The pain of two homelands

May 30, 2010 The title is, of course, ironic. It raises expectations of a traditional Zionist poem [in Hebrew, immigrating to Israel is called “ascending”], but it immediately becomes clear that the speaker not only did not “go up”, but also did not even “come” [of his own free will] – his parents “brought” him. From the start the poem gives the appearance of a document, with declarations of intentions divided into clauses; but these sections do not have a uniform legal formula. And they cannot have one. The words are precise (talking, shouting and saying represent here the letting off of tension which has been building for some time).

I happened to read this poem to a group of soldiers – it is easy to catch when read aloud – and a heated argument broke out right away. A few saw it as a protest poem on an ethnic level. They said that Sephardim [Jews from the Arab world and adjacent, mostly Moslem-majority countries], whether they were part of the pre-state Jewish settlements who fought for the establishment of the state or immigrated after its founding and ran into new difficulties – had the distinct feeling that they were being discriminated against. And when it comes to poetry and its modes of expression, they had only loose ties to the Israeli experience depicted in decades of Hebrew poetry.

Others in the group – from various backgrounds – concentrated on the details of the poem and argued that it was not in fact a statement about ethnic tension. If we did not know the origin of the poet’s family, we would see the poem in a more general light, as the outburst of someone who finds himself where he does not want to be, and this may very well be the poem’s orientation. Incidentally, the listeners were put off by the harshness of the speaker’s words, especially “I didn’t become a Zionist” and “If I weren’t Jewish, I’d be anti-Semitic”. Have things gone this far – alienation from the country and even from its people – or is this a protest against the prevailing idiom, a kind of slaughtering of sacred cows, out of spite? Perhaps the poem is simply proof of the failure of our ideological education, and, anyway, these poets . . .

But there were those in the same group who pointed to a different side of the poem, and I think that justice is with them. They realized that the outburst was not without calculation, not just a way to vent steam. There is a counterweight to the protest, and the poem testifies to a fundamental, unreleased internal tension. The poet does not want to cut himself off from the world of his readers (“I know it isn’t nice to hear”) and he isn’t gleeful. On the contrary, he too is sorry (“It isn’t nice to say”). He has an outburst, but also takes a stand. While he has not come here of his own accord and he has not adjusted, and he’s shouting because he has nowhere to go – this is exactly what gives him a grip [on life]: the torments here are great, but (as [Hebrew writer Yosef Haim] Brenner said before him): “I haven’t got any place else”.

The witness testifies, it seems, against his will, and so he is even more credible to us: he doesn’t have ideological grounds, but he has (“Don’t ask me how”) a clear sense of solidarity: “Despite all of the above, I care”. And that, after all, is the main thing. Excerpted from Dan Pagis, Me-hutz l'shura (Out of Line: Essays on Modern Hebrew Poetry), ed. Hannan Hever, Jerusalem, Keshev 2003. It originally appeared in the Israeli army publication, Be-mahane, 13.9.1982, 157-164.