How the Narratives of Yehuda Amichai Frame Our Understanding - Essay Example

?How the “narratives” of Yehuda Amichai frames our understanding not simply of an individual’s ivity/identity but also of a national ivity/identity. The Jewish poet Yehuda Amichai has become popular in his home country of Israel but also as an international writer, whose poems have been translated into many languages. He is very much loved and a major reason for his success lies in the way that he captures complex, and at times conflicting, emotions about being a Jewish person who has lived through the turbulent years in which the modern homeland of Israel was created. This paper explores three ways in which Amichai engages the emotions of his readers in relation to personal and national identity: through language that recalls the Jewish sacred scriptures, through narratives about the changing nature of the relationship which Jewish people have with their God, and through narratives about Jerusalem. In each of these domains Amichai conveys a deep ambivalence that characterizes both personal and national identity in twentieth century Israel. The language of Amichai’s poetry echoes the ancient scriptures of the Jews, and particularly the psalms and books of prophecy. A good example of his reliance on ancient concepts, vocabulary and writing style can be seen in the poem “My Child Wafts Peace.” Peace is one of the great motifs of the psalms. The love of a parent for his or her child is depicted as something decidedly human and earthly, since the narrator speaks of the physical presence that the child has when he writes “ It is not just the smell of soap” (line 4). The mention of the human sense of smell emphasizes the physical world of the present, while at the same time the notion of wafting peace conjures up also an abstract and perhaps spiritual dimension. Amichai calls into question the traditional notion of the promise, which is fundamental to Jewish national identity, and also to the claim that Jews have on the land of Israel. The Jews are the chosen people, who moved into their own promised land, at the direction of their God. By mentioning the peace that the child experienced in the his mother’s womb, (lines 12-15) Amichai emphasises the protective power of the mother figure. A baby in the womb is completely isolated from any threat, and secure in its own little world. This model for human existence is presented as something pure and positive and it is suggested that each child across the land has the same potential to grow up with a promise of peace and harmony in this land. This image is contrasted this with the failure of God’s fatherly promise to the Jews. That same land is “torn like clothes/That can’t be mended” (lines 7-8) which suggests the narrator is pessimistic about the political situation in Israel, because fathers have lost their children, by implication through war, which has left them hard and unwilling to compromise or find a peaceful solution to the tensions in the area. It seems that only the small, confined peace within the mother’s womb, or perhaps within the small family unit, is the only peace that the child will ever have. A hint of hope is contained in the suggestion that this individual family based peace will thrive in pockets across the country, if each child one by one grows up to fulfil the human promise that was given at birth by his or her mother. In the Jewish faith the mother is the channel of membership in the community, and it seems also, in Amichai’s view, the source of all hope for the Jewish future. The language takes these ancient concepts and twists them in such a way that the patriarchal dominance of Judaism gives way to an altogether more feminine ideal. Ancient language and concepts are also prominent when Amichai speaks of God. In the poem “Memorial Day for the War Dead” the whole world is presented as a strange kind of sacrifice. The memorable lines “Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,/in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God” uses the vocabulary of the ancient Jewish exodus from exile into the promised land. This land was supposed to flow with milk and honey, and the stern but loving father –God provided manna, which was a miraculous bread from heaven, to feed the starving people on their long march to their new homeland. In the poem the same food based imagery is used, but the relationship between people and God has changed into something far less trusting. A toothless God suggests not just powerlessness, but also extreme age. This poem shows Amichai’s disappointment in the traditional religious narrative of joy hiding behind earthly sorrows. The imagery of dead soldiers floating above the parade (lines 20-24) implies that there is no possibility of joy hiding behind Israel’s sorrow at all. The flags and patriotic blue and white dresses in the shop windows are depicted as superficial glosses on a horrible underlying truth. The awful message of this poem is that the old religion retains its power to terrify Jewish people, but it has lost its power to heal and comfort them. This dilemma sums up Amichai’s ambivalent position on the divinity. The ending of this poem presents imagery that captures both national and personal Jewish tragedy, caused by the successive wars that have robbed parents of their precious children. The “great and royal animal” (lines 29-31) which lies dying, suggests the Lion of Judah, a scriptural metaphor for the Jewish nation. Most horrific of all is the conflation of motherhood and fatherhood in the image of a father who has lost his son and walks “like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb” (line 33). On a national level, this imagery can be interpreted as the embryonic state of Israel, doomed because it is already dead in its earliest conception, waiting to be stillborn. On a personal level these lines can be interpreted as the pain of parents who bear Jewish children, knowing that they will be required to sacrifice them to the war effort, so that they too, are in a sense dead before they are even born. These stark images show a deep pessimism and refusal to believe the Jewish narrative of suffering as a cover for some mystical joy. Amichai portrays suffering as a bitter and negative experience, and he refuses to look for any sign of joy. The depiction of Jerusalem also conjures up ancient memories and modern disillusionment. The poem “Love of Jerusalem”, for example, studiously evokes both the good and the bad features of the city. Amichai seems to reject purely religious or purely cultural appreciation of the modern city, with its “cripples and the blind” (line 4) alongside the shops selling every kind of product. The analogy of loving the city for these reasons being like a man who loves women schematically, by a manual of sex positions, seems to deplore the objectification of Jerusalem as an iconic place. Amichai’s sense of place is much deeper, and tied to ancient history as well as to modern appearances. The poem is an example of what Eshel describes as Amichai’s “unique combination of the profane and the celestial” or even “sacrilegious and sanctified” (Eshel, 2000, p. 141). The poems of Yehuda Amichai present, therefore, a highly critical and at times ironic vision of what it is to be Jewish in the modern world. In his rejection of eternal war, and longing for a peace that is real, rather than some archetypal but distant promise from an apparently ineffectual God, he paradoxically retains a deep bond with the land of Israel, and its contested capital, Jerusalem. Using ancient images in conjunction with modern dilemmas he highlights the inner contradictions of the continuous struggle for the “promised land” for individual Jewish people, and for the nation as a whole. Works Cited Eshel, Amir. “Eternal Present: Poetic Figuration and Cultural Memory in the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, Dan Pagis, and Tuvia Rubner.” Jewish Social Studies 7 (1) (2000), pp. 141 -166. Read More