Hebraic poetry between the two wars rather chooses for topics the Messianic faith of the rebirth of the Jewish people or the decline of the individual within urban civilization. Then, she shouts the inexpressible horror of the persecutions undergone in Europe Nazi, for finally singing found independence.
The head of file of this school is U T Grinberg (1894-1981, established in Israel in 1924): its collections express the uprooting of the modern man ' Ema gedola veyareah (Great Fear and the moon); to the topic of the holocaust it devotes Rehevot hanahar (Extents of the river).
A. Shlonsky (1900-1973) exerted a significant influence on the Jewish letters: its style introduced forms and expressions new into Hebrew of poetry. The topics properly Jewish or borrowed from the rite do not miss entirely, but do not hold in its poetry the place which they have at Grinberg, for example. Influenced by Russian symbolism, in particular by Alexander Blok, it shows in its turn the decline of urban civilization and, by contrast, glorifie the halus (pioneer) in Devaï, Begalgal, ' Al mil' and (1957, Douleur, swirl, loneliness). Like its predecessors, Shlonsky is a translator of great value: it gave the Hebraic versions of the principal Russian authors (Pouchkine, Gorki, Blok), like Brecht, of Shakespeare or Shaw.
N Alterman (1910-1970) is initially lyric poet with Kohhabim bahus (Stars with the outside). Translator of Villon and of Scottish ballades, it is subject to the influence of it: Šire makot misraym (Songs of the plagues of Egypt) and ' Ir hayona (the City of the dove). Like that of Shlonsky, its Hebrew is that of the middle of the century; it is not voluntarily archaistic. It is not astonishing that he became the author of popular songs and famous refrains: ' Anše ' aliya hašeniya (Men of the second emigration)
Translator it also, specialist in comparative literature, Lea Goldberg (1911-1970) has a place of choice among the contemporary poets; its poems are characterized by their sensitivity and their lyricism. Its immense culture gives a price very particular to its work of literary criticism.
It is a very different way which chose Cananeans, whose head of file was poet Y. Ratoche (1908-1981). They reject all the Jewish inheritance deliberately, wanting to be exclusively Semites and inviting the Arabs to join this large and ancient family: until now, their calls remained vain, which by no means prevented Ratoche from dedicating its poems to Baal and Astarte, divinities of the Semitic Pantheon.
For one half-century, two names have occupied the first place in the Hebraic letters: S. J. Agnon (1888-1970) and H. Hazaz (1897-1973). The first especially, Nobel Prize of literature in 1966, owes its immense success with the harmonious synthesis between the Jewish element which constitutes the frame of its accounts and the literary methods modern. Its language is voluntarily stuffed of recollection, rabbinisms, often not easily comprehensible with all those which are not familiar of the traditional Jewish culture. During the handing-over of the Nobel Prize, one asked whether it had not been subject to external influences, in particular that of Kafka to him; he refused to admit it, but the method modern, surrealist, some of its tales, ' ad hena (Up to now), for example, leaves the open debate.
Hazaz wanted to be the witness of the unit of the Jewish people in his deep diversity; Russian Jew, it described the " first generations " in Dorot rišonim, then turned to Yemenites which, while being transplanted of their native Holy Land Yemen, cross in a short moment of the centuries of evolution and civilization. He devotes Hayoševet baganim (You who residences in the gardens), and Yaiš to them. Finally dialectical Galut-Geula (Exile-Delivery) A worried much: Beqes hayamim (At the end of times) is a drama whose hero is the pseudo-Messiah Sabbataï Tsvi (XVIIth C.).
Y. Bourlah (1886-1969) did not have need disorient to paint the Eastern Jews (sephardim); born in Jerusalem, it descends itself from a sepharade family and devotes to her community of origin all its novel, which is considerable: ' Išto hasenua (the Wife which it hates) reports the vicissitudes of the married life of Daoud and poor Rachel, which Daoud had to marry because Massaouda, his mother, had thus decided some...; ' Alilot ' aqabia (Épopée of Aqabia), one of its best novels, depicts a deeply nationalist hero sephardi, such as sees it Bourlah, which borrows a number of features from the Bible or the Jewish tradition.
Three years hardly after the revelation with the face of the world of extended from the misfortune which struck the Jewish people reappears an independent State (1948) which, nineteen centuries after the exile, gathers exiled. The writers of rising generation are in natives majority of the country, members of kibbutzes and Palmah (shock units of the army), from where their nicknames of " generation of the war of Independence " or " generation of Palmah ".
Deeply integrated into the life of the kibbutz, these writers stick to the exaltation of the collective values. Their heroes, at the same time builders and combatants, deliberately make the sacrifice of their life to defend their ideal. They practically do not have an existence apart from the microcosm of the kibbutz. The authors more in reputation are Yigal Mossinsohn, born in 1917 (Gray like a bag); Moshe Shamir, born in 1921 (It was gone from there by the fields, Of its own hands); Nathan Shaham, born in 1925 (Always us); Aharon Megged, born in 1920 (Wind of the seas, Hedva and me). S. Yizhar (born in 1916) note however a certain disenchantment of the kibbutz in Ephraim turns over to the alfalfa. Its most significant novels are those where it delivers dramas of conscience: The Prisoner of war and Days of Tsiqlag. The most outstanding poet of the generation of Palmah is Haïm Gouri (born in 1923), with Flowerss of fire and Rose of the winds.
The authors of this generation discover, although with passing, the horror of the Holocaust. In their meetings with survivors of the camps of death, they become aware of all the range of the tragedy: Six Wings for each one, of Hanoch Bartov (born in 1926), Neither of now, nor from here, of Yehouda Amihai (born in 1924), are made the echo of it.
Indeed, the literature of the genocide is at least as much the work of witnesses, of victims whose language of expression is one of the Western languages (Andre Schwartz-Bart, Élie Wiesel) that that of Israeli authors. Numbers the latter, in front of a also terrible drama, could react only by silence. However, the survivors start to write. Thus, Aharon Appelfeld (born in 1932) directly does not evoke Shoah, but time of front and according to the tragedy. Its heroes are assimilated Jews, being unaware of their true identity, which are in full distress when they must face their destiny, or of survivors unable to release itself from a past which continues them, trying in vain to forge a new life (Smoked, the fertile Valley, Frost on the ground, the Time of the wonders, Badenheim 1939). They are the same topics as milked Yoram Kaniuk (born in 1930) in Adam ressuscity. Young authors, children of survivors or others, having lived Shoah only in the collective memory of a whole people, also start them to speaking about the inexpressible one. Savion Liebrecht (born in 1948) in its news, for example, or especially David Grossman (born in 1954) in See below Love.
The creation of the State of Israel quickly explodes the ideological designs which prevailed until there. The values defended by the kibbutz do not resist the fast expansion of the new company. Consequently, the writers try to provide other foundations for an individual existence. " us " makes place with " ego ", the hero is replaced by the anti-hero of another reality. It is through historical characters whom Moshe Shamir expresses disappointment that it tests with regard to a State in which corruption and the social decline do not miss (a king of flesh and blood, the Ewe of poor).
The evolution towards a more individualistic literature, more personal, is obvious as from the years fifty-sixty in the authors of the " war of Independence " as among their juniors, whom one calls " generation of the State " or " vague news ". Aharon Megged turns initially to a surrealist writing (the Escape), before returning to novels anchored in the reality of the country: The short Life, Travels in the month of Av, Feugelman, for example. Moshe Shamir, in his novel the Playboys, throws a critical glance on what became its generation. The characters of Itzhak Orpaz (born in 1923) move in a universe with the surrealist landscapes impregnated of symbols. Solitary beings, locked up in their incommunicability, such are the characters that Amalia Kahana-Carmon (born in 1928) depicts in a very personal style (In same basket, And the sun on the valley of Ayalon, Up there in Montifer, I accompanied it at it). Desire by destruction and instinct of death is the topics developed in a surrealist atmosphere by Avraham B Yehoshua (born in 1936) with its beginnings (the Death of the old man, the night Trip of Yatir).
However, a progressive slip towards the handing-over in question of the Israeli company will characterize the literature of the Seventies and Eighties. Yoram Kaniuk caricatures the " new Israeli " in That which goes down in top and in the History from large aunt Shlomtsion. Already, Avraham B Yehoshua approaches of them realities in Vis-a-vis with the forests, then in At the beginning of the summer 1970, which treats war of attrition. In his first novel, the Lover, beyond the history of an Israeli family at the time of the war of Kippour, the author evokes the major reasons of this war. In late Divorce and the five seasons Year, the idea of the incompatibility between the realization of the ideology Zionist and the requirements of the life is subjacent. Its last novel, Mr Mani, true family épopée, evoke in a subtle way the factual, ideological history and policy of the Eastern Judaism.
The war of Kippour starts a true traumatism and will be used as starting point with many works: Yitzhak Ben-Ner (born in 1937) publishes Sunset in the countryside, After the rain, Country remote, where it is also about the visit of president Sadate in Israel, David Schütz (born in 1941) written Grass and sand. Yaakov Shabtaï (1934-1981) goes even further others and, in its novel For inventory, depicts the collapse of the fundamental values of the Labour movement. Tel-Aviv of the years seventen seems a universe without spirituality and ideal. End of account, its posthumous work, goes in the same direction.
Younger authors are also caught some with the myths. Mordekhai Shalev (born in 1948), in the ground remembers, exposes with irony the work of the pioneers of the second vagueness of immigration. The dream Zionist, impresses romanticism, was betrayed by the pioneers themselves, and their descendants cannot thus remain to him faithful.
Lastly, it is with the crowned values on which is founded the Israeli company that Amos Oz (born in 1939), Prix Femina foreigner 1988, attacks, as of its first works, revealing the back of the decoration of a company which defends of the ideals of which it is diverted in fact: Countries of the jackal, Elsewhere perhaps, My Michaël, To death, the Hill of the bad consulting. He scans the subsoils of the human heart and, by a subtle introspection, highlights the constant fight between the beauty, logic and the light, on the one hand, and the instincts hidden, the madness and the shade, on the other hand. In the Sixties, Amos Oz had a presentiment of the crisis which was going to undergo the kibbutz, and in its later novels it predicts the deep transfer of the Israeli company. The Box blackreports the intimate drama characters resulting from communities and mediums very different in Israel from the Seventies, before the seizure of power by the line. The memory tortured by the culpability of a secret agent and the search of the mercy are in the heart of the Know novel a woman. In the Third Sphere, which has as a background the Palestinian revolt, the hero, man of the left, do not manage to modify the company, where prevail decline and degradation. The third sphere, prefiguration of the individual, national and universal aspirations, is a refuge, a place where the reconciliation between realities and the ideal is possible
The interrogation on the character of the national identity also appears through the assertion of the Community membership. Writers originating in Arab countries, for example, are more made know. On the steps of Mordekhai Tabib (1910-1979), which painted its yemenit community , Amnon Shamosh (born in 1929) celebrates its community of Alep, dispersed throughout the world or immigrant in Israel (Michel Ezra Safra and son). Sammy Michael (born in 1926) sticks at his Iraqi community in a handle of fog, but also evokes the situation of the Israeli Arabs (Refuge and Trumpet in the wadi). Elie Amir (born in 1937), him so originating in Iraq, devotes its novel the Cock of the forgiveness, published in 1983, with the painful integration of the immigrants. Erez Bitton (born in 1942), of Moroccan origin, has the desire to enrich by its poetry Israeli civilization thanks to its own culture (Moroccan Offering, the mint Pound). authors resulting from the ethnic minorities also make hear their Hebrew voice. Anton Shammas (born in 1950), in Arabesques, traces the history of several generations of his Arab family. In its novel fatal Baptism, Naïm Araydi, Druse writer , insist on confrontation between the two universes in which it lives
Other writers take refuge in the world of childhood. They leave in search their roots, in a universe which in their eyes breaks up. Such Binyamin Tammuz (born in 1919) with the Dunes of gold, Nissim Aloni (born in 1926) with the Owl, or Hanoch Bartov (Of which are you the child? Shulamith Hareven (born in 1931), with the City with the many days, or David Shahar (1926-1997), Prices Medicis foreigner 1981. This last, in its romantic cycle the Palate of the broken muds, is with the search of the time wasted in Jerusalem of the British mandate and wonders unceasingly about the mystery of the life and the existence of God in a world of dreams and illusions.
It was gone from there by the fields (1945), of Moshe Shamir, can be regarded as the first really Israeli part. It is the history of a kibboutznik (member of a Community village) and of " its " war of independence. Although valiant with the combat, it refuses the concept of heroism. It is hard as well with his mother as with the woman, survivor of the European massacres, who carries her child. Aharon Megged (Hedva and me) also puts to him in scene a kibboutznik sympathetic nerve and intelligent with which it city hardly succeeds. Nissim Aloni, in cruelest of all it is the king, develops the thesis according to which any government is cruel, whatever its good intentions. Under the character of Jeroboam, which dared to revolt against Solomon and its heir legitimates to become " cruelest of all ", appears in all its tragedy the situation of the State of Israel at the time. Ben-Zion Tomer (born in 1928) is still haunted by persecutions (Children of the shade).
It is at the end of the Sixties that one witnesses a handing-over in question of the established traditions of the Israeli theatre. Hanoch Levin (born in 1943), Hillel Mittelpunkt (born in 1949), Yehoshua Sobol (born in 1939) carry to the scene a modern language and a diction. While wondering about the difficulty of being, they do not neglect any therefore the specific problems of the country. It is especially Hanoch Levin which is devoted to sour anti-institutional satires. Thus, after the Six Day old war, it tackles the self-satisfaction of the Israelis, who hoot his provocative part the Queen of the baths. Yehoshua Sobol also wonders about the Israeli values while taking for background either the immediate present, or from the more remote times of the history of the Jewish people (Saint-Sylvestre 72, the Old woman of the twenty, the Last Workman, the War of the Jews). new troops are born, which enrich the theatrical life and make it possible to young authors to be made known, while theirs predecessors continue to create.
In reaction against a poetry whose Nathan Alterman is the symbol, Nathan Zach (born in 1930), David Avidan (born in 1934) and Yehouda Amihaï call in question the topics and the forms expensive to the generation of the preceding poets. They are not any more the national ideals but the condition even of the man and his difficulties of being which provide their inspiration. Refusing rhetoric and the metaphors too elaborate, they stick to the simple images drawn from the everyday life, with spoken Hebrew, sometimes vulgar, who makes fi meter and rhymes. Avot Yeshurun (1904-1991), which by its age belongs to the preceding generation, especially acquires its notoriety in the Seventies. Its poetry is closer by certain sides to that of its juniors, and its political, unacceptable dispute at a certain time, ends up entering manners.
While taking part in the creation of a new poetry, poets such Abba Kovner,Dan Pagis, I Yaoz-Kest, Yakov Besser draw their topics in their own experiment of rescapés of Shoah. In their primarily allusive mode of expression, the concrete one yields the place to mythical, and realism with the symbol. But Shoah is anchored in the hebraïc literature beyond the testimonys of rescapés, since their children, who lived the horror only through memories of their parents or friends, succeed, by to some extent adapting their suffering, which they express in their poems.
Those which continue in the way of Shlonsky or Alterman, such Amir Gilboa, Nathan Yonathan, Dalia Ravikovitch, Tuvia Rivner, Ozer Rabin, create new poetic forms. Their successors Yona Wollach, Yaïr Hurvitz (deceased respectively in 1985 and 1988), Meir Wieseltir and others younger show a lyricism which often disputes it with the strange one, but where the sensitivity is always with flower of skin.
The Israeli literature is a crucible today where writers of several generations create and publish. Those of the war of Independence, those of the generation of the State continue to write, making new great strides and cohabiting with new talents which already proved reliable. Novels and news are of original natures where realism côtoie surrealism, impressionism symbolism. One finds a large variety of styles there, a search for forms and a linguistic effort of restoration which is all the more significant since the rebirth of the Hebraic language was born just hundred years ago. The tackled subjects are anchored in civilization and the culture Israelis and Jewish. The events socio-policies which mark out the history mark the Israeli literature deeply. However, it largely exceeds its geographical and historical framework, even if it appears very specific, because topics and the characters whom it puts in scene, problems and the interrogations which it installation reach a universal dimension
- Extract of the Universalis Encyclopaedia