Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Politics, and Culture: Books on Israel, Volume II

7. National Neurosis in Israeli Literature: A.B. Yehoshua

Aliza Shenhar National Neurosis in Israeli Literature: A.B. Yehoshua I A significant change occurred in Israeli literature in the 1970s as writers attempted to contend with the objective features of the Israeli condition and to fashion a fictional world constituting a paradigm of Israeli society. The most prominent example ofthis change is found in the work of A.B. Yehoshua, whose innovation is the presentation of a model opposed to that of conventional Zionism. Yehoshua draws out of the collective subconscious awkward and vexatious questions about the accepted tenets of Zionism and gives expression to all the political uncertainties and fears that disturb the Israeli's sleep. His work parallels the neurosis ofthe individual with the neurosis of national existence on the overall allegorical level. It should be clearly stated that Yehoshua's stories, novels and plays have an independent poetic existence, beyond the allegorical plane; but in the context of Israeli society the writing acquires a multi-faceted significance, even though each work stands on its own merits. A reading from the social and national viewpoint thus 110 Critical Essays on Israeli Society. Politics. and Culture adds breadth and depth to the immediate plane ofthe text. Allusions to other areas of significance selVe as a kind of hidden text to the overt material. Thus a macro-context imposes itself on the various elements comprising the micro-context. The process ofinterpreting the text is therefore a constant confrontation between the literary matter, which selVes as the plain text, and the cultural, social, and national contexts, which selVe as the hidden text. II In several of his earlier books Yeho~hua presents an Israeli society which, though secular, on]:" appears to have turned away from traditional Judaism and the traditional "Jewish Condition." In fact, this society too is seen as religiously driven; the Israeli social and political way of life is portrayed as no more than a substitute for a traditional Jewish way onife. For example, the main theme ofthe short story "The Last Commander" is the experience of slumber and death; the warrior generation, now on reselVe duty, prefers slumber in the desert to the activity of battle. Only those who did not take an active part in the past wars prefer fighting. The platoon, headed by their commander, spend their whole time sleeping until the appearance of the chief commander. He drops down from heaven by helicopter like an angry God and during the following seven days drills them to exhaustion. The moment he leaves, the platoon returns to its deep slumber. In "The Last Commander" the heroes live in a society that marshals them in a totalitarian order and whose regulations intimate a transcendental source. They yearn to live in a clear-cut framework of law, of "do" and "don't," of military seIVice and of collective rituals, whose ecstatic climaxiswar. Theheroes are members of monastic-type orders and live in an army camp and on military campaigns. either openly, as in 'The Last Commander " or "High Tide," a terror story about an ancient prison for life prisoners that according to tradition will in the National Neurosis in Israeli Literature: A.B. Yehoshua III end be flooded by the tide. or in secret. as in "Opposite the Forests." in which the hero disciplines himselfln a manner akin to a religious retreat to write about "Crusades." that is. holy wars. Sometimes the hero attempts to break out ofthe totalitarian order so as to deliver himself to the opposing cult. which is not founded on ritual. For example. in "The Torpor of the Day" the heroes. construction laborers. wish to escape their mechanical. ever repeating manual work. In the middle of the working day they leave work and fall into a deep slumber. All ofYehoshua's stories are characterized by confllctconflict which creates in the personality of the heroes a dislocation between two contradictory forces: attraction to creative power and attraction to destructive power; the forces oforder versus those of chaos. The expedition to the desert in ''The Last Commander" reflects. these two contradictory forces. In the history ofthe people ofIsrael the social and religious order was created in the desert. and there the Law was given to the people. But in the desert man found the natural wilderness. the primeval chaos. which beckons him on to be swallowed up and disappear forever. There is no doubt that the fusing ofthe clerks' camp into the army camp...