ahad Ha’am, influence of 20n44, 31f., 40n13, 207, 213, 225 anti-Semitism 7–12, 59, 96–8, 114n10, 135–6; see also ‘Poems of Wrath’

Habimah 203 Hebrew University, governor 124, 183n8, 203 Hebrew Writers Union (Tel Aviv), founder 203 Homburg 124

Berlin 6, 94, 101, 105–06, 123 birth (1873) near Zhitomir 122

Ira Jan, relationship with 121, 131n11 Israel, land of, visits (1909) 215, 225; Tel Aviv home (1925–1934) 203

charisma 20n41, 227, 231, 233 childhood 6, 16f., 119–20, 122f., 125, 153–4, 157, 167–8, 181; wildness 154, 175n5 childlessness, parallels in T.S. Eliot 185–201; love for children 186–7, 198n6 conscription, evasion of 96 death (1934) 6, 112, 146, 159, 188, 190, 210; funeral 220n36 editor 17, 224; kinnus (ingathering) 3, 15, 18n11, 20n43, 50, 54, 94, 122, 124, 188, 197, 203, 209; Sefer ha-Aggadah (with Ravnitzky) 117, 183n8, 224 father 6, 8, 15, 106, 119, 120, 153, 154, 159, 165, 167–8, 174–5, 181, 182, 183n9, 220n30, 221, 222 fund-raising 219n3, 224 Gordon, admiration for 52n14, 115n31 grandfather 6, 153–4, 167–8, 174n3, 175n4, 175n5

Kishinev, visit (1903) 11, 114n10 London, visit (1931) 230 loss and grief 6, 15, 119, 125, 128, 131n11, 153f., 157, 159f., 164f., 167–8, 174, 182, 190, 217, 221, 223, 226 marriage 175n5, 190–3, 198n6, 199n14, 199n27 Mendele, disciple of 1, 16, 19n19, 20n44, 29–30, 40n18, 74, 117, 122, 125f. mother, separation from 6, 15, 119, 120, 128, 131n11, 153–4, 157, 159–60, 165–8, 174, 174n3, 182, 190, 217, 221, 226; calls wife ‘Mother’ 190; last years with poet in Odessa 157, 175n16 national poet 1ff., 203, 225–6; reluctance 204; unworthiness, sense of 157, 198–9n6, 225 ‘new Isaiah’ (Gorky) 4 New York, visit (1926) 219n3

260  Bialik’s Life and Character Odessa, teacher in 187; in 1905 revolution 121; pogrom (1905) 33 orphanhood 125, 154, 167–8, 190, 204; parallels with Wordsworth et al. 152–78

Tchernichowsky, compared with as Russian-Hebrew poet 94–116 Tsarist empire, as national poet in 43–53

poverty, experience of 154, 167 publisher 123, 124

Ukrainian landscape in poetry 14, 122–3 United States, meets Coolidge 219n3

rages 180; in writing City of Slaughter 227n9 relatives, detested 153, 174–5, 182, 184n12 Romantic poet 152–78 Russian-Jewish poet 21–53 Scholem, relationship with 124, 231 screen memories, and Freud 179–84 shtika (silence) 41n58, 93n29, 176n17 Soviet Union, escape (1921) 6; brotherin-law Jan Gamarnik 199n27 suicidal 41n58, 52n17, 95, 154, 157, 175n5, 189, 213, 228n13

vulgarity 174n2 wife, Manya 190–1 Wordsworth, compared with as Romantic poet 152–78 Yeats, compared with as national poet 202–20 Yiddish, vernacular 1–2, 124 Zionist congresses, responses to 220n30, 224; 1897 14, 213; 1931 151n54

Bialik’s Works

Aggadat Shlosha ve-Arba’a (The Legend of Three and Four, 1929) 131n10, 182 Ahare moti (After my death, 1904) 188 Akhen Hatzir ha-Am (Surely the people is grass, 1897) 211 Akhen gam zeh musar Elohim (This too is the sweeping scourge, 1904) 27–8, 31–2, 41n50, 118 Al ha-Shehitah, (‘On the Slaughter’, 1903) 20n41, 59, 97, 114n10, 135, 149n6, 211 Aluf Batzlut ve-Aluf Shum (Knight of Onions and Knight of Garlic, 1923, 1927) 51n7 Al levavkhem she-Shamem (On your desolate hearts, 1897) 213, 220n30 Almenut (Widowhood, 1933) 154, 167 Arvit (Dusk, 1908) 155 Arye Baal Guf (Tough Arye, 1898) 95 Avi (My Father, 1928) 125, 154, 167, 220n30 Avim Hoshrim (Clouds darken, 1932) 200n43 Ayekh? (Where are you? 1906) 169, 177n67 Bar-Kokhba see En zot ki rabat tzerartanu Ba-Sadeh (In the field, 1894) 163 Be-Ginat ha-Yarak (In the Vegetable Garden, 1933) 200n43 Be-Ir ha-Haregah (City of Slaughter, 1903) 8, 9–12, 16, 19n28, 29, 52n17, 98, 114n10, 134, 135, 136, 148, 148n4, 149n15, 211, 213, 224, 227n9 Be-Yom stav (On an autumn day, 1897) 167 Birkhat Am (Blessing of the People, 1894) 220n29

Davar (The Burden, 1904) 7–9, 51n7, 175n11 Dimah Ne’emanah (Faithful Tear, 1894) 215 El ha-Arye ha-Met (To the Dead Lion, 1892) 51n7, 52n14 El ha-Tzippor (To the Bird, 1892) 92–3 En zot ki rabat tzerartunu (Nothing but your fierce hounding, 1899) 96, 135 Gam be-Hitaroto le-Eynykhem (Even when he reveals himself, 1931) 188–89 Gesisat Holeh (Dying Man, 1890?) 199n32 Giluy ve-Khisuy be-Lashon (Revelation and Concealment in Language, 1915) 188, 201n57 Givole eshtaked (Last-Year’s stalks, 1903) 165–6, 192–3, 199n37 Ha-Brekha (The Pool, 1904) 16–17, 159, 163, 164, 165, 176n28, 210 Ha-Eynayim ha-re’evot (Hungry eyes, 1897) 103, 199n32 Ha-Hatzotzra Nitbaysha (The Shamed Trumpet, 1915) 148n2 Halakhah ve-Aggadah (Halakhah and Aggadah, 1915) 130n1 Halayla aravti (Outside in the Dark, 1900/1) 191–2 Halfa at panai (Your spirit passed, 1916) 188 Ha-Matmid (The Talmud Student, 1896/7) 104, 131n25, 197 Ha-Sefer ha-Ivri (Hebrew literature through the ages, 1913) 20n43 Hem mitna’arim me’afar (They shake the dust, 1907) 155, 220n30

262  Bialik’s Works Hetzitz va-Met (He looked and died, 1915) 18n9, 201n57 Hirhure Laila (Night meditations, 1894) 11, 165 Holekhet at me-imi (You’re leaving me, 1907) 131n11 Hoze, lekh brakh (Prophet, run away, 1908) 7 Iggeret Ketanah (A short letter, 1894) 41, 213 Im dimdume ha-hamah (At twilight, 1902) 118, 186, 199n33 Im yesh et nafshekha la-da’at (If you want to know, 1896) 114n11 Kiru la-Nechashim (Summon the sorcerers, 1906) 195 La-Mnatze’ah al ha-Meholot (Totentanz, 1915) 115n25 Lifne Aron ha-Sefarim (Before the Bookcase, 1911) 157, 197 Li-Netivekh ha-ne’elam (In your vanished traces, 1907) 131n11 Manginah le-ahavah (A song to love, 1893) 191 Me-Ahore ha-Gader (Behind the Fence, 1909) 166 Megillat ha-Esh (Scroll of Fire, 1905) 8, 16, 44, 51n7, 86, 91n3, 117, 119–21, 131n10, 175n5, 182, 183n8, 183n11, 195, 198n14, 199n32, 200n49, 204, 215, 216–7, 224 Megillat Orpah (Orpah’s story, 1926) 186 Mete Midbar (Dead of the Desert, 1902) 44, 114n14, 118–19, 163, 195 Mi ani u-ma ani (Who am I? 1911) 157–8, 93n29 Mikhtav katan li katva (She wrote me a short letter, 1896/7) 191 Mikra’e Tziyon (On the First Zionist Congress, 1897) 220n30 Mi-Shire ha-Horef (Winter Songs, 1904) 51n5, 228n11 Mi-Shire Kayitz (Summer songs, 1896) 163 Predah (Separation, 1934) 167–8

Re’itkhem shuv be-kotzer yedchem (You see again your powerlessness, 1931) 151n54, 220n30 Safiah (Aftergrowth, 1903–23) 41n43, 117, 121–5, 159, 160, 162, 180–2, 182n5, 164–7, 200n46 Sefer Bereshit (The book of Genesis, 1927/8) 185–6 Sefer ha-Aggadah (Book of Legends, 1908) 117, 183n8, 224 Shaha nafshi (My spirit is bowed, 1923) 198n14, 215, 220n30, 225 Shirat Yisrael (Jewish song, 1894) 96 Shiratenu ha-tze’ira (Modern Hebrew poetry, 1907) 189 Shirati (My Poetry, 1901) 154, 167 Shire Am (Folk Songs) 51n7 Shire Za’am (Poems of Wrath, 1903–06) 5, 7–12, 34–5, 45, 51n7, 97, 110, 133–4, 135–6, 145, 148, 211, 219n22 Shir ha-Avodah veha-Melakha (Work Song, 1932) 111 Shirim u-Fizmonot li-Ladim (Poems and Songs for Children, 1933) 1, 51n7, 188 Shiva (Mourning, 1933) 167 Tzanah lo zalzal (Like a fallen branch, 1911) 194, 200n43 Va-Yhi ha-Yom (And It Came to Pass, 1934) 44, 185–6 Ve-Haya ki timtze’u (Scroll in the Dust, 1910) 168–9 Ve haya ki ya’arikhu ha-yamim (And it shall be when days grow long, 1908) 155–56, 175n14 Vi-Yhi mi ha-ish (Whoever be the man, 1911) 159 Yadati be-lel arafel (I know on a foggy night, 1906) 34–5, 145, 149n6 Yam ha-demama polet sodot (The sea of quiet spits secrets, 1901) 217 Yatmut (Orphanhood, 1928–34) 125, 154, 167 Yenaser lo ki-levavo (Let him saw, 1926) 165–6, 176n27

General Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes ‘The Abandoned One’ (Neruda) 173–4 Abbey Theater (Dublin) 203, 214, 216, 218 Achimeir, Abba 151n44 Aelia Capitolina 84; see also Jerusalem Africa 8, 24, 57, 68, 70n8, 112 aggadah 14, 16, 17, 18n10, 31n50, 86–7, 98–9, 117–32, 175n4, 183n8, 185–6, 224, 227n11 Agnon, S.J. 117, 124, 124, 128–30 Agricultural Cooperative Society (Ireland) 203 Ahad Ha’am 16, 19n21, 20n44, 24, 27, 29, 30–2, 38, 40n13, 124, 207, 213, 217, 220n30, 225, 227n9 Akiva, Rabbi 83, 86–7, 101 À la recherche du temps perdu (Proust) 1, 5 Albania 20n43, 54, 150n37 Alexander I, Tsar 53n34 Alexander II, Tsar 5, 7, 21, 23, 25, 26, 36, 39n3, 96 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll) 200n42 ‘Alien to your people’ (Tchernichowsky) 104 aliyah 6, 7, 14, 23, 24, 91 Alkabetz, Solomon Halevi 90 Alkalai, Rabbi Yehuda 31, 50–1 Ammon 57 ‘Among School Children’ (Yeats) 203 Amos, biblical prophet 7, 55, 59, 62, 175n14 Anacreon 106 Ansky, S. 36, 41n62 anti-Semitism 1, 5, 7, 15, 22, 23, 24–30, 32, 35–9, 50, 69, 90–1, 95, 96, 112,

130, 133–51, 183n8, 207, 208, 215; see also Damascus blood libel; pogroms ‘Apollo’ (Tchernichowsky) 108, 109, 116n44 ‘The Apollo God’ (Heine) 116n43 Arabia 118–19, 146, 150n16 Armenia 10, 43–4, 56, 63, 222 ‘The Armenian Grief’ (Toumanian) 44 Arnim, Achim von 54 Arwidsson, A. I. 52n29 Asherah 108, 116n45 Ash Wednesday (T.S. Eliot) 188, 195, 197, 198 ‘As I Ebb’d With the Ocean of Life’ (Whitman) 171–2 Assyria 52n20, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 75, 78 Astarte 108, 109–10, 116n45, 139 Athens 71n27 Aufklärung 18n11; see also Enlightenment; Haskalah Aurélia (Nerval) 120 Austria 27, 37, 49 Autoemancipation (Pinsker 1882) 27, 29 Avodah Zara 114n13 ‘Awakening’ (Babel) 126–7 Baal 81 Baal Shem Tov 161, 177n45 Babel, Isaac 12, 33–4, 38, 95, 126–7 Babylonia 52n20, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 75, 77–9, 81–2, 86, 92n4, 189, 226 ‘The Backbone Flute’ (Mayakovsky) 228n13 Balfour Declaration (1917) 121, 144, 150n37, 215 Balkans 45, 50

264  General Index Ballads of Worms (Tchernichowsky) 112–13 ‘A Band of Soldiers’ (Tchernichowsky) 100–1, 115n19, 115n20 Barbour, John 72n54 Bar-Kokhba 12, 84, 96, 101, 146, 208, 211, 219n14 Bar-Kokhba (Nothing but your fierce hounding) 96, 113n7, 211 ‘Baruch of Mainz’ (Tchernichowsky) 95, 98, 136 Bava Batra 114n14, 119, 126, 130n5 Bayreuth 209 Beilis, Mendel 38, 41n50 Belinsky, Vissarion 48 Belorussia 23 Ben Ami, Mordekai 33, 187 Ben Gurion, David 146, 150–1n39, 217 Benjamin, Walter 19n27 Benya Krik (Babel) 95, 113n3 Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer 31, 51 Berachot 87, 127 Berdichev 2, 177n67 Berdichevsky, Micah Josef 54 Berlin 6, 94, 101, 105, 106, 123, 124 Berlin, Isaiah 39, 222, 230, 231 Be-Seter Ra’am (In the Secret Place of Thunder) (Mendele) 5 Betar 138 Bethlehem 90, 115n20 Beth Shean 112, 114n19 bet midrash 6, 15 Bharati, Subramania 19n18, 117, 222 Bialik, Manya 175n5, 190–1, 198n6, 199n14, 199n27 Bikurim (First Fruits festival) 84; see also Mishna Bilozerski, Vassily 49 Bismarck, Otto von 31 Biographia Literaria (Coleridge) 67 Black Hundreds 26 Blake, William 12, 54, 68, 139, 193, 199n37 Bloch, Joseph Samuel 27 Book of Common Prayer 65–6, 72n49 Borisov brothers 49 Botev, Hristo 13, 18n11, 51, 94, 141, 152 Bowlby, John 231, 246–8 Brand (Ibsen) 223 Brenner, Joseph Chaim 28, 38, 138, 149n11 Brentano, Clemens 54 Briullov, Karl 53n34

‘The Bronze Horseman’ (Pushkin) 43 Brotherhood of Cyril and Methodius 49 The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky) 181 The Bruce (Barbour) 72n54 Buber, Martin 149n15 Bubionny, Semion 38 Bukharin, Nikolai 38 Brontë, Emily 170–1 Bulgaria 18n11, 51, 94, 150n37 The Bund (General Jewish Labor Bund) 35, 36 The Buried Candelabrum (Zweig) 5 Burla, Yehuda 149n16 Burns, Robert 5, 19n18, 67, 117, 222 Byron, Lord George 13, 19n18, 51, 69, 72n42, 94, 114–15, 117, 152, 170, 222 Cadets (Russian Liberal Constitutional Democratic Party) 35, 37 Cahan, Ya’akov 149n9 Camus, Albert 112, 173, 177n75 Canaanites (Tchernichowsky) 98, 107, 109, 119 Carroll, Lewis 200n42 Carson, Rachel 200n50 Catherine II, Russian empress 23 Cathleen ni Houlihan (Yeats) 210, 212 Chatterton, Thomas 176n23 Chaucer, Geoffrey 66 Chekhov, Anton 194–5, 37 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Byron) 170 ‘Childish Recollections’ (Byron) 222 children’s poems 1, 15, 16, 51n7, 188, 198n7, 200n43, 218 ‘chosen peoples’ 56, 59, 70n4, 205 Christianity and the Church 3, 21, 23, 44, 45, 55, 57, 62, 63, 69, 70n5, 90, 116n45, 134, 143, 144, 206, 209; conversion to 3, 21, 23, 26, 63, 69, 133; supersession of Judaism 3, 4, 68–9, 90; see also anti-Semitism Chulkov, Mikhail 54 Church of Rome 65, 67 Clemenceau, Georges 28 The Cocktail Party (T.S. Eliot) 201n54 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 67, 176n23, 177n74, 221–2 Confessions of a Murderer (Joseph Roth) 37 The Confidential Clerk (T.S. Eliot) 186 Conrad, Joseph 2, 18n9 Constitutions of Oxford (1407–09) 65

General Index  265 ‘Coole Park and Balleylee, 1931’ (Yeats) 208 ‘Coole Park, 1929’ (Yeats) 216 Coolidge, Calvin 219n3 Cossacks 38, 48, 98 Countess Cathleen (Yeats) 210, 212 Coverdale, Miles 65 Crimean War (1853–6) 25 The Criterion 19n21, 188 Cromwell, Oliver 66 Cuchulain 208, 209, 210, 219n14 Culloden, battle (1746) 222 Cyprus 59 Cyrus, King 75, 78, 82 Damascus blood libel (1840) 5; see also anti-Semitism ‘Damon the Mower’ (Marvell) 199n37 ‘The Dance’ (Siamanto) 10 Daniel Deronda (George Eliot) 31 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 102, 138, 139, 222 Dante 183n10, 201n56 Darwin, Charles 158, 206 Das Lied von der Erde (Mahler) 125 Das Neue Ghetto (Herzl) 183n8 Daughter of Slava (Kollar) 49–50, 223 Davar (Hebrew newspaper) 143 David, King 44, 185 Dejection Ode (Coleridge) 177n74, 222 Denmark 4 De Quincey, Thomas 170 The Devils (Dostoyevsky) 25 Dickens, Charles 153, 171 Döblin, Arnold 124 Dr. Zhivago (Pasternak, 1957) 39 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 25, 181 ‘A Dream’ (Shevchenko) 52n23 Dreyfus, Alfred 5, 28 Dublin 206, 207, 214, 215, 218 Dublin Hermetic Society 206 Dubnow, Simon 176n19 Dühring, Eugen 27 Dunash ben Labrat 88 Dunbar, battle (1650) 72n54 Dvir 123, 124 The Dybbuk (Ansky) 36, 41n62 ‘Eagle! Eagle!’ (Tchernichowsky) 99 ‘Earthly Jerusalem’ (Greenberg) 142 East Coker (T.S. Eliot) 188 Eden 16, 25, 82, 162, 196 Edict of Return (538 BCE) 78, 82; see also Cyrus

Edom 101, 111, 115n20, 142–3, 145, 146, 151n41 Edward VI 66 ‘Eeldrop and Appleplex’ (T.S. Eliot) 201n54 Egypt 12, 13, 19n32, 41n50, 56–7, 59, 60, 64, 72n54, 73n66, 77, 108, 118, 135, 149n12, 150n16, 183n8 Ehrenburg, Ilya 39 Eighteen Benedictions 85 Elam 57 The Elder Statesman (T.S. Eliot) 186 Eleazar ben Yair 146 Elijah, prophet 17, 60, 86, 87, 127, 128–9, 131n9, 176n28 Eliot, George 31 Eliot, T.S. 2, 19n21, 68, 185–201, 224, 229 Eliot, Valerie 187 Elizabeth I 66–7 Elka’s Wedding (Tchernichowsky) 107, 124 emancipation, Jewish 4, 7, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29–30, 32, 69, 121, 133, 134, 137 emancipation of serfs, Russia (1861) 21, 25, 23, 50 emigration of Russian Jews 1, 4, 14, 25, 27, 28, 30, 33, 38, 134, 135 Eminescu, Mihai 18n11 En Dor 100, 115n20 ‘End-Poem’ (Greenberg) 139, 147 English Revolution 66 Enlightenment 2, 3, 6, 15, 18n11, 22, 23, 27, 37, 64, 68–9, 134; see also Haskalah Epstein, Yitzhak 149–50 Erasmus 63 ‘Escape to the Mountain’ (Imber) 27 Ethiopia 59, 63 Eugene Onegin (Pushkin) 52n23 exile 1, 3, 6, 15, 28, 54, 118, 122, 153; see also galut ‘Exode’ (Spire) 12 Ezekiel, prophet 61–2, 74, 82, 110, 189, 223, 226 Ezor Magen u-Ne’um Ben ha-Dam (Defensive Shield and the Word of the Son of Blood) (Greenberg) 5, 148n4 Ezra, Moses ibn 17, 49 The Faerie Queene (Spenser) 67, 199n37 The Family Reunion (T.S. Eliot) 197, 201n54 ‘Fears in Solitude’ (Coleridge) 221–2 Ferguson, Samuel 209

266  General Index Fichman, Jacob 187 Fikret, Tevfik 19n18, 107, 117 Finland 5, 6, 25, 43, 46, 47–8, 54, 117 Fischof, Adolf 26 Fishta, Gjergj 107 folk poems 1, 16, 51n7, 203 The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (Werfel) 5 Four Quartets (T.S. Eliot) 188, 195 France 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 37, 46, 47, 64, 69, 137, 216 Frankenstein (Shelley) 199n38 Freiburg 180 French Revolution 43, 45, 49, 64, 69, 91, 137, 151n44, 221 Freud, Sigmund 179–84 Freud, Tom 183n8 Frost, Robert 190 Gabirol, Solomon ibn 17 Gaelic League 207, 210, 214, 220n31 Galilee 17, 84, 108, 116n41, 122 galut (exile) 1, 2, 28, 94 Gamarnik, Jan (Ya’akov) 199n27 Garden of Adonis (Spenser) 199n37 ‘Garden of Love’ (Blake) 199n37 Garibaldi, Guiseppe 64 Genesis 13, 20n46, 92n4, 92n6, 123, 126, 147, 191 Geneva Bible (1560) 66, 72n51 Germany 19n27, 30, 31, 37, 40n23, 65, 70n6, 102, 111, 118, 123, 137, 144, 146, 149n14, 149n15, 203 Gertler, Mark 115n25 Gibran, Khalil 13, 107 Gilbert, W.S. 72n42 Gilboa, Mount 100, 115n19, 115n20 Gilgamesh, Epic of 106 Gittin 114n10, 120, 183n8 Gnessin, Uri Nissan 28, 37–8 ‘God-full Night’ (Tchernichowsky) 108–09 Gökalp, Ziya 4 Gonne, Maud 203, 212, 223 Goral l’Adonai (Alkalai) 50 Gordon, Aharon David 142 Gordon, Judah Leib 52n14, 91, 97, 104, 115n31, 134, 135, 150n35, 224–5 Gorky, Maxim 4, 111, 123 Graetz, Heinrich 18n11, 27, 225 Graham, Kenneth 172 Great Expectations (Dickens) 171 Great Famine (Ireland) 205 ‘Great Hallel’ (Psalms 136) 77 Greece 18n11, 73n27, 54, 150n37

Greek War of Independence 52n19 Greenberg, Uri Zvi 5, 41n43, 91, 95, 97, 102, 116n44, 134, 138–148 Gregory, Lady Isabella Augusta 209, 214, 216 Grundtvig, N.F.S. 4 Guernica 10 Gundulic, Ivan 45, 52n9 Gutenberg, Johannes 63 Habimah 41–2, 203 Hacohen, Israel Meir (Chofetz Chaim) 39n3 Hagigah 201n57 Hallel 77, 131n9 Halevi, Judah 45, 68, 88–9, 92n27, 93n31, 93n32, 94 Hanina ben Teradion 99 Hanka, Vaclav 49 Ha-Poel ha-Tzair 143 Hardy, Thomas 194 Ha-Shachar 29 Ha-Shiloah 19n21 Hatikvah (Imber) 27, 137, 149n13 Hasidism 123, 131n16, 162, 177n45 Haskalah 3, 4, 6, 16, 18n11, 18n14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 37, 39n8, 46, 50, 51n7, 52n14, 96–7, 104, 132n25, 135, 224; see also Enlightenment ‘Hate-Song for England’ (Lissauer) 137 Heart of Darkness (Conrad) 18n9 Hebrew Bible 3, 4, 12–13, 18n11, 51, 54–73, 74, 75, 89, 92n4, 92n6, 107, 133, 146, 149n13, 183n8, 189, 201n56, 208, 229, 231; see also Scripture Hebrew Melodies (Byron) 67–8 Hebrew Melodies (Heine) 93n31 Hebrew University 114n9, 124, 183n8, 203, 224 Hebrew Writers Union (Tel Aviv) 203 Hebron massacre (1929) 115n19, 142–3 heder 6, 21–2, 122, 127, 130, 175n4 Heine, Heinrich 5, 24, 93n31, 106, 115n36, 116n43, 131n15 Hellenism 116n44, 141, 150n26 Helsingfors (Helsinki) 32 Henry VIII 63, 65, 66 Herder, Johann von 4, 49, 179, 209 Herkel, Jan 49 Hermon, Mount 89, 108, 116n41 Herzl, Theodor 8, 10, 14, 24, 27, 28, 31, 40n13, 50, 69, 91, 95, 106, 150n18, 152, 183n8, 203, 215, 220n30, 220n36, 226

General Index  267 Hess, Moses 24, 31 ‘He Told Her’ (Brenner) 149n11 Hibbat Zion (Love of Zion) 23 ‘Hill of Corpses in the Snow’ (Greenberg) 147 History of Ireland (O’Grady) 207 History of the Jews (Graetz) 225 Hitler, Adolf 5, 19n27, 30, 112, 136–7, 146 The Holocaust 6, 10, 27, 32, 70n5, 91, 100, 112, 114n9, 133, 138, 139, 143, 147, 207, 219n22, 229, 247; warnings 24–6, 133–51 Holy Land 7, 74, 75, 88, 131n15; see also Israel ‘Hooligans’ (Cahan) 149n9 Hosea, prophet 61, 139, 189–90, 223, 226 Hoveve Zion (Lovers of Zion) 29 Hussein, Emir Feisal ibn 144 Hutchinson, Sara 222 Hyde, Douglas 4, 207, 209 Ibsen, Henrik 13, 107, 223 Ignatiev, Nicolai Pavlovich 26 ‘I have nothing’ (Tchernichowsky) 110 ‘I laid me down upon a bank’ (Blake) 199n37 The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud) 183n5, 183n8 Iqbal, Muhammed 107 The Iliad (Homer) 102 Ilil 108, 110 In Memoriam (Tennyson) 171, 189 ‘I love to wander’ (Tchernichowsky) 111–12, 116n51 Imber, Naphtali Herz 27, 149n13 Immortality Ode (Wordsworth) 159, 161, 163, 164 In Those Days (Mendele) 126–8, 131n23 Iorga, Nicolae 18n11 Iraq 149n12, 150n16 Ireland 4, 5, 53n41, 54, 67, 94, 117, 185–201, 223 Irgun 114n9, 147 Irish Arts and Crafts movement 203 Irish Home Rule 206 Irish Literary Theater 207, 209 Irish National Literary Societies 207 Irish War of Independence (1918–21) 206 Isaiah, book of 2, 12, 20n36, 44, 52n20, 53n40, 54, 55, 58, 60, 71n17, 71n29, 72n51, 74, 78, 82, 110, 139, 145, 152, 175n14, 185, 189 Iskra 36

Islam 1, 3, 44, 45, 52n9, 55, 87, 88, 90, 134, 143, 144, 145, 150n37 Israel, kingdom of 20n36, 56, 59, 61, 75, 91n3, 115n20, 146, 149n13, 190, 226 Israel, land of 3, 5, 6, 7, 17, 18n12, 24, 25, 27, 29, 32, 38, 44, 45, 46, 54, 58, 62, 74, 75, 84, 88, 91, 111, 112, 117, 122, 124, 134, 135, 136, 137, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 174, 201n58, 227, 228n18, 229 Israel, people of 19n32, 45, 54, 57, 59, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 72n51, 73n66, 77, 81, 83, 116n41, 116n48, 126, 129, 131n9, 192, 223, 226 Israel, state of 138, 143, 147, 202, 229, 230 Jabotinsky, Vladimir 15, 31, 95, 97, 113n6, 113n7, 123, 137, 138, 148, 150n18, 151n54, 217, 219n4, 224 Jamnia (Yavneh) 183n8 Jan, Ira 121, 131n11 Jehoiachin, King 60 Jehoshafat, valley 71n24 Jena, battle (1806) 70n6 Jeremiah, book of 12, 52n20, 55, 58, 60, 62, 74, 79, 80, 81, 92n29, 93n31, 110, 114n10, 140, 192, 200n41, 204, 223, 227n2 Jerusalem 7, 20n32, 62, 67, 71n24, 71n27, 74–93, 97, 106, 107, 108, 116n41, 119–20, 122, 124, 126, 127, 128, 134, 137, 139, 142, 144, 145, 148, 182, 183n8, 189, 202, 205, 224; Blake 68; see also Temple ‘Jerusalem Forever’ (Greenberg) 147 Jesus 83 Jewish Legion 137 Jewish Socialist Workers Organization 28 Jewish Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment 22, 27 Job, book of 2, 13, 44, 112n10 Job (Joseph Roth) 18n6 Joel, prophet 71n24, 194 John of Gischala 146 Josephus 113n7, 146 Josiah, King 66 ‘The Journey of the Magi’ (T.S. Eliot) 189 Joyce, James 2, 201n51, 210, 232 Judah, kingdom of 56, 61, 75, 76, 79, 80–2, 91n3, 149n9, 226; see also Zion Judenstaat, Der (Herzl) 50 Judith (Marulik) 52n9 Jung Deutschland 31

268  General Index Kabbalah 89, 199n34, 203 The Kalevala (Lönnrot) 13, 44, 45, 47–8, 106 Karolyi, Gáspár 12 Katznelson, Berl 138 Keats, John 104, 183n10 ‘The Kerchief’ (Agnon) 128–30 Khotin, battle of (1621) 45 Kiev 37, 38, 49, 106 kinah (lament) 8 King James Bible (1611) 64, 65, 71n42 King Lear (Shakespeare) 190 kinnus (ingathering) 3, 15, 18n11, 20n43, 50, 54, 94, 122, 124, 188, 197, 203, 209 Kipling, Rudyard 68, 72n42, 73n66 Kir 59 Kish 115n20 Kishinev pogrom (1903) 9–12, 35, 36, 52n17, 93n32, 97–8, 114n10, 134, 135, 148n4, 149n15, 197, 211, 227n9 Kishon river 60 Klausner, Joseph 151n44, 175n6, 200n46, 224, 227n9 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb 12 Knox, John 72n51 The Kobzar (Shevchenko) 45 Kölcsey, Ferenc 18n19, 20n32, 117 Kollar, Jan 43, 44, 49–50, 222 Kolmar, Gertrud 124 Konrad Wallenrod (Mickiewicz) 46–7 Kook, Rabbi Abraham Isaac 217, 225 The Koran 69n2 Kossuth, Leon 31 Kostomarov, Mikola 49 Kralovedorsky Manuscript 49 Krasinsky, Sigismund 52n16 Krishnamurti, Jiddu 177n45 Kupala, Yanka 43 Lamb, Charles 221 Lamentations, book of 61, 80–1, 92n27, 120, 131n9 The Lament of the Daughter of Judah (Nevakhovich) 72 ‘Lament for the Solitary Sheep’ (Greenberg) 148 Lasker-Schüler, Else 124 Lavrov, Pyotr 36 Lawrence, D.H. 68, 173, 196 Lawrence, T.H. 72n42 League of Nations 144 Lebanon 84, 115n20, 116n41, 127

Lebensohn, Abraham Dov 22–3 Lebensohn, Micha Joseph 31 ‘The Leech Gatherer’ (Wordsworth) 176n23 Leino, Eino 107 Lenin, Vladimir 36, 38, 111, 123 Leopardi, Giacomo 18n19, 107, 117, 222 ‘Let’s be happy’ (Tchernichowsky) 103 Lewis, C. Day 196–7 Lewis, C.S. 120 Lewis, Saunders 72n51 Liberal Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets) 35 ‘Ligeia’ (Poe) 170 Lissauer, Ernst 137 Lomonosov, Mikhail 45 London 27, 67, 146, 176n27, 183n8, 198, 206, 207, 213, 214 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 106 Lönnrot, Elias 5, 6, 13, 25, 43, 44, 45, 47–8, 48, 54, 117; see also The Kalevala ‘Love Song for Saul’ (Tchernichowsky) 101, 115n15 ‘Lullabye’ (Tchernichowsky) 112 Luther, Martin 63 Macbeth (Shakespeare) 190 Maccabees 52n20, 98, 101–02, 120, 149n15 MacDonagh, John 211, 216 MacNéill, Eoin 54, 207, 210 Macpherson 49, 53n42 Maḥaneh Yisra’el (Hacohen) 39n3 Mahler, Gustav 2, 125 Makkot 86–7 Maldon, battle of (991) 65 Mameli, Goffredo 51, 94, 152 Man and Nature (Perkins) 228n19 Mandelkern, Solomon 22, 39n8 Mandelstam, Osip 28–9, 52n8 maquama 51n7 The Mare (Mendele) 5, 25, 33 Markish, Peretz 150n26 Markov, Nikolai 41n50 Marsh, George Perkins 228n19 Marti, José 13, 51, 94, 152 Martov, Julius 36 Marulik, Marko 52n9 Marvell, Andrew 199n37 Mayakovsky, Vladimir 228n13 Mazzini, Giuseppe 31 May Laws (1882) 15, 26, 148n2

General Index  269 ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’ (Yeats) 202 Megiddo 60 ‘Memorial’ (Greenberg) 140–1 Memoirs (Neruda) 174 Menachem Mendel of Rymanov 31 Mendele Mocher Sefarim 1, 5, 16, 18n5, 19n19, 19n21, 25, 28, 29, 30, 40n18, 52n13, 74, 113n3, 117, 122, 125–8, 130, 131n23 Mensheviks 36 The Mental Traveller’ (Blake) 193 Mesopotamia 58, 60 Messiah and messianic movements 36, 40, 68, 83, 128–9; Agnon 144; Bialik 176n28, 220n30; Greenberg 156–7 The Messiah (Klopstock) 12 Micah, prophet 59, 60, 86 Michelangelo 164 Michael (Wordsworth) 176n27 Mickiewicz, Adam 4, 5, 6, 12–13, 25, 43, 46–7, 54, 107, 117, 141, 202 Midrash 17, 50n41, 51n7, 86–7, 114n10, 118, 125, 182, 185, 189, 209, 213; see also aggadah Mikhaelovka 106 Milton, John 54, 66, 67, 162 The Mishna 17, 153 Moab 57 Modernism 202, 216 Moliére 106 Moses 41n58, 67, 110, 114n10, 122, 126, 223 Moznayim 203, 230, 232, 234 Mqhayi, Samuel Edward Krune 73n66 Mussolini, Benito 31 ‘My Astarte’ (Tchernichowsky) 109–10 ‘My Sister, Ruhama’ (Gordon) 13, 134 ‘My Song’ (Tchernichowsky) 98, 99, 102 The Myth of Sisyphus (Camus) 173 Nabucco (Verdi) 13 Napoleon and Napoleomic wars 31, 43, 46, 47, 70n6, 73n61, 137 Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) 36 Narodniki 36, 37 Nathan, prophet 60 Natural History (Mendele) 125–6 Nazism 5, 112 Nebuchadrezzar, King 60 Nehemiah 56–7, 92n4 Neruda, Pablo 2

Nerval, Gérard de 120, 171, 183n10 ‘Neutral Tones’ (Hardy) 200n42 Nevakhovich, Judah Leib 22 Nibelungenlied 209 Nicholas I, Tsar 21, 22, 23, 39n3, 43, 52n8, 52n23 Nicholas II, Tsar 26, 183n5, 204 Nietzsche, Friedrich 40n23, 95, 107, 116n38, 210 ‘No More Metaphors’ (Greenberg) 147 Nordau, Max 28 ‘No Second Troy’ (Yeats) 204, 212 ‘Not brief sleep’ (Tchernichowsky) 95 ‘Nutting’ (Wordsworth) 158–9 Odessa 2, 5, 11, 12, 16, 19n21, 23, 25, 29, 33–5, 74, 93n32, 94, 95, 102, 105, 106, 113n3, 114n10, 114n18, 115n31, 121, 123, 124, 126, 157, 176n19, 183n5, 187, 194, 203, 225 Odessa Jewish Education Committee 187 The Odyssey (Homer) 60, 102 O’Grady, Standish 207 Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (T.S. Eliot) 198n12 O’Leary, John 207 ‘On the Blood’ (Tchernichowsky) 105 ‘On the Edge’ (Gnessin) 37 ‘On the Mountains of Gilboa’ (Tchernichowsky) 115n19 ‘On the Ruins of Beth Shean’ (Tchernichowsky) 114n19 Order of the Golden Dawn 206 Osman (Potocki) 45 Ottoman empire 7, 45, 50, 71n27, 144, 150n37 Palacky, Frantisek 49 Pale of Settlement 1, 2, 7, 21, 37, 96, 204; see also Russia Paparrigopoulos, Constantine 18n11 Paradise Lost (Milton) 67 Parnell, Charles Stewart 205, 206, 207 Parti Socialiste Français 28 Pascoli, Giovanni 19n18, 117, 222 Pasternak, Boris 39, 132n25 Pasternak, Leonid 39, 132n25 Pearse, Padriac 13, 44, 152, 210, 211, 216 Peel Commission 150n39 Pentateuch 6, 51n5, 154 Percy, Thomas 54

270  General Index Persia 62, 75, 78 Peter I, Russian Tsar 23, 33 Petőfi, Sander 12, 13, 51, 94, 107, 141, 152, 202, 222, 223 Philistines 59, 101, 114n19, 115n20 Picasso, Pablo 2 ‘Pilgrim Girl’ (Tchernichowsky) 108 Pindar 71n27 Pinsker, Leon 27, 29 The Plague (Camus) 112 Plato 106, 110 Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinovich 36 Plunkett, Horace 203, 214 Plunkett, Joseph 13 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin 26 Poe, Edgar Allen 170 ‘Poems of Wrath’ (Bialik, 1903–06) 5, 7–12, 34–5, 45, 51n7, 97, 110, 133–4, 135–6, 145, 148, 211, 219n22; see also pogroms ‘Poems to Ilil’ (Tchernichowsky) 110 pogroms 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 19n27, 25, 33–5, 36, 52n17, 93n32, 97, 113n3, 114n10, 134, 135, 141, 148n4, 149n15, 197, 211, 227n9; see also ‘Poems of Wrath’; Russia Poland 5, 6, 21, 25, 43, 45, 46–7, 50, 54, 117, 142, 144; partitions of 21 Polish revolts (1830, 1863) 23, 43, 46, 104 Potemkin (Eisenstein) 121 Potiphar 182 Potocki, Waclaw 45 poverty 1, 21, 26, 32, 56, 96, 106, 115n36, 154, 167 The Prelude (Wordsworth) 6, 158, 159, 160, 163, 181 Prešeren, France 19n18, 222, 223 Promised Land 12, 57, 68, 99, 119, 122, 195; see also Israel; Judah; Zion Protestantism 53n41, 66, 67, 71n35, 204, 205, 207, 209, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219n4 Protestant Ascendancy 204, 213 Proust, Marcel 1, 5 Psalms 12, 20n36, 44, 51n5, 53n40, 55, 59, 65, 66, 67, 71n27, 72n49, 74, 75–8, 90, 92n21, 93n31, 114n10, 120, 122, 131n9, 131n10, 175n14, 183n8; see also Hebrew Bible Puritans 64 Pushkin, Alexander 2, 33, 43, 51n8, 52n23, 107, 152

‘The Rabbi of Bacherach’ (Heine) 5 Rabinowich, Osip 23 Rada, Jeronim de 20n43, 54 ‘Radiance’ (Hizdaharut) (Greenberg) 141, 142 Raftery, Anthony 208 Ramat Gan 199n14, 203 Rashi 6, 122, 123 Rathenau, Walther 124 Rawidowicz, Shimon 116n40, 131n16, 174n2 The Reformation 63, 67 The Renaissance 63 ‘Revenge’ (Tchernichowsky) 5, 114n18, 100 revolutions of 1848–49 12, 25, 137, 202 Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire (Rousseau) 170, 200n41 Rilke, Rainer Maria 2 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge) 222 Risorgimento 31 Robespierre, Maximilian 64 Romania 18n11 Romans and Roman empire 1, 12, 44, 75, 83, 86, 97, 107, 114, 119, 120, 134, 135, 182, 184n8, 205, 224 Romanticism and Romantics 2, 16, 49, 152–78, 179 Rosicrucianism 206, 210 Roth, Joseph 2, 37 Rothschild, Lord Nathaniel 27 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 169–70, 183n10, 200n41 Russell, George 206, 207, 212 Russia 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19n27, 21–53; see also Pale of Settlement; pogroms Russian army, conscription 21, 22, 25, 39n3, 46, 96, 137 Russian civil war (1918–21) 38, 96, 100, 105, 114n18, 121–2, 123, 134, 136, 143 Russian Duma 41n50 Russian empire 6, 21–53 Russian-Japanese war (1904–05) 24, 138 Russian Orthodox Church 3, 47, 43 Russian Revolution 5, 14, 15, 30, 36, 102, 107, 121, 126 Russian Social-Democratic Party 35, 36 Russian socialism 7, 12 Russian-Turkish war (1877–78) 23, 31, 51, 52n13

General Index  271 Russification 3, 15, 43, 44, 46, 48, 50 Ruth, book of 186 Ryleyev, Kondrati 52n8 Safarik, Pavel Josef 49 Safed 90, 143 St. Petersburg 22, 28, 42n63, 106 Samaria 20n32, 55, 121 Samson (Jabotinsky) 95 Samuel, prophet 115n20 Saul, King 20n36, 69, 100, 101, 114n19, 115n20, 149n13 Schiller, Friedrich 3 Schiller-Szinessy, Rabbi Solomon 31 Scholom, Gershom 19n27, 124, 231 Scotland 5, 18n11, 222 screen memories 179–84 Scripture 2, 5, 56, 57, 60, 63, 74, 75, 86, 144; see also Hebrew Bible ‘September 1913’ (Yeats) 210–11, 215 Serbia 31, 50, 140, 150n37 Shabbetai Zevi 68, 144–5 ‘Shadows’ (Lawrence) 173 Shakespeare, William 18n11, 65, 66, 106, 110, 190 Shalom, Shin 142 Shami, Yitzhak 149n15 Shawqi, Ahmed 19n18, 117, 222 Shekhinah 86, 145, 148, 151n53, 199n34 Shelley, Mary 199n38 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 208 Shema (‘Hear O Israel’) 98, 129 Sheol 103, 201n56 Shevchenko, Taras 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 19n18, 25, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 52n23, 53n34, 54, 117, 122, 202, 222 Shirei Sefat Kodesh (Lebensohn 1842) 22–3 Shir ha-Siyum (End-Poem, 1946) (Greenberg) 139, 147 Shlonsky, Abraham 142 Shloyme Reb Chaims (Mendele) see In Those Days Sholom Aleichem 35, 93n32 Siamanto 10 siddur (Hebrew prayerbook) 17, 74, 75 Siegfried 209 Silent Spring (Carson) 200–01 Simchat bet ha-Sho’eva (festival of the water drawing) 85 Simeon bar Giora 146 ‘Sketches’ (Tchernichowsky) 102, 106 slavery 12, 31, 56, 57, 57, 118, 221

Slavs 43, 49, 50, 223; see also Kollar Sligo 206 Sliozberg, Henrik 35 Slovenia 50, 223 Slowacki, Julius 52n16 Smilansky, Moshe 149n16 Smolenskin, Peretz 25, 27, 29, 31 Solomos, Dionysios 4, 18n11, 19n18, 54, 117, 222 ‘A Song for Simeon’ (T.S. Eliot) 189 Song of Songs 2, 20n36, 83–4, 88, 126 Sons and Lovers (Lawrence) 173 Soviet Union 6 Spain 45, 67, 68, 88–9, 93n32, 94, 98, 149n12 Spender, Stephen 197 Spenser, Edmund 66, 67, 199n37 Spinoza, Baruch 158 Spire, André 12 ‘Spring and Fall’ (Hopkins) 200n41 Stalin, Joseph 30, 34, 38, 52n8, 199n27 Steinberg, Yehudah 19n21 Steinman, Eliezer 187 Stern, Abraham 63n44, 97, 114n9 Sternheim, Carl 124 The Stormy Life of Laz Roitshvantz (Ehrenburg) 39 ‘The Story of My Dovecot’ (Babel) 12, 33–4, 113n3 Streets of the River (Greenberg) 138, 147–8, 151n39 Sukkah 85 supersession 68–9, 90–1; see also anti-Semitism Suspiria de Profundis (De Quincey) 170 Sweden 48 Sweeney Agonistes (T.S. Eliot) 201n54 Syria 52n20, 150n16 Tabernacles (Sukkot) 85 Talmud 6, 17, 31, 83, 87, 94, 99, 102, 109, 113n7, 116n48, 117, 118–19, 122, 125, 127, 131n25, 154, 169, 175n4, 183n8, 185, 197, 204, 209, 224, 225 Tarshish 76 Tchernichowsky, Saul 5, 38, 41n43, 44, 51, 60, 69, 88, 91, 94–116, 123, 124, 134, 136, 142, 143, 145, 150n35, 227n9; Ha-Yevani (the Greek) 102; see also Canaanites tehiya (revival) 4, 131n16, 225 Tel Aviv 94, 102, 106, 111, 112, 123, 125, 144, 203, 219n4, 220n36

272  General Index Tel Hai 136–38 Temple in Jerusalem 13, 58, 62, 68, 75–6, 77, 81, 83, 84–6, 88, 89, 90, 97, 108, 114n10, 117, 119–20, 121, 126, 127, 134, 182, 183n8, 189, 205, 213, 220n30, 224, 226 Teresa of Avila 183n10 Theosophy 206 ‘They say there’s a land’ (Tchernichowsky) 101–02 ‘Three Truths’ (Tchernichowsky) 104 ‘Thumbelina’ (Andersen) 200n45 ‘Tintern Abbey’ (Wordsworth) 159, 160–1, 163, 170 Tisha B’Av (Ninth of Av) 78, 79, 80, 86, 88 ‘To a Butterfly’ (Wordsworth) 176n25 Tolkein, J.R.R. 120 Tolstoy, Leo 35, 183n10 Tone, Wolfe 208 ‘To the British Empire, 1936’ (Greenberg) 146 ‘To the Bund’ (Ansky) 36 ‘To the Sun’ (Tchernichowsky) 105, 111 Toumanian, Hovannes 43, 44 Tower of Babel 92n4 Travels of Benjamin the Third (Mendele) 52n13, 127 Trilling, Lionel 227 Trotsky, Leon 36, 38, 123 Trumpeldor, Joseph 137–8 Tucholsky, Kurt 124 Tuwim, Julian 5 Two-Part Prelude (Wordsworth) 162 Tyndale, William 65, 66 tzedakah 62 Uganda 8 Ukraine 5, 6, 12, 25, 37, 43, 46, 48, 54, 106, 114n18, 117, 122, 136, 142, 149n11, 153 Ulysses (Joyce) 2, 201n51 Uncle Vanya (Chekhov) 194–5, 200n44 ‘Under Ben Bulben’ (Yeats) 208–09, 218 ‘Under their Ploughtooth’ (Greenberg) 147 Uriah, prophet 86–7 The Vale of Esthwaite (Wordsworth) 177n47 Varoujan, Daniel 10 Verdaguer, Jacint 5 Verdi, Giuseppe 13 Vienna 27, 29, 50, 180, 183n8

Wagner, Richard 27, 40n23, 209 Walcott, Derek 73n66 Wales 18n11, 72n51 The Wandering Jew 152 The Wandering Jews (Roth) 2 Washington, George 64 The Waste Land (Eliot) 2, 195, 197, 198n4 Watts, Isaac 67 Weber, Max 58, 70n11, 221 Weizmann, Chaim 28, 113n6, 113n7, 146, 148, 150n18, 151n54, 217, 219n4, 223, 224 Werfel, Franz 5 ‘The White Man’s Burden’ (Kipling) 73n66 Whitman, Walt 12, 70n13, 150n26, 171–2 Wind in the Willows (Graham) 172–3 ‘With My God, the Blacksmith’ (Greenberg) 140 ‘With Our Youths and Our Old People’ (Gordon) 30, 97 ‘The Word of the Son of Blood: on the Arabs’ (Greenberg) 134 ‘Words’ (Yeats) 204 Wordsworth, William 64, 148, 152–78, 179, 181, 196, 230, 234–45 World War I 2, 5, 10, 14, 24, 32, 33, 70n5, 102, 104, 115n25, 121, 137, 138, 140, 148n2, 177n75, 186, 195, 196, 197, 201n57, 202, 210, 218 World War II 198, 201n59, 221 World Zionist Organization 14, 24, 27, 69, 203, 215 Wuthering Heights (Brontë) 170–1 Wyatt, Thomas 66 Yadaim 83 Yeats, W.B. 5, 54, 64, 107, 117, 202–20, 222, 223, 224, 229, 232 Yeivin, Yehoshua Heschel 151n44 yeshiva 6, 15, 22, 37, 142, 175n4, 197 Yiddish 1, 2, 4, 7, 12, 24, 25, 36, 43, 106, 124, 131n23, 138, 140, 174n2 Yohanan ben Zakkai 146 Yose, Rabbi 87, 127–8 Zachariah, prophet 139, 175n14 Zelenohorsky Manuscript 49 Zera’im 17, 84, 117 Zhitomir 6, 119, 153, 167–8, 181, 190 Zhukhovsky, V.A. 53n34

General Index  273 Zion 131n10, 137, 142, 145, 146, 147, 152, 226, 228n13 Zionism 123–4, 133, 135, 137, 143, 144, 146, 149n15, 149n16, 150n18, 150n35, 150n37, 151n39, 151n54, 152, 183n5, 183n8, 201n51, 203, 204, 219, 213, 215, 217, 220n30, 223, 224, 225–6, 227n9

Zionist congresses 220n30, 224; 1897 14, 213; 1931 151n54 Zion, poetry of 74–93 Zlatarski, Vasil 18n11 The Zohar 154 Zweig, Stefan 5 ‘Zydek’ (Jewboy) (Tuwim) 5 Zrinyi, Nicholas 45