Decadent Trends in Hebrew Literature: Bialik, Berdychevski, Brener (review)

Book Reviews 149 colloquium to hear everything the distinguished writers, literary critics, artists, art historians, and art critics-many of them Holocaust survivors-had to say and which summaries cannot fully convey. Ute Stargardt Department of English Alma College Decadent Trends in Hebrew Literature: Bialik, Berdychevski, Brener, by Hamutal Bar-Yosef. Jerusalem: Ben Gurion University Press and Mosad Bialik, 1997. 416 pp. (Hebrew) This book offers a re-evaluation of the poetic work of Haim Nachman Bialik and the fictional work of Micha Yosef Berdychevski and Yosef Haim Brener in light of the European Decadent movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Decadence in art and literature is characterized by social and political pessimism, aestheticism, a retreat from moral and traditional values, interest in the eccentric and alienated individual and in the lurid, physiological underside of heterosexual relationships, and a general rejection ofthe ideals ofromanticism, notably nature, love, sensualism, instinctualism, and primitivism. The early precursors of modem Hebrew literature rejected these Decadent trends in some of their critical writing. To the extent that they affirmed the Zionist ideals of national and social revival they could hardly subscribe to the dejected world view of Decadence. Yet the latter was an influential artistic and literary movement when they produced their most important works, and they could not help absorbing~espite themselves-some of its most prominent elements. Haim Nachman Bialik manifests decadent tendencies in his aesthetic articulation of repulsive, degrading, and sick aspects of human nature and social reality. Jewish traditional life in East European ghettos appears as a degenerative process, replete with images ofdecay, rot, and putrefaction and the repeated invocation of spider webs and cats, symbols of ennui, a mood of general despair and indifference. Expressions of suicidal depression have been interpreted in the context ofthe poet's biography, and in a national-historical context, but they should also be considered as aspects of the cultural climate ofDecadence. Images ofthe woman asfemmefatale, a general disgust with sexual relations, and the fear ofadult heterosexual love appear in Bialik's poetry alongside romantic and idealized representations ofwomen. Bar Yosefsuggests that we see the former as expressions of Decadence, and the latter as expressions of Romanticism. Finally, the author analyzes Bialik's choice ofhighly polished and precise language, his use ofarchaisms and neologisms, his preference for polisemic devices and his emphasis on the musical and prosodic aspects oflanguage as stylistic manifestations 150 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 of Decadence. The first half of the book revolves around Bialik and his indebtedness to Decadence. The second half of the book is devoted to an exploration of Micha Yosef Berdychevski and Yosef Haim Brener. Berdychevski's irrational and self-destructive heroes have been mistaken for Romantic representations of emotionalism. But the neurotic behavior of individuals who manifest pathologies and genetic aberrations are more representative of a Decadent sensibility. Berdychevski's perverse heroes are neither aware ofnor expressive of a deep mystical beauty, but rather of an inescapable almost biological baseness typical of the Decadent interpretation of the human condition. Women in Berdychevski are sexual objects who attract men for physiological reasons; the attraction is doomed because it is instinctual rather than spiritual, in the best tradition of Decadent interpretations of heterosexual relationships. Berdychevski saw Jewish national heritage as a burden and advocated a return to personal and individual egotism as the first stage in creating a genuinely invigorated national identity. Berdychevski's use of fragmentary writing and his nebulous style can also be seen as manifestations of Decadence. Yosef Haim Brener was tom between the desire to create a "healthy" vigorous national literature and the Decadent trends that dominated the European literary scene. Much as he rejects Decadence, he describes Jewish life in Eastern Europe as a process of gradual degeneration. Brener often satirizes fashionable decadent young Jewish intellectuals as neurotic, irredeemably self-centered, apathetic, and pessimistic. Rather than Realism, it is Decadence that generates this author's tendency to give voice to human despair and disillusionment. What is most significant is that Brener described the Jewish pioneers in Palestine in decadent terms: as rootless dreamers, disillusioned and alienated neurotics much in contrast to the typical representations of the Zionist endeavor...