The Last Chapter: Nathan Alterman and the Six-Day War
1999; Indiana University Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2979/isr.1999.4.2.178
ISSN1527-201X
Autores Tópico(s)Middle East Politics and Society
ResumoIOR OBVIOUS REASONS, NATHAN ALTERMAN'S admirers, including most literary scholars, tend to forget, overlook, or suppress the last chapter of his life. Despite extensive debate over his works during the last two decades, only a handful of studies have actually dealt with the period of his transition from an all-inspiring poet into an angry columnist whose writing, as well as public activity, were totally mobilized toward one overriding idea: the concept of Greater Israel.' Alterman's devotees regarded this step with a double qualm: they were dismayed at his poetry's unreserved permutation into journalistic polemics; and many were upset that Alterman, identified for over a generation with the pragmatic mainstream of the Labor Movement (Mapai), had now metamorphosed into the most vocal spokesman of radical ideology distinctly allied to the Revisionist Right.2 Alterman was not alone among writers traditionally bound to Mapai who, in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, immediately began to empathize with the idea of Greater Israel, insisting that the Israeli Government retain the status quo in the recently captured areas. For Alterman, however, the SixDay War changed his entire life. In Nathan Alterman--the Poet as Leader, Moshe Shamir presents documentary details ofAlterman's life in the period following the Six-Day War, when the poet was totally immersed in organizing the Greater Israel Movement and composing its manifesto. He took upon himself every role, was undeterred by any commitment, and overcame obstacles that previously he would not even have dreamed of tackling, wrote Shamir. Yet at the same time he was always wary not to appear as a solitary fighter, aprimus inter pares .. .3 After the manifesto's publication, Alterman remained active in the movement, participating in its meetings, lobbying politicians, and contributing to its journal, Zot Ha'Aretz [This is the Land]. But the major expression of his new stage in life is illustrated in the scores of articles he published almost weekly in the newspaperMa'ariv,
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