Abstract
The Hebrew poetry of the 1950s and early 1960s participated in the construction of the Israeli national 'imagined community' by negating the sea. The poets of the 'generation of statehood' portrayed the arrival in Israel in such a way as to occlude the sea itself. Like their forefathers, they tended to represent the sea as simply an obstacle to be overcome on the way to Eretz Israel. By turning their backs on the water they fashioned a native poetry written on sovereign ground. This allegorical configuration of the landscape removed the abstract subject from a concrete encounter with his surroundings and made it possible to reject those whose presence predated his, including among others Mizrahi Jews, Arabs, and women.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 49-64 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Mediterranean Historical Review |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2002 |