Yosef Ḥayyim Brenner's Mikan umikan: The Telling of Trauma

The essay suggests a new reading of Yosef Ḥayyim Brenner's long story "Mikan umikan," written in Palestine in 1911. Deviating from previous readings, which have stressed national-social, philosophical, and existential aspects of this highly appreciated yet somewhat problematic text, it follows its intricate delineation of a personal plot of a painful loss. "Mikan umikan" is thus considered in terms of its impressive poetic achievement in creating a literary representation of trauma. Read in light of current trauma and literature discourse, it is shown to endow space and time to a missing part, an unspeakable "hole" in the narrative. A sophisticated manipulation of the story's diary format and a portrayal of two parallel, intertwined chains of repetitions are presented as the poetic means by which this goal is achieved.

The trauma articulated is that of the protagonist's separation from an intimate male friend, toward whom he experiences ambivalent feelings of homoerotic love mixed with humiliation and aggression. On the basis of details related to Brenner's life during the time of publication of "Mikan umikan" (as presented by Anita Shapira in her biography of the author), and of information discerned from his intensive correspondence with various figures in the Hebrew culture arena of his time, this trauma is read as reminiscent of the author's separation from his friend and colleague, Uri Nissan Gnessin. Brenner's story therefore possibly provides a rare glimpse into the intriguing and largely enigmatic relations between these two giants of modern Hebrew literature.