‘Tza’an’ and ‘Cana’an’: Hannale of Dorohoi The Forgotten Poem by Ya’akov Orland

Abstract

Critical studies of Ya’akov Orland’s poetry often repeat the premise that his later poems, from the 1970s on, are characterized by the use of historical materials for inspiration. Looking at the entire body of Orland’s work, especially the papers in his private archive, most of which are still unpublished, one sees that his use of historical and biblical sources, and affinity for epic poems, began thirty years earlier and is closely tied to his theatrical writing and translation of plays. The article focuses on Orland’s Hannale of Dorohoi, a dramatic poem written in the second half of the 1940s, parts of which appeared in the literary supplement of the Israeli newspaper Davar in 1947. Against the background of that period and the attempts to forge a Hebrew cultural identity, the article explores the limits of attraction to the ‘other’ that appear in the poem. This includes attraction to the gypsies’ ‘otherness’, unlike the attraction to the Young Hebrews Movement or Canaanite ideology.