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‘Golden Age’ Poetry in Contemporary Israeli and Palestinian Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2008

Ziva Ben-Porat
Ziva Ben-Porat*
Affiliation:
The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel Aviv University, Israel
*
Email: zivabp@post.tau.ac.il
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Abstract

This article is a small part of a research project dealing with the presence of Hebrew poetry from al-Andalus in Israeli culture in general and in Israeli poetry in particular. In spite of its indisputably canonic status and 800-year history as a central model for the writing of poetry, this magnificent corpus is quite unknown to today’s readers, and its genres are obsolete. It is, as I shall explain, a ‘dinosaur-like’ canonic entity. The article contains some explanatory references to the historical trajectory of the poetry in question, from a central and active position to a marginal and passive presence – dealing with both the particular beneficial conditions in al-Andalus and current internal and external political situations. However, the paper is not about literary history or cultural politics. Rather, it focuses on the ways ‘dinosaur-like’ canonic status is revealed in the writing of contemporary poetry and in its readings. I begin with a short introduction concerned both with the poetry of al-Andalus and with the cognitive and inter-textual aspects related to the ‘dinosaur-like’ existence of texts and models. Owing to lack of space, I then deal with only three of the many characteristic features of this phenomenon: cognitive accessibility (illustrated by two readings of a Palestinian poem by Sami al-Kilani), manifested distancing (illustrated by Amnon Shamosh’s poem that converses with Yehuda Halevi), and modes of alluding (illustrated by a poem of Yehuda Amichai).

Type
Focus: al-Andalus – the Three Cultures
Information
European Review , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 127 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2008

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References

References and Notes

1. The informative part of this survey is based on many studies. Most of the Hebrew studies are not mentioned in the references, but those in English are (references 11, 13, 14, 17, 18).Google Scholar
2.Menocal, M. R. (2000) The Literature of Al-Andalus, edited by Reymond Scheindlin and Michael Sells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3.Menocal, M. R. (1993) Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric (Durham: Duke University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. I have used this material twice before. Earlier versions, differing in scope and focus appeared in Z. Ben-Porat (1996) Zionist reads Palestinian: interpretation and dialogue in the light of cultural differences and political conflicts. Arcadia 31(1–2), 231–244. A shorter and slightly different Portuguese version is in Z. Ben-Porat (1996) Estudos Comparativos Interculturais de Recepçao. Revista de Cultura, 29, 47–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5. It is interesting to note that the missing verses connect the miraculous change of the desert to national revival and the return of the exiled Jews. Since Zionism did not endorse a belief in divine redemption the verses were excluded. But recalling them might have influenced my reading of al-Kilani’s poem.Google Scholar
6. There are various classes of epigonic writing in the Andalusian tradition. One of the most interesting is Ratzon Halevi’s (2006) ‘interminglings’, in which he takes an Andalusian poem and to each of its verses adds his verse, writing on the same theme in exactly the same form. The result can be a contemporary poem that still describes Israel as desolate and in ruins. Google Scholar
7.Goldstein, D. (tr., ed. and commentator) (1965) Hebrew Poems from Spain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
8.Rosen, T. (1995) ‘As in a Song by Samuel Ha-Nagid’ – between Samuel Ha-Nagid and Yehuda Amichai [Hebrew]. Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature, 15, 83–106. Google Scholar
9.Amichai, Y. (1994) Yehuda Amichai: A Life of Poetry 1948–1994. Translated from the Hebrew by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav (New York: HarperCollins).Google Scholar
10. Sporadic tests of readers’ responses to the allusions verify this claim. But it is not a statistically valid proof because of the small number and accidental choice of participants.Google Scholar
11.Gibb, H. A. R. (1963 [1926]) Arabic Literature: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
12.Halevi, Y. (2002) Poems from the Diwan. Translated by Gabriel Levin (London: Avril Press).Google Scholar
13.Scheindlin, R. P. (1986) Wine, Women, and Death (Philadelphia/New York: The Jewish publications Society).Google Scholar
14.Scheindlin, R. P. (1991) The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul (Philadelphia/New York: The Jewish Publications Society).Google Scholar
15.Laor, Yitzhak (2007) “Somewhere between the (Tanakh) Bible and the Palmach”, in Ha'Aretz Literary Supplement, 2, 18 May 2007.Google Scholar