“He Who Employs Funny Rhymes in His Speech”: Parodied Poetics in the Works of Uri Zvi Greenberg and S. Y. Agnon

This essay argues that Greenberg and Agnon employ simplistic rhyming in their works for rhetorical effect. It shows that both writers use this rather sophisticated literary device to express their criticism of inauthenticity in the sphere of religion: artificial worship in Agnon’s case, and hypocritical divinity in Greenberg’s. For Agnon, parody is used as part of an endeavor to provide historical documentation of certain institutional religious practices. For Greenberg, it is a means of representing the devastation of humanity following World War I. Methodologically, what follows is a formalist engagement with a particular literary idiosyncrasy: the incorporation of bad poetry into otherwise serious and skillful literary work.