Paradoxes of a ‘National Poet’: The Strange Case of Bialik

Abstract

The archetypal charismatic according to Weber is the biblical prophet, and so it is not entirely surprising that the renaissance of Hebrew language and literature as part of Jewish nationalism was led by a charismatic poet who, in some of his most powerful and influential works, spoke with the voice of a prophet — Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934). One of the great, unexplained ironies of modern Jewish history is that Bialik, whom Weizmann called a giant of the Zionist movement, and who was hailed in his lifetime and until the present day as the poet laureate of the Jewish national renaissance, had painfully ambivalent feelings about this role — reminiscent of those of Krishnamurti, as shown in the previous chapter — to the point of rejecting it.

‘The rage of Dante against Florence, or Pistoia, or what not, the deep surge of Shakespeare’s general cynicism and disillusionment are merely gigantic attempts to metamorphose private failures and disappointments. The great poet, in writing himself, writes his time.’

T.S. Eliot, ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’