Modern Hebrew poetry in Israel (Bialik, Tchernichovsky, Amichaï)

Modern Hebrew poetry accompanied and embodied the revival of Hebrew as a living language, from the centers of Eastern Europe to Israeli culture. Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), known as the "national poet," powerfully expressed the Jewish condition of his time — the nostalgia for the house of study, the revolt following the Kishinev pogrom in "In the City of Slaughter," the aspiration toward rebirth — and durably fixed the registers of the new poetic language. His contemporary Saül Tchernichovsky introduced a more pagan, Hellenizing sensibility attuned to nature. The following generation, shaped by life in Eretz Israël, saw the flourishing of voices such as those of Nathan Alterman and Avraham Shlonsky, and then, after the founding of the State, of Yehuda Amichaï, whose everyday, ironic language profoundly renewed poetry, and of Dahlia Ravikovitch, a major and critical voice. Oscillating between Memory of the diaspora, celebration of the land, and a critical gaze upon the national project, this poetry constitutes one of the most vital expressions of Israeli culture.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗