The Betrayal of the Mother Tongue in the Works of Hoffman, Zach, Amichai and Pagis

Abstract

The majority of literary works written in Hebrew, both before and after the move to the Land of Israel, were written after a long series of departures from mother tongues. It was a kind of betrayal of the mother committed, for the most part, by male writers, especially under the influence of Zionist ideology. Literary critics, like most of the writers themselves, viewed writing in Hebrew as an expression of a national revival, a return to the Jewish people’s ancient heritage, as well as to normalcy. The purpose of this study is to retrieve the sunken remains of a forgotten mother tongue hidden in the sea bed of Israeli works of Hebrew literature. My assumption is that literary works written in the author’s second language hide or repress echoes from the linguistic past of their creators. Bringing these lost sounds to the surface and acknowledging their existence, leads to a more complete reading of Hebrew literature and to an unveiling of the various voices hidden in the heart of its central narrative. I was drawn to those writers whose linguistic origins were German, like Aharon Appelfeld, Yoel Hoffmann, Nathan Zach, Yehuda Amichai, Dan Pagis, Tuvia Ruebner and others. There are, however, great differences between the writers in the degree to which they reveal the footprints of German; in the poetic strategies they employ to camouflage it; the benefits they drew from writing in Hebrew; and in their degree of awareness of the entire issue. My goal is to identify and analyze the indirect methods used consciously or unconsciously by Hebrew writers to either recall or repress their verbal past. Reading the works of authors, who do not write in their mother tongues, presents a challenge for the scholar: to see Israeli literature as a multi-lingual and multi-voiced landscape. If we listen to the sounds beneath the surface, we will understand the “other” who is etched within us and identify other kinds of “self” that are hidden within Israeli literature.