A New Sound in Hebrew Poetry: Poetics, Politics, Accent

Four: The Runaway Train and the Yiddish Kid Shlonsky’s Double Inscription

100 chapter four The Runaway Train and the Yiddish Kid Shlonsky’s Double Inscription Shlonsky’s train made a bigger impression than the [Jezreel] Valley Railroad. —Mordekhai Sabar, paraphrasing the “jokesters” of the era Toward a New History of Shlonsky’s New-Accent Poetry Whether or not his new-accent poem “Train” made a bigger impression on Hebrew speakers than the actual Jezreel Valley train that first rode into Palestine in 1904, Avraham Shlonsky continues to be the focus of scholarship on the litera ary new accent. He performed perfectly the role of innovator, inscribing the proto-Israeli accent in contradictory service to national identity: as both new and old, integrative and revolutionary. Ironically, the scholarship tends to reduce or simplify Shlonsky’s contribution even as it valorizes him as the new-accent poet. The literary history as written by contemporary critics locates the 1920s as the decade in which Hebrew poets in Palestine discontinued the Ashkenazic accent and chose instead to write in what was known as the Sephardic or corr rect accent. In fact, the switch from one accent to the other is most often ident tified as a phenomenon that occurred ca. 1927. But this consensus is linked to and at least in part determined by another consensus: that Shlonsky was critic cal to—if not the motivating force behind—the literary accent shift. This scholarly perception of Shlonsky as the one responsible for revolutionizing Hebrew poetry by introducing the new accent may have roots in the percept tions of readers in the twenties and thirties, such as the one expressed in the epigraph above, and the poet’s own self-portrayal as a rebel and innovator.1 This account of the rise of the new accent in Hebrew poetry and of Shlonsky’s contribution to it has several problems. It is not clear why Shlonsky is credited with this revolution when among his generation of poets he was far from the first to compose in the new accent. By the time his new-accent poetry appeared in print, many other well-known poets had already published their own volu - the runaway train and the yiddish kid 101 umes of new-accent poetry. At this point Shlonsky was still publishing poems in Ashkenazic as well. Imprecise claims of Avraham Shlonsky’s primacy in new-accent poetry obfusc cate the nature of his considerable contribution. Shlonsky’s reputation in this realm is in part an extension of his general reception as an innovator and as a rebel, and his persona as the leader of a generation of Hebrew poets. Thanks to this reputation, critics tended to see him as the newest addition to a genealogy of great Hebrew writers. But these perceptions are also an expression of Shlonsky’s actual and substantial contribution to new-accent poetry that have been either displaced or distorted. Shlonsky was a great innovator capable of breathtaking literary-linguistic feats: he integrated the new accent into his poetry while res sponding to the demands of contemporary conceptions of literary history. This chapter focuses on Shlonsky’s innovative integration of the new accent into both the Hebrew poetic corpus and his own poetic persona. Shlonsky used his canonical and noncanonical poetry explicitly to allay fears associated with the introduction of the new accent into canonical Hebrew poetry. He resolved questions about the possibility and viability of new-accent poetry, questions that were untouchable by women’s poetry because of the terms of its reception. Shlonsky’s first new-accent compositions in the early to mid-twenties were in subcanonical genres—folk songs, translations, and occasional verse. He did not begin to publish new-accent poems in any genre until 1926 when “Train” (“Rakevet”) appeared in Davar.2 He had composed “Train” a few years earlier and first performed it at his work settlement in the spring of 1923. As with Bluv­ shtain, Shlonsky’s brief stint as a laborer (briefer, even, than Bluvshtain’s) cont tinued to be a major inspiration for his poetry for several years.3 Some scholars attribute Shlonsky’s switch to the new accent in the 1920s to the year he spent in Palestine as a teenager, but his participation in a labor settlement may very well have been the more significant factor in his adoption of the new accent.4 The first extant new-accent composition by Shlonsky is dated winter 1922 (January– March), and was written during his four-month stay at En ±arod, a settlement that pitched...