SOURCE: "Farewell to Arms and Sentimentality: Reflections of Israel's Wars in Yehuda Amichai's Poetry," in World Literature Today, Vol. 60, No. 1, Winter 1986, pp. 12-17.

[In the following essay, Mazor examines Amichai's unsentimental approach to the brutality of Israel's wars.]

      War's a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,
      Unless her cause by right be sanctified.
 
                                Byron, Don Juan, 9.4

One may convincingly argue that all art is enduringly besieged by an intriguing paradox. A considerable part of any work of art is founded upon emotion. Even the most ambitiously intellectual, logical, artistic creation that aspires only to analytical insight is not completely devoid of emotion. Such a lack would undoubtedly devitalize the piece, leading to shallowness. Thus emotion is not only laudable but crucial to any work of art. When feeling deteriorates into over-emotionality, however, when the delicate balance between depicted object and artistic depiction is upset or destroyed, the work suffers. The artistic paradox is therefore enticing and potentially devastating at the same time; the creative work's vitality and its deterioration spring from the same source, and the dividing line between the two may be hazy. In most cases, though, readers seem to possess a reliable capacity to distinguish correctly between well-monitored sentiment and exaggerated sentimentality.

Perhaps it is easier to demonstrate a methodology for avoiding sentimentality than it is to define the difference between delicate sentiment and coarse sentimentality. Although all art develops its own means of preventing a stumbling metamorphosis from the former to the latter, one may plausibly discern a common denominator among all the techniques and devices: the enduring effort to cultivate an equilibrium between the emotional resonance evoked by the material and that earned by the artistic depiction. This goal may be adroitly achieved by a deftly calibrated process of restraining emotions, distilling sentiments, dimming the eroding emotional potential, and damming the potentially inordinate effect.

One might contend that distancing is easier to establish in literature, the verbal art, than in the other arts. This argument is based on the fact that the distance between the artistically molded reality and the molding medium is greater in literature than in, say, painting, sculpture, music, or dance. Color, form, sound, movement are all physical phenomena; words are the only creative materials not found in nature. This unique character of the verbal arts is acknowledged by the Psalmist, who lauds: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard" (Psalms 19:1-4). The verbal personification which the Psalmist bestows upon nature maintains the only thing it does not possess: words.

More than fiction or drama, poetry seems to shrink literature's inherent distance between depicted object and depicting medium because poetry more strongly prefers emotional to rational expression. Fiction, especially the novel, is the most conscious and intellectual literary form: it doubts, examines, muses, inquires, suspects, expounds, probes, and analyzes. Poetry appears to engrave the importance of being emotional on its ideological ban. The need to curb emotions and block sentimentality in poetry therefore becomes an urgent one.

This need increases when the poetic subject itself is highly emotional, such as war—particularly the protracted, lacerating Israeli wars in which poets have participated and continue to participate. The historical proximity of these wars, especially the War for Independence (1947–49), to the Holocaust, the perpetually besieged position of the state of Israel, the knowledge that defeat would lead to national calamity, the haunting sense of David compelled to face Goliath—all these factors give Israeli wars a remarkably condensed emotionality and consequently increase the hazard of an oversentimental poetic response.

Since it is beyond the capacity of a single paper to discuss the quantity of techniques mobilized by Israeli poets for taming emotionality in war-related verse, it seems preferable to concentrate on one poet whose ars poetica may represent major tendencies shared by many. Yehuda Amichai (b. 1924) is one of the most distinguished and prolific of contemporary Israeli poets. Although war is certainly not a predominant component in his work, his poetry does embrace all Israeli wars from the struggle for independence through the recent conflict in Lebanon. Furthermore, Amichai's poetry displays a flexible and sensitive capacity to modify literary means according to alternating emotional resonances emerging from different wars. The unique feelings generated by the Six-Day War and the Lebanon war in comparison to the War for Independence are prudently mirrored in his verse, and his work may be considered a poetically historical account as well as a sensitive moral barometer of Israel's conflicts.

Nathan Zach, another contemporary Israeli poet, states, "When sentiments fade away, the correct poem speaks out." Zach does not recommend the purging of emotions from poetry but suggests dealing with emotions in an unemotional way. Amichai's poetry differs markedly from Zach's yet ardently exemplifies Zach's axiom. Amichai uses a repetitive technique in his poetry, adopted for disarming sentiments of their undesirable potential for sentimentality. Although a poem's focus is war and its agonizing outcome, the subject is treated not directly but obliquely. Thus war is evasively depicted through themes and topics which are relatively or even exclusively divorced from war itself. Consequently, war is uprooted from its highly emotional immediacy and anchored in a distant context, which meliorates the emotional resonance, serving to dilute it. In other words, a deflection of attention from a given war insulates its emotional potential and thereby establishes esthetic distance.

This technique is proficiently displayed in the following sonnet, which opens a cluster of sonnets titled "Ahavnu Kan" ("We Loved Here"):

    My father spent four years in their war
    And neither hated his enemies nor loved them;
    But I know that already there
    He built me day by day from his tranquillities
 
    Which have been so few, collected by him
    Between bombs and smoke,
    And he put them in his worn bag
    With the rest of his mother's drying cake.
 
    And he collected in his eyes nameless dead
    Many dead he collected for me,
    For I will recognize them in his looks and will know them,
    And I will not die like them in the atrocity—
    He filled his eyes with them and he was wrong:
    I continue going to all my wars.

The poem's major theme is the narrator's own forced participation in war (despite his father's hopes), but it is suspended by the poem's end and consequently is considerably blurred. One may also discern a rhetorical device we might call thematic swindling. The reader assumes that the father's wars are the poem's focus, only to realize at the poem's conclusion that he has been misled. The swindle that yields frustrated expectations, however, grants the poem an enigmatic tinge, making necessary an intellectual deciphering process. The reader must extricate the poem from the emotional level to the rational one, and therefore the emotional potential is weakened.

Furthermore, the majority of the poem is devoted to the father's wars. Despite their horrors, they deflect attention from the narrator's wars and thus blunt their impact in the poem. A similar thematic deflection is demonstrated in "Shir al hakravot harishonim" ("A Poem on the First Battles").

     On the way to the front we stayed overnight in a kindergarten,
     Under my head I put a woolen Teddy bear
     Upon my tired face dreidels descended
     And trumpets and dolls—
     Not angels,
     My feet, in the heavy boots
     Let fall a tower of colorful dice
     Which have been put each on the other,
     Each die smaller than the one under it
     And in my head big and small memories confusingly mingled
     And made dreams.
 
     And beyond the window there were fires …
     And also in my eyes under my eyelashes.

Here thematic deflection seems to reach a level of extreme elaboration. Though war is again the poet's center of interest, it is left to a relatively marginal part of the poem and alluded to only hastily. In "We Loved Here" the narrator's war is suspended until the end, whereas in the present example the war is inlaid from the very beginning and then blatantly abandoned. The dilution of war's emotional potential is achieved through a diversion of attention from war to a kindergarten. The naïve and peaceful connotations thus evoked soften the harsh, devastating impact of armed conflict. On the other hand, the encounter emphasizes the horrors of war when contrasted to the tranquil background of the kindergarten. The shift mutes the emotional response generated by war but does not let emotionality completely dissipate. Consequently, the poem's emotional tone is balanced. Another example of Amichai's skillful use of thematic deflection to control inordinate emotionality is found in "Bet hakravot hatsva'i habriti behar hatsofim" ("The British Military Cemetery on Tsofim Mountain").

     Forgetfulness in the valleys. More remembrance on the mountain.
     A diligent prudency constructed
     On the mountain slopes. How can one die
     At a great distance for
     A country that does not exist? And I
     Was not born then, yet.
 
     Sometimes in summer
     When the terrestrial globe is transparent,
     The grandchildren of those who died watch
     Their dead grandfathers calmly floating
     As on the floor of the ocean
     Of the land of Jerusalem.

The British wars in Israel took place many decades ago, and their selection as the poem's theme already establishes a certain historical distance. Still, since British rule in Israel is historically bound to the Israeli struggle for independence, the emotions aroused by the war have not completely faded. Thus, the War for Independence saliently echoes between the poem's lines, but its emotional resonance is muted. Moreover, the narrator's reference to the soldiers killed by the British as grandfathers serves as a cunning device of temporal displacement and cultivates the illusion that they continued to live after death, as young men, and eventually became grandfathers. The temporal remove and the illusion of survival together function to lessen the sorrow of the soldier's death and consequently reduce its emotional impact.

The same technique is well demonstrated in one of a group of poems titled "Kinot al hametim bamilkhama" ("Lamentations on the War Dead").

     The memorial of the unknown soldier is
     On the other side. The enemy's side.
     A good reference point for the artillery men
     Of the future.
 
     Or the war memorial in London
     Hyde Park corner, decorated as a cake
     Fancy and rich: one more soldier raises his head
 
     And a gun, one more cannon, one more eagle, one more
     Stone angel.
 
     And a big marble flag like whipped cream.
     Poured from above
     Artistically
 
     The oversweet cherries
     Too red
     Already have been gluttonized by the glutton of hearts.
 
         Amen.

Although the poem begins with reference to what was probably an Israeli unknown-soldier's memorial, erected in haste during the battles and now beyond the border, on the enemy's side, the focus shifts rapidly to a British war memorial in the heart of London. That depiction of the British monument, so different from the Israeli one, occupies most of the poem's text and closes the piece. The coquettish richness of the foreign memorial confronts the meekness of the Israeli monument. Whereas the latter is bleakly besieged on the enemy's side, the former is proudly located in the center of the capital, declaring its arrogant artistry. Furthermore, the foreign memorial is made of stone, symbolically announcing that the war and its horrors are also now petrified, never to return. In contrast, the Israeli marker is described as a good target for artillerymen in future conflicts. The foreign war came to an end; the Israeli one did not and is augured to continue, as bloody as ever.

Imagining the Israeli memorial as a convenient target for future marksmen is also bitingly ironic: the soldiers who were shot and killed are doomed to repeated shellings after their death. Even the tomb cannot provide the repose they never found while alive. Another ironic barb is directed at the foreign monument. The British role in Israel during the years prior to the War for Independence was certainly not laudable, despite lofty pretensions of bringing order and peace to the region. Now British rulers have erected a grandiose memorial to commemorate their army's service, while the war they pretended to end goes on. Such irony is not only ideological, but also acts as a tool to curb sentimentality by establishing an emotional distance, leading to clear-eyed rationality.

Amichai also restrains sentimentality with verbal simplicity, a sort of rhetorical meekness, as in "Geshem bisdeh hakrav" ("Rain on the Battlefield"): "Rain falls on the faces of my friends: / On the faces of my living friends, who / Cover their heads with a blanket— / And on the faces of my dead friends, who / do not cover any more." The simple, ordinary language and the modest tone of this short poem create a considerable distance between emotional essence and rhetorical utterance. A cry becomes a whisper; weeping all but vanishes. Potential sentimentality therefore fades, and a very correct poem (following Zach's prescription) results. The dead and the living are equal because the rain soaks everyone. That horrible equality is again shown as the live soldiers cover their faces with blankets and look like dead comrades—who are customarily covered with a blanket on the battlefield. The enormous emotional impact born of such statements demands drastic restraints. Monitoring the language and tone seems an appropriate rhetorical technique for the poem's esthetic needs.

The same verbal monitoring is applied to the metaphorical texture of another poem from "Lamentations on the War Dead."

     Dikki was hit
     Like the watertower in Yad Mordechay.
     Hit. A hole in the belly. Everything
     Streamed out of him.
 
     But he remained standing like that
     In the landscape of my memory,
     Like the watertower in Yad Mordechay.
 
     Not far from there, he fell
     A bit northward, near Chulekat.

Poetry's exalted, celebrated verbal characteristics are missing here, replaced by a surprising simplicity in which a dying soldier is compared to a collapsing watertower. The customary elevation of the figurative level is not completely abandoned, however, for a dryly reported simile that could have been taken from an informative newspaper account attains its rhetorical purpose. The holy becomes secular, the divine becomes earthly, and the emotionally laden poem escapes sentimentality.

Elsewhere, simile gives way to metaphor, and the hierarchic relationship between the metaphorically related elements acts as a cornerstone for rhetorical restraint, as in the fourth poem of "Lamentations on the War Dead."

     I found an old book about animals,
     Brehm, second volume, birds:
     In a sweet language, depiction of a starling's life,
     A thrush and a swallow. Many errors in an old
 
     Gothic script, but a lot of love. "Our winged
     Friends," "Wandering from us to the warm countries,"
     A nest, a spotted egg, soft down, the nightingale,
     The stork, "The spring harbingers."
     The red chest.
 
     Year of publication, 1913, Germany,
     The eve of the war which was the eve of my wars:
     My good friend who died in my arms and his blood
     In the dunes of Ashbod, 1948, June.
     Oh, my friend
     The red chest.

The metaphorical bond between the robin's red breast and the blood-covered chest of the speaker's friend is cleverly wrought and meaningfully baffling. The poem's first two stanzas lead the reader to assume the poem's focus is an old. alluring German bird book. The third stanza then connects the book's date of publication to World War I, provoking the reader's curiosity, and further links that war to the Israeli War for Independence. The German defeat in World War I prodded Germany to start World War II; the Jews who escaped that war and reached Israel were later forced to fight for independence. Only the poem's closing stanza fully reveals the true focus, however, and the reader's frustrated assumptions compel him to reread and reconsider the poem. The bird descriptions, especially the red breast, are not the thematic nucleus, as previously believed, but only a vehicle for the metaphorical equation within which the narrator's dead friend is the tenor.

This zigzag process of literary comprehension is certainly not unique. Many literary texts deliberately dictate a reading-comprehension process whereby later information casts new light upon previously rendered information and consequently alters the initial perception of meaning. As Iser says, "The act of reaction is not a smooth or continuous process, but one which, in its essence, relies on interruptions of the flow to render it efficacious. We look forward, we look back, we decide, we change our decisions, we form expectations, we question, we muse, we accept, we reject; this is the dynamic process of reaction." However, in Amichai's poem the reading process is prudently mobilized toward the rhetorical goal of preventing sentimentality: its baffling characteristics condition a drastically rational reaction which eliminates its emotional potential. In other words, the reader's reaction to the poem is extricated from the emotional level and "exiled" to the rational level, enabling sentiment without sentimentality.

Another effective use of poetry's figurative tissues to block sentimentality is evident in Amichai's poem "Elohim merakhem al yaldey hagan" ("God Pities the Kindergarten Children").

     God pities the kindergarten children
     He pities the schoolchildren less
     And He does not pity the adults at all.
     He leaves them alone
     And sometimes they are forced to crawl on all fours
 
     In the burning sand,
     To get to the first-aid station
     And they are bleeding.
     Perhaps He will pity the true lovers,
     Will bestow mercy and will shade
     Like the tree that shades the homeless
     Who sleep on a bench on the boulevard.
 
     Perhaps we also shall give them
     The last coins of grace
     Which mother left us
     So their happiness will protect us
     Now and in the days to come.

Although the war theme is concealed in the poem's embroidery as a seemingly marginal metaphor, its presence significantly affects the overall meaning. The narrator's blatant accusation against God, who wrongly and stintingly distributes His mercy, takes on a singular meaning as the castigated adults are portrayed as wounded soldiers, crawling in the burning sand, bleeding and in grave pain. The phrase "crawling on all fours" also likens the adults to helpless infants and consequently emphasizes their miserable condition. It is ironic, moreover, that whereas true infants are well protected by God, adults who are as helpless as infants are indifferently deserted by the same Lord. However, once God's injustice toward the chastised adults is configured in metaphorical terms of bleeding, wounded soldiers, the impact of war's atrocities permeates the poem's fabric and dominates its ideological features. The impact of war's horrors is in no way diminished, yet the emotional resonance is successfully restrained. The precarious border between sentiment and sentimentality has once again been avoided.

The thematic structure of the poem, I might add, is founded upon a pervasive critical irony. The speaker's contention that divine pity for kindergarten children is coupled with a disturbing injustice toward adults offers a stark contrast to the traditional image of a merciful God. This fundamental irony prevails throughout, but it is not the most striking ironic aspect. In fact, it serves as a foundation upon which an even more intricate irony is developed at the poem's conclusion. The speaker, bitterly disappointed by a God whose generosity does not even match that of a tree, decides to replace this pitiless Lord. He bestows upon the agonized adults the last coins of grace from his mother's inheritance. The final two lines of the last stanza shed a surprisingly ironic light on this generous initiative: "So their happiness will protect us / Now and in the days to come." Accordingly, the speaker's magnanimity is nothing but a selfish investment: he aspires to support the castigated adults because it may be beneficial. Consequently, the ironic accusation leveled at God boomerangs and hits the speaker himself. Furthermore, to his allegations of divine indifference toward human misfortune, he adds the charges of selfishness and hypocrisy, thereby only widening the abyss between his pretentious self-portrait and his true nature.

Irony and sentimentality cannot coexist. The rational critical consideration dictated by irony does not admit of superfluous emotionality. Excess emotionality is based on a lapse of critical distance; irony springs form that distance. The attainment of such distance becomes more problematic as Amichai's thematic focus shifts from the independence struggles (1947–49) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) to the recent conflict in Lebanon, the most confusing and most heatedly debated war Israel has ever known. This war is painfully different from and far worse than previous ones; it aspired to bring peace, yet it still continues. Some argue that although the conflict erupted in 1982, its roots can be traced to the laudable Six-Day War (1967), whose consequences were dramatic and even spectacular. The haunting sense of a besieged country threatened constantly by murderous animosity was drastically alleviated. The stifling perpetual fear of destruction was suddenly replaced by glorious self-confidence. The starkly constricted borders, exposed to vicious attacks, were expanded through stupendous conquests from horizon to horizon. Victory was not easily digestible, however. The sharp transition from a state of siege to sweeping conquest also invoked a sense of modesty. High pride, excessive self-confidence, and vain haughtiness arose. David not only smote Goliath but also succeeded him.

The traumatic Yom Kippur War was the bitter result of those perilous developments. Still, the lesson was not learned. Grief and blatant rage surfaced during the summer of 1982. Hostile foes of yesterday turned into fervent peace-seekers, whom Israel spurned. Even the absence of Egypt did not radically alter the vicious calculus of enmity in which Israel is still the threatened component. Israel's basic struggle for survival was no less right than before, but the protracted Lebanon conflict raised more questions than answers. The painful nature of Israel's most recent war is piously mirrored in the poem "Hagibor ha'amiti shel ha'aqedah" ("The Real Hero of the Aqedah").

     The real hero of the aqedahwas the ram
     Who did not know about the conspiracy among the others
     As if he volunteered to die instead of Isaac.
 
     I want to sing him a memorial poem.
     About the curly wool and his human eyes
     About the horns which were so quiet on his vibrant head
     And after he was slaughtered they made of them shofarot
     For the cheering of their war
     Or for the cheering of their vulgar happiness.
 
     I want to remember the last scene
     Like a handsome photograph in a refined fashion journal:
     The tanned young man, indulged in coquettish clothes
     And next to him the angel dressed in a long silk garment
     For a celebrated reception.
     And they both stare with empty eyes
     At two empty seats
 
     And behind them, like a colorful background, the ram
     Held in the thicket before slaughter.
     And the thicket is his last friend.
 
     The angel left for home
     Isaac left for home
     And Abraham and God left long ago
 
     But the real hero of the aqedah
     Is the ram.

Though the aqedah story has inspired numerous variations, both in Hebrew and non-Hebrew literature, Amichai's approach to this ancient yet fresh and tantalizing motif is striking: all the traditional participants in the sacrificial drama are bypassed, and the ram, the real victim, is elevated to a leading role. This surprisingly innovative interpretation is not superficial manipulation or vain literary provocation, but a useful vehicle to render a critical message. The specific nature of this message is clarified in the last three lines of the first stanza: "And after he was slaughtered they made of them shofarot / For the cheering of their war / Or for the cheering of their vulgar happiness." These lines refer to the euphoria that flowed from the intoxicating victory of the Six-Day War. Associating the shofarot with that "vulgar happiness" expressly recalls the sounding of the ram horns after the conquest of the Wailing Wall during the Six-Day War, a celebration that the poet interprets as a disturbing sign of presumptuousness. The phrases "their war" and "their vulgar happiness" manifest his recoil from such conceited behavior, in which he wishes no part.

A common denominator between Amichai's critical elucidation of the aqedah and his denunciation of the Six-Day War's unfortunate consequences is clear, however: there are always forsaken victims who pay for others' happiness with their lives. In this sense, the slaughtered ram and the young soldiers who fell during the war are analogous sacrifices sharing analogous altars. In this vein, the word volunteered (lehitnadev) is particularly significant, since volunteerism is a key concept in regard to the Israeli army. The term may thus be considered an integrative element that binds past and present, the fable to its moral. An identical expressive connection springs from the change in verb tense between the opening and closing lines of the poem: "The real hero of the aqedah was the ram … the real hero of the aqedah is the ram." The biblical ram was sacrificed in the distant past; its young human successors are being continually sacrificed today. Past and present are bound in bloody redundancy.

As in previously discussed poems, thematic deflection is evident here, for the war in Lebanon is indirectly presented through the isolating screen of the aqedah fable. Consequently, an esthetic distance is achieved and the poem is redeemed from potential sentimentality. "The Real Hero" is ironical, hyperbolic, and critically piercing. Shakespeare cleverly stated in I Henry IV, "The arms are fair / When the intent of bearing them is just" (5.2.88-89). Indeed, despite the questionable nature of the Lebanon conflict, Israel did not say farewell to fair arms. Long years of haunting terrorism have certainly produced a just intent for bearing arms, yet too many aspects of this continuing war are not fair. This change in the nature of war has dictated a change in Amichai's literary response to the subject. Though lamentation for the dead is undiminished, it is joined with biting irony and exaggerated criticism. In Amichai's verse, historical dynamics are faithfully shadowed by poetic dynamics. In this regard, his poetry aspired not only to mirror history but to judge it as well. Amichai's "war poem" is a "correct poem" not only because it extinguishes sentimentality and prefers a whisper to a cry, but also because it is a farewell to arms as much as it is a farewell to sentimentality.