Between historical fiction, family saga and KÜNSTLERROMAN: Yehudit Katzir's TZILLAH

• In Event: History and Politics in Modern Hebrew Fiction

Abstract

The tension between personal and collective narrative has been widely used as a way to synchronically and diachronically read Modern Hebrew Literature. In this respect, the recent publication of - and the critical attention to - a large number of works belonging to the variety of forms included under the definition of «life writing» is particularly relevant. Among those, there are some works where the retelling of the past and the definition of the self pass through the filter of the family saga genre. Already understood as a way to problematize the meta-Zionist narrative, the family saga has been developed as historical fiction, auto/biographical novel or a blending of these genres. Moreover, what has been defined as the fictional autobiography disguised as historical fiction by women authors, could be considered as the crossing of these paths.
In this perspective, the last work of Yehudit Katzir, TZILLAH (2013), could be an interesting case study. In my paper, I will contextualize TZILLAH with respect to the recent flourishing of life writing, the family saga genre and the fictional autobiographies by women authors. A particular attention will be devoted to the compatibility of these modalities of writing with the KÜNSTLERROMAN genre in the context of contemporary Hebrew literature.
The possibility of a text like TZILLAH to be read as an attempt to retell the History and, at the same time, to tell both a family and an individual story in which the discovery of an artistic vocation finds place, will be the main focus. All these points of view will contribute to the deepening of Katzir's uses of the idea of «SHALSHELET HA-DOROT» as it appears in her last literary work.

author

• Elisa Carandina, INALCO