Uri Zvi Greenberg’s Brenner: Thrownness, Orphanhood and ‘Mission-oriented’ Literature

Abstract

Uri Zvi Greenberg depicted the Zionist author Yosef Haim Brenner as the archetype of a literary model that he termed ‘Mission-oriented Literature’, especially in his writings that were published through the years 1925-1928. The model was described by Greenberg as a literary attempt to express the pain that derived from the gap between reality and the ideals that literature aspired to fulfill. This article examines Greenberg and Brenner’s poetic and theological-political perspectives, their understanding of the term ‘literature’ and the existential place that thrownness holds in their writing. While Brenner expressed thrownness as standing in front of an unanswered question and the meaninglessness of life, Greenberg saw it in terms of orphanhood which, in the Jewish context, was reflected in the absence of a homeland and divine indifference, and, as such, in the often violent struggle involved in gaining a homeland. Greenberg identified Jewish and Christian theological symbolism as raw material in his literary expressions of thrownness as orphanhood.