Abstract

The paper examines the image of the maternal in Hayyim Nahman Bialik's poetry and short prose. Contrary to most prior critical evaluations, which have viewed the autobiographical or symbolic mother in Bialik's works as a monolithic representation of misery, helplessness, and self-sacrifice, this paper emphasizes the mother's portrayal as a feared, loathed, and highly ambivalent object of identification vis-à-vis the emergence of the romantic Hebrew male poet. In a reading that spans from Bialik's early lyric poetry to his mature epic "Yatmut" (Orphanhood), the author traces the development of the mother image over the course of the poet's adult life and compares it to maternal images in the works of other romantic poets (William Wordsworth, for example). She also draws parallels between the ambivalent knot through which the poet is bound to his mother, and a similar ambivalent knot that cements the bond between national poet and his "people."

pdf