S. Yizhar

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S. Yizhar (1951)

Yizhar Smilansky ( Hebrew יזהר סמילנסקי; born September 27, 1916 in Rehovot , Ottoman Empire ; died August 21, 2006 in Sderot ), also known as S. Yishar , was an Israeli writer.

Life

Yizhar Smilansky comes from a family of writers, his father, the author Zeev Smilansky came to Palestine from Odessa in 1890 , his father's uncle was the famous author Moshe Smilansky . Yizhar studied at the teacher training college in Jerusalem and worked as an educator in Yavniel , in the children's and youth village Ben Shemen , in Hulda and in Rechovot . He also studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem , where he later taught as a professor of education until his retirement. Since 1982 he has also held a professorship in Hebrew literature at Tel Aviv University .

He received his pseudonym S. Yizhar from the poet Yitzhak Lamdan , who published the first short story S. Yizhar in 1938 as editor of the magazine Gillyonot . From then on, S. Yizhar published all of his texts and books under this pseudonym.

Soldier and politician

As a Haganah intelligence officer , S. Yizhar took part in the Israeli War of Independence . This was later reflected in many of his literary works.

After the war, S. Yizahr was elected to the first Knesset as a member of the Mapai Party in 1949 and remained a member of this party until the sixth Knesset. He moved to the Rafi party, which was newly founded by David Ben-Gurion , and finally left the Knesset in 1967. But "S. Yizhar spoke out on political issues until his death, and not in the spirit of Benjamin Netanyahu, ”said his translator, Ruth Achlama , on the occasion of Yizhar's 100th birthday.

writer

S. Yizhar was one of the most outstanding writers in Israel. He shaped Israeli literature as well as the Hebrew language , which he enriched with neologisms and archaisms , among other things . His ethical attitude, his conscience is reflected in his work: he loved the fighters and hated war , said the poet Haim Gouri about him.

As the first Hebrew-speaking author, S. Yizhar describes in his story Chirbet Chisa (literally: the ruins of Chisa ) as early as 1949 the expulsion of Arabs from an almost deserted village during the war of independence in 1948/49. In this story, published by the left-wing publisher Sifriat Hapoalim , he shows compassion for the Arab villagers and went to court with the soldiers of the Israeli army. For many Israelis, he became a traitor, as Ruth Achlama reported: “S. Yizhar is still on the recommendation list of the Israeli Ministry of Education for voluntary high school reading, with the stories ›The Prisoner‹ and ›Chirbet Chiza‹ and the novel Auftakte. Under Menachem Begin ' Chirbet Chiza' was removed from the curriculum; under Yitzhak Rabin it was resumed. And once S. Yizhar said he always knew when his book stand on the curriculum, because then came back threatening phone calls. " Khirbet Chiza was also filmed and Israeli television showed.

S.Yizhar's masterpiece is the novel The Days of Ziklag , in this book of over a thousand pages he tells the story of the Israeli War of Independence and shows a group of soldiers in the Negev with their moral problems.

For almost 30 years, from the 1960s to the early 1990s, Yizhar's literary silence lasted. During this time, Yizhar published essays and books on education and literature. It was not until the 1990s that a number of award-winning novels and short stories appeared again, including a. Mikdamot (German: Auftakte ). This autobiographically grounded novel describes "the everyday life of a pioneering Zionist family and the deep roots of the activists in biblical and Talmudic sources".

S. Yizhar died of heart failure after a long illness.

Awards

  • 1959 - Days of Ziklag - Israel Prize
  • 1989 - Akum Prize for his life's work

Fonts (selection)

  • English: Midnight Convoy & Other Stories , Toby Press, 2nd Rev. Ed 2007, ISBN 1-59264-183-0
    • in German: Übers. Ruth Achlama Stories of War and Peace. Suhrkamp, ​​1997 ISBN 3-518-40820-8
  • Chirbet Chisa. Hebrew 1989 (dated May 1949)
    • English: Khirbet Khizeh , Ibis, 2007, ISBN 965-90125-9-4
    • in German: Übers. Ruth Achlama An Arab village. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1998 (also published in Spanish)
  • English: Preliminaries , Toby, 2007, ISBN 1-59264-190-3

Secondary literature

  • Anita Shapira : Hirbet Hizah: Between Remembrance and Forgetting In: Jewish Social Studies Vol. 7, No. 1, Fall 2000 (New Series), pp. 1–62 (on the history of the novel's impact until today)
  • Barbara Schäfer: Chirbet Chiz'ah or the expulsion from paradise. in Zs. Kalonymos 13th year 2010, no . 1 ISSN  1436-1213 pp. 9–11 (with book quotations) Online About "An Arab Village"
  • Hannah Hever: Ḥirbet Ḥizʿā. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 50–54.

Follow-up productions

  • Dani Gal, Installation: Zen for TV and the Birth of the palestinian refugee problem. 2010
  • Film: Khirbet Khizeh. TV, 1977. 54 min. Directed by Ram Loevy. Hebrew with engl. UT. Also as a DVD.
  • Video film - the author reads from the first chapters of "Mikdamot"; the director Anat Even accompanies his voice with her gaze, continues his words and at the same time holds against it. Israel 2005, 40 min., Orig. Hebr. with subtitles Dt., Frz., Engl.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ S. Yizhar on Shortstory Project (web links)
  2. ↑ a b c Ruth Achlama, quoted from Ayala Goldmann: Nobel Prize candidate and politician (web links)
  3. ↑ In German: Tales of War and Peace , Suhrkamp, ​​1997
  4. ↑ Shiri Lev-Ari: S.Yizhar: 1916-2006. In: Haaretz , August 22, 2006, p. 9
  5. ↑ contains: 1. Before the start, 2. Chirbet Chisa (later published individually as "An Arab Village") 3. The prisoner 4. Midnight convoy 5. The dung heap 6. The escaped 7. Habakkuk
  6. ↑ see also the collection "Stories of War and Peace" 1997, which contains the story under other titles
  7. ↑ Reading by the author from it, in excerpts, see subsequent productions
  8. ↑ Video, black and white & sound installation 22 min. 34 sec., & Slide projection, 80 slides, color. Shown on: Art 41 Basel. Contents: The work derives from a controversy around the classic Hebrew novella Khirbet Khizeh by Israeli author Yizhar published in 1949, in which he described the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from their village by the Israeli Army during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The story became a bestseller, was included in the Israeli high school curriculum in 1964 and adapted into the television film in 1978, titled "Khirbet Khizeh". On February 15th, 1978, the film should have been shown on the Israeli TV. 90 minutes before the showing of the film it has been canceled by the Minister of Education and Culture due to its content shedding doubt on the Zionist narrative. The unprecedented cancellation of a TV show through the government prompted protests against censorship from a coalition of artists, authors, lawyers, parliament members, journalists and TV technicians. However, the public polemic for and against airing the film became a fight for the freedom of information rather than an argument about the content of the film. As result of this, TV newsmen vented their feelings by letting Israeli screens go dark for 50 minutes-the length of the controversial film, on the day after the Minister's order. Archived copy ( Memento of March 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ For details, see previous note.
personal data
SURNAME Yizhar, S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smilansky, Yizhar (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Rehovot , Israel
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 2006
Place of death Sderot