Musical Discourse and Historical Narratives in Hebrew Literature

This article explores the role of musical discourse in shaping historical narratives in the Hebrew literature of Yehoshua Kenaz and Nathan Shaham. By referring to the rich reservoir of German culture and literature, such as Thomas Manns Doctor Faustus> both Kenaz and Shaham uniquely come to terms with past events. Examples include the immigration from Europe to Palestine in the first decades of the twentieth century, World War II, and the War of Independence. My claim is that a dialectic model of aesthetics characterizes both authors poetic employment of musical discourse in order to reflect upon cultural and political processes for Kenaz, it is narrating the moments of strangeness and alienation inherent in processes of socialization and identification, such as the formation of the Zionist self, and for Shaham, it is documenting distorted realizations of sociocultural visions regarding life in the Yishuv and the State of Israel

Art · Hebrew · Linguistics · Literature · Moment (physics · Musical · Narrative · Physics · Diverse Musicological Studies · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Music History and Culture · Philosophy