An Ordinary Day: The Discursive Mode and the Demise of Alterman’s Journalistic Poetry

Abstract

Alterman’s journalistic poetry, a corpus of more than 900 poems spanning nearly 30 years, consists basically of three major sub-genres or modes: the satirical, the prophetic (or pathetic), and the discursive. Roughly, this poetic corpus, which developed in the 1930s as a vehicle of wit and satire, was transformed in the 1940s into a site of powerful national pathos, and, after Israel’s founding in 1948, became dominated by a ‘mundane’ discursive mode based on rational reasoning.

Alterman’s poetry in the 1950s, in its topical (‘Hatur Hashvi’I’ [‘The Seventh Column’]) and canonical (‘Ir Hayona’ [‘City of the Dove’]) configurations, was bitterly criticized from the left and right of the political spectrum. The purpose of this article is to unravel the complex rhetorical strategies and devices employed in the poems, as they appear in the discursive mode, and expose, with their deficiencies, their aesthetic and moral value. Tracing the story of Alterman’s discursive mode parallels the degeneration and ultimate demise of Alterman’s journalistic poetry – the largest, richest, most brilliant and influential of its kind in Modern Hebrew literature.