Modern Hebrew Literature

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The Modern Hebrew literature begins in the 19th century and is written in a modernized, to be standardized in the 20th century form of the Hebrew language, which dates back to the language of biblical and medieval Hebrew literature. As their forerunners, some dating back to the 18th century, both the Hebrew writings of the Jewish Enlightenment in Central Europe and those writings that use Hebrew as the language of the Jewish press and literature in the Sephardic - Oriental diaspora , particularly in the Ottoman Jewish cultural life and Arab countries.

history

Since the middle of the 19th century, Hebrew has slowly developed from a language that only appears in a few areas of written form, especially the sacred area, to a Jewish- Israeli national language used in all areas of oral and written form . In the course of this development it also increasingly became the language of modern Jewish prose , poetry and drama in Israel. Many of their early authors wrote in their mother tongue or in the cultural language surrounding them ( Yiddish , German , Arabic, etc.) as well as in Hebrew; later, especially since the establishment of the state of Israel , the Hebrew monolingualism prevails among the Jewish authors in Israel.

During this phase, the development of Hebrew literature had its centers outside of Israel, mainly in Eastern Europe . Modern Hebrew literature in Palestine usually begins with the second Aliyah (1904–1914), while a group of literary masterminds, such as the later Nobel Prize winner Samuel Agnon , Josef Chaim Brenner , Mosche Smilansky , David Shimoni and Jakob Fichmann, enter the Ottoman Empire immigrated. However, until World War I , modern Hebrew literature was still mainly composed in Eastern Europe. After the war and the October Revolution , many Eastern European Hebrew writers emigrated to Palestine, so that at that time Hebrew literature there was to a large extent a continuation of the European tradition. Parallel to and in contact with these authors, the Hebrew-language work of Sephardic - Oriental authors of the old Yishuv was created , whose mother tongue and other written languages ​​were usually Arabic and Djudeo-Espanyol . Jehuda Burla (1886–1969) was one of these authors, who narrated the life of the Levant not from the perspective of the immigrant but from the inside perspective of the native. With the rise of the old yishuv, rooted in the region, in the new yishuv of the much more numerous Ashkenazi immigrants from Europe, the literary work of the Sephardic-Oriental authors also became a branch of the steadily growing Hebrew literature, which was soon dominated by Ashkenazi themes and perspectives.

In 1921, 70 authors founded the Association of Hebrew Writers in Tel Aviv with the stated aim of working together to protect and promote Hebrew literature and intellectual interests. During this time, the first literary magazines , Ha-Adamah ("Die Erde"), edited by Josef Chaim Brenner, and Ma'abarot ("Transit, transition camp"), edited by Jakob Fichmann, appeared. Palestine developed into the center of Hebrew literary creation, all the more so when the idea of ​​the return of the Jews to Zion changed from a symbolic love of Zion into a political force ( Zionism ). Some of the most important modern Hebrew writers of the first half of the 20th century, Chaim Nachman Bialik , Achad Ha'am , and Saul Tschernichowski spent the last years of their lives in Tel Aviv, and although this period does not represent the peak of their work, they practiced on younger Hebrew Authors in Palestine had a great influence.

The second generation of writers included Uri Zvi Greenberg and Abraham Shlonsky , who no longer referred primarily to their European roots, but found in the Land of Israel the desired antidote to the figurehead of the rootlessness of the diaspora . The third generation with authors like S. Yizhar and Moshe Shamir began their work at the time of the Palestine War of 1948. The group of the Canaanites negated the closer connection between Israelis and the Jews of the Diaspora; Israel should not be seen as a continuation of Judaism, but as a culture in its own right. Important authors of this period were the poets Nathan Alterman and Leah Goldberg .

The works of a number of Israeli writers have been published in translations, including in German . They include Abraham B. Jehoshua , Amos Oz , Ephraim Kishon , Batya Gur , David Grossman , Eli Amir , Zeruya Shalev , Meir Shalev , Etgar Keret , Nir Baram , Orly Castel-Bloom and many others.

See also

literature

Books

Magazines

  • Gershon Shaked (Ed.): Modern Hebrew Literature: MHL.
  • Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ S. Siebers, The Iraq in Israel. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010.
  2. ↑ Cf. Vivian Liska: Exil und Exemplarität. Jewish rootlessness as a figure of thought. In: Doerte Bischoff, Susanne Komfort-Hein (Hrsg.): Literature and Exile. New perspectives. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, pp. 239–256