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Dr. Anna Lissa

Postdoktorandin (Stipendiatin 7/2010 - 09/2011)

Two Nations in Making: A Comparative Approach to the elaboration of National Literary Canons. The case of Giacomo Leopardi and Hayyim Nahman Bialik

The comparison of Italian literature, which is of course part and parcel of European culture and literature with modern Hebrew literature may embody and interesting case of learning through strangeness, because the ‘strangers’, namely the Jews, have been living for a long time in Europe. Furthermore, after the spread of Enlightenment and of its Jewish version (Haskalah) in Europe[1], it may be easily assumed that the Jews were not only overwhelmed by modern thought, instead they also participated to the building of modernity. They became partners of European culture and partners of Gentiles in the modern world.

During the XIX century new forces were at work and they invested Jews as long as Italy: the birth of the National idea, the rediscovery and the reassessing of a national cultural heritage with an historical continuity, i. e. the building of a national identity and, finally the presence of an enemy.

As for the Jews, it is generally acknowledged that the birth and success of Zionism is a reaction to modern anti-Semitism, paradoxically engendered by the failure of Haskalah (Jewish Enlightement) and by Jewish emancipation. Nonetheless, Zionism, is deeply rooted in the Haskalah itself because it had redefined Jewish identity as immanent and as the evolving product of natural, scientifically explicable developments.

As for Italy, the reputed Italian historian Luigi Salvatorelli has pointed out that the roots of the Italian Risorgimento have to be found in the XVIII century Enlightenment with its culture and political thought. According to him, during the XVIII century Italy revives its relationships with the European civilization. According to him, many XVIII century Italian writers, such as Pietro Verri, were focusing on an Italian patriotism based on unity and National consciousness, while Vittorio Alfieri and Giuseppe Parini were fully reassessing the ethic-cultural feature of Risorgimento and its relationship with the XVIII century Europe’s political thought.

The current project assumes historical facts and political thought as a starting point in order to focus mainly on the cultural and literary implications.

Given this general frame, the research work will focus on the comparison of two poets: the Italian Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) and the national Jewish poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934)[2].

Together with Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi has been among the first authors who wrote patriotic poems to their fatherland, Italy. True, he conceived Italy as the continuation and the reprise of the glorious past of the Roman Empire. Nonetheless, among his main concerns there was the rebuilding and re-elaboration the national literary canon, the effort to reshape afresh Italian language and to shape Italian identity. For this reasons, he was involved in editorial activities, he published translations of Greek literature, through which he could try to give a new, up to date form to Italian language, which was mainly in the hands of the XVI century ‘Puristi’. Given his literary and also philosophical interests, he was less involved in the political debate strictu sensu about the democratic and the liberal options.

As for Bialik, he was born in Volinia (Poland/Ucraina) and he is considered the ‘national Hebrew poet’. Such interpretation has been elaborated by the historian of literature Yosef Klauzner already at the beginning of XX century. While living in Europe and mainly in Odessa until the 1920s, Bialik wrote poetry and was also involved in editorial activities. Much like Leopardi, he wanted to rebuild the national literary canon. He searched and published Middle Ages Jewish poetry, namely Ibn Ezra and Ibn Gvirol. Through his literary involvement, the editing of old Jewish poetry and his activity as a translator (he translated Don Chichotte, among others) he gave a seminal contribution to the shaping of modern Hebrew language. Before leaving Odessa to Tel Aviv, he founded a publishing house, Dvir, still existing in Israel, with the purpose of publishing the Jewish literary corpus. He devoted his remaining years in Tel Aviv mainly to his editorial activity. Finally, he paid much attention to children literature, whose main purpose was the education of the new Jew conscious of his historical cultural past and ready to face the new national enterprise. From this point of view, we must point out that he laid the foundation of a tradition, because Israeli literature and Israeli writers are very sensible to the issue of children books, and many reputed authors, like A.B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz among others, have nowadays published books for children.

I think that a comparative study of the two authors will fit into the general research cluster of the Graduate School “Society and Culture in Motion”, because it can become a case study about how the ideas and cultural concepts are transmitted, even though, of course, Bialik and Leopardi did not know each other. Nonetheless, they belonged to a main, essentially European, main stream, which has been appropriated and re elaborated in different ways by each of them according to the different culture they belonged to.

[1] Actually the Haskalah enjoyed by far a great success in Western Europe.

[2] The time gap among the two poets must not come as a surprise, it reflects the time it took to the Haskalah and then to Zionism to get to underdeveloped Russia, whose Jewish community became since the end of XIX century most involved and most active in Zionist enterprise. It must be also pointed out that the last European Jewish cultural centre was Odessa (Ucraina), were Bialik, among the others, was living. After the major Jewish intellectuals left the city, in the 1920s, they came to Tel Aviv, which became the first Hebrew cultural center in British ruled Palestine.

Working experiences

Education

Awards and grants

Publications

“Going and Coming back from the Kingdom of Death: Weinburg and Jerusalem in Yehuda Amichai’s Not from This Time Not from this Place. Cantillo, Giuseppe (ed.). L’idea di Europa. forthcoming.

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