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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
The traditional opening statements in the debate concerning the beginnings of modern Hebrew literature usually assume the form of claims or accusations of paternity. Claims–if the child is legitimate; accusations–if it is not. I wish to avoid the paternity issue because, as I shall argue, it is essentially groundless and precludes consideration of other perspectives. My strategy shall therefore be an oblique attack from an unexpected quarter using traditional camouflage, I begin with a prooftext.
1. , Jackson Bate, The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). “The burden of the past” has, to be sure, Nietzschean overtonesGoogle Scholar. See White, Hayden N., “The Burden of History,” History and Theory 5 (1966): 111–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. On Hebrew literature in eighteenth-century England, see Schirmann, J., “The First Hebrew Translation from English Literature: the Play The Mourning Bride by William Congreve” (Hebrew), in J. Schirmann, Letoldot hashirah vehadrama ha′ivrit, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1979), and articles on Ephraim Luzzatto and Samuel Romanelli in the same volume, pp. 217–301.Google Scholar
3. Price, L. M., English Literature in Germany (Berkeley, 1953)Google Scholar
4. The books by Bloom pertinent to this argument are The Anxiety of Influence (New York, 1973), A Map of Misreading (New York, 1975), Kabbalah and Criticism (New York, 1975), Poetry and Repression (New Haven, 1976), and Agon (New York, 1982).Google Scholar
5. See Hayden, N. White′s remarks on this subject in the article cited in note 1Google Scholar
6. See Friedlander, Y., “The Concept of the Essence of Poetry at the Beginning of the Hebrew Haskalah” (Hebrew), Bikoret ufarshanut 1 (March 1970): 55–60;Google ScholarBarzilay, I., “The Ideology of the Berlin Haskalah,” PAAJR 25 (1956): 1–37Google Scholar and “The Italian and Berlin Haskalah,” PAAJR 29 (1960–1961): 17–54;Google ScholarAltmann, A., Moses Mendelssohn (Philadelphia, 1973), particularly chaps. 5 and 8;Google ScholarShohet, Azriel, ′Im Hilufe Hatekufot (Jerusalem, 1960);Google ScholarSchwartz, Moshe, “The Poetics of Sublimity and Solomon Loewisohn′s Melitzat Yeshurun” (Hebrew), Moznayim 17 (September-October 1963): 373–383;Google ScholarCohen, Tova, “Influences upon Solomon Loewisohn′s Melitzat Yeshurun” (Hebrew), Bikoret ufarshanut 6 (December, 1974): 17–28.Google Scholar
7. The histories of literature (and several high school textbooks) have been treated in detail by Holz, Avraham in “Prolegomenon to a Literary History of Modern Hebrew Literature,” Literature East and West 11, no. 3 (1967): 253–270.1 discuss only those writers and aspects relevant to my argument.Google Scholar
8. Leipzig, 1836.
9. Toldot hasifrut ha′ivrit hafiadashah (Tel Aviv, 1928). We shall quote from the 1952 edition. To this one should add Lachower′s ′Al gevul hayashan vehehadash (Jerusalem, 1951), which contains three essays on Luzzatto, pp. 29–95, published some twenty years earlier.
10. Historiyah shelhasifrut ha′ivrit hahadashah (Jerusalem, 1930; 2 ed., 1952). Klausner had already established his position in brief in his Russian-language history of modern Hebrew literature first published in Warsaw in 1900.
11. Kurzweil′s many essays of the 1950s on this subject were first collected in Sifrutenu hahadashah: hemshekh o mahpekhah [Our Modern Literature: Continuation or Revolt?] (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1959).
12. This pamphlet was published in Berlin at the beginning of 1782 as a reaction to Joseph II′s Edict of Toleration, promulgated October 13, 1784.
13. In Kol kitve Bialik, H. N. (Tel Aviv, 1951). The article on Luzzatto, first published in 1927, appears on pp. 228–229; that on the revealed and hidden in language, on pp. 191–193.Google Scholar
14. Mishnat haZohar, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1948), vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1961). Tishby shared with Lachower a lifelong fascination with Luzzatto. See Tishby′s two definitive essays on Luzzatto′s mysticism in the former′s Netive ha′emunah vehaminut (Tel Aviv, 1964), chaps. 8 and 9.
15. (Kovna, 1939), pp. 1–168.
16. Halkin′s position is found in his Modern Hebrew Literature, Trends and Values (New York, 1950), chaps. 1–4; Mavo lasiporet ha′ivrit, notes taken at Halkin′s lectures by Tzophia Hillel (Jerusalem, 1954); and in a much-neglected essay, “History and Historicism in Modern Hebrew Literature” (Hebrew), in his collection of essays Derakhim utzedade derakhim basifrut, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1969), pp. 155–182. The last essay, written after Kurzweil′s savage attacks on Halkin, demonstrates that these attacks had little effect on Halkin′s initial position.Google Scholar
17. Dov Sadan′s central essay, Al sifrutenu, first appeared as a monograph in 1950, Tel Aviv, but was later included in his Avne bedek (Tel Aviv, 1962), pp. 9–61, under the title “Masat Mavo′” (“Introductory Essay”).Google Scholar
18. Israel Zinberg′s History of Jewish Literature has a complicated publication history. Its first volumes were published in Russian in the 1920s, but the entire work, including the incomplete last volume, was issued in Yiddish beginning in the late 1920s in Vilna and ending in 1943 in New York. The six-volume Hebrew edition appeared between 1955 and 1960 in Tel Aviv. A twelve-volume English edition was translated and edited by Bernard Martin (Cincinnati and New York, 1972–1978). Zinberg, incidentally, includes Luzzatto among the medieval Hebrew poets.Google Scholar
19. Berlin, 1933.
20. Frankfurt-am-Main, 1922.
21. Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times from Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig (New York, 1968). Original Hebrew: Hamahashava hayehudit ba′et hahadashah, 2 vols. (Tel Aviv, 1945–1950). For a summary of Kurzweil′s career and ideological stance, see James S. Diamond, Barukh Kurzweil and Modern Hebrew Literature (Scholars Press, California, 1983).Google Scholar
22. The popularity of the book might reflect a readership beyond maskilic circles. Luzzatto was admired among pious Jews for his ethical tract, Mesillat Yesharim. Layesharim tehilla would not offend a pious reader, since it demonstrates the victory of the just (the yesharim; note that the term appears in the title of both books) over the evil and all the “characters” bear the names of virtues or vices.
23. Jauss, Hans Robert, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” New Literary History 2, no. 1 (Autumn 1970): 7–38. Also collected in H. R. Jauss, Towards an Aesthetics of Reception (Minneapolis, 1982). Page numbers in text refer to NLH.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24. On Wessely, see , Klausner, op. cit., pp. 138–143. On Luzzatto, see Simon Ginzburg, The Life and Works of Moses Hayyim Luzzatlo (Philadelphia, 1931), pp. 110, 113, 114; Yonah David, Hamahazot shel M. H. Luzzatto (Jerusalem, 1972), notes pp. 75, 101, 112, 113, p. 97 (nn. 9, 14, 37, 38, 40, 41, 46).Google Scholar
25. See above, n. 13.
26. M. H. Luzzatto, Sefer Hamahazot (Tel Aviv, 1927).
27. Bialik, p. 228.
28. Schirmann, J., “The Plays of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto” (Hebrew), in Schirmann, J, Letoldol hashirah vehadrama ha′ivrit, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 161–175.Google Scholar
29. Joseph Karo, Lawyer and Mystic (Oxford, 1962).Google Scholar
30. P. 229.
31. Toldot hasifrul ha′ivrit hahadashah (Tel Aviv, 1952), pp. xi, xii. Introduction written in 1927 for first (1928) edition.
32. See Sergio J. Sierra, “The Literary Influence of G. B. Guarini′s Pastor Fido on M. H. Luzzatto′s Migdal Oz,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s. 50, no. 3 (January 1960): 241–255 and no. 4 (April 1960): 319–337. Though Yonah David (op. cit.) does discuss the pastoral or allegorical features of the plays, he draws no substantial conclusions. Nomi Tamir-Ghez seems to be moving towards a deeper understanding of the pastoral, but ultimately concentrates on the disjunctive nature of Migdal Oz in “On Literary Contacts and the Thematic Structure of Migdal Oz” (Hebrew), Hasifrul, nos. 30–31 (IX/1–2) (April 1981): 95–100. The literature on the pastoral is vast. See Peter V. Marinelli, Pastoral (London, 1971), bibliography, pp. 83–88. Of particular interest are: William Empson, Some Versions of the Pastoral (London, 1950); H. Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington, 1969); and Renato Poggioli, The Oaten Flute (Cambridge, Mass., 1975). The concept of the allegory has been radically revised in Angus Fletcher′s Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, 1964).Google Scholar
33. Pastoral (London, 1971).
34. Berlin and Prague, 1789–1811. Klausner provides full bibliography on Wessely until 1930 in op. cit. (1952 ed.), pp. 103–104.
35. Pelli, Moshe, “Naphtali Herz Wessely: Moderation in Transition,” Hebrew Studies 19 (1978): 43–55, and Yehudah Friedlander, Perakim basatira ha′ivrit beshilhe hamea′ah ha-lS beGermania (Tel Aviv, 1979).Google Scholar
36. Originally in Heker Devar (Warsaw, 1876), pp. 41 ff. Collected in Kol Kitve Kovner (Tel Aviv, 1948), pp. 33–34.
37. 1st ed., Kapust, 1815. The most frequently cited Hebrew edition is that of S. A. Horodetzky (Berlin, 1922; Tel Aviv, 1946). English edition: In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, ed. and trans, by Dan ben Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington, 1970).
38. , Halkin, “Historia and Historicism,” pp. 175–176. Halkin, like Shapira and Sadan, leans heavily on G. Scholem′s “Mitzvah haba′a ba′avera,” originally in Keneset (Tel Aviv, 1937). English translation, “Redemption Through Sin,” by H. Halkin and G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York, 1971).Google Scholar
39. Horodetzky, ed. pp. 33–34.
40. There are many articles on both Joseph Perl and Isaac Erter (see bibliographies in EJ and El), but there is no scholarly monograph on the satire in the Galician period of the Has kalah. Perl′s Megalei Temirin (Vienna, 1819) has elicited some of the best research efforts, since it is one of the most accomplished Hebrew works of the nineteenth century.
41. See Dan, Joseph, Hasipur hahasidi (Jerusalem, 1975)Google Scholar and Nigal, Gedalya, Hasiporet hahasidit (Jerusalem, 1981). Also articles by Band, A., Elbaum, J., Elstein, Y..Google Scholar
42. Sippure hama′asiyot of Nahman of Bratzlav, ed. by Nathan Sternhartz (Ostrog, 1815/16).
43. Hirsch, E. D., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, 1967)Google Scholar and The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago, 1967). See Lentricchia′s, F. critique of Hirsch in After the New Criticism (Chicago, 1980), pp. 256–280.Google Scholar
44. La Scienza Nuova (Naples, 1725, 1730, 1744). English edition: The New Science, trans. Thomas G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch (Ithaca, 1948). Though the studies of Vico are numerous, Isaiah Berlin′s Vico and Herder (London, 1976) is particularly applicable to our study.Google Scholar
45. Yerushalmi, Y., Zakhor (Philadelphia, 1982), p. 101.Google Scholar
