Literature, Identity, and Identification in the Work of S. Yizhar and its Reception

Abstract

S. Yizhar is considered the first ‘Sabra’ author of prose. This essay deals with his public persona, the ways in which it derives from his literary work, and the ways in which it is used as a model of identity for the New Jew. This model was based on the form of opposition typical of Yizhar’s work, between two characters and their representation of reality: the lyric quasi-religious narrator who represents everyday objects as enigmatic and inaccessible, while the collective character of the people around him, whose discourse is represented sarcastically, conceive everyday objects (as well as other human beings and animals) as subjects of human manipulation.

This model is exemplified in a close reading of ‘The Runaway’, a short story told from a child’s point of view (translation included in Midnight Convoy and Other Stories, Toby Press 2007). The child sees an escaping horse and identifies with it while other characters see the loss of a working animal. The narrator’s and the child’s intimate relation to natural objects and everyday objects reflect him, unlike the grown-ups around him, as a native Israeli and as a sensitive artist who can see objects running out of perception.

This opposition model also appears in the critical reception of Yizhar’s work. His esoteric use of Hebrew could only be read by native Hebrew speakers and used to differentiate them, and their literary taste, from new immigrants who were the majority of Israel’s Jewish population. In a society that had no social class distinctions and was ideologically opposed to such a distinction, literary taste was used as a powerful means to differentiate the Sabra and to form a cultural subject whose relation to reality is based on the quasi-religious standpoint of facing an inaccessible, un-representable, object.