H.N. Bialik and the Anatomy of National Language

• In Event: The Pathologies of Jewish Literature

Abstract

A recurring metaphor in the poetry of Hayim Nahman Bialik figures the Jewish nation as caught between life and death, neither dead nor fully alive. In his essay “Language Pangs” (Hevel Lashon) from 1905, debating the stakes and prospects of the “revival” of the Hebrew language as a national language, Bialik turns to this metaphor once again. This time the metaphor is employed to describe the unique state of Hebrew at the turn of the century: a largely non-spoken language, unqualified for the use of everyday conversation. Bialik refers to Hebrew as semi-dead, inferior in relation to European languages, and elaborates on its “weakening power of digestion” and “philological skeleton,” explaining that the language lacks the flesh and blood of a living tongue. This paper examines the figurative account offered in “Language Pangs,” focusing on the unique corporality Bialik attributes to Hebrew and the different pathologies he locates in its “body.” Chana Kronfeld argues that in “Language Pangs” Bialik diagnoses Hebrew as an ill linguistic system that could only be cured through a total “revival” in both writing and speech. Yet, as the essay unfolds, Bialik seems to suggest that the “illness” of Hebrew poses such a threat to its “life” that it cannot be cured naturally, with time, but must be “operated” immediately, by poets. Throughout the essay, Bialik's metaphors become more complex and obscure, and toward the ending, the initial illness ascribed to Hebrew is transformed into a state of pregnancy and delayed birth. Poets are then summoned to assist the language in her labour. Yet, this surgical assistance, which is meant to cure Hebrew, gradually takes the form of a symbiotic relationship between poets and language. Considering this gendered relationship, as well as its violent and erotic implications as they are invoked in Bialik’s own terms, my reading casts light on the pathological dimensions of the project of national and linguistic revival.

Author

• Roni Henig, Columbia University