LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

israeli jewish nation buildingHebrew University of Jerusalem, since the closed academic milieu wasconsidered as trustworthy of such materials that the general readership couldnot be exposed to. It took more than thirty years for two collections of Darwish’spoetry to be translated, published and received as normal literary texts. By thistime translations of more than six hundred of his poems had been individuallypublished in literary newspaper sections and magazines, and yet a number ofpublishing houses still considered the publication of a collection of them asunsuitable, due to Darwish’s affiliation with PLO cultural institutions. The 1967war partially changed this attitude – the euphoria that followed Israeli victoryover the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan was eventually followed by a slow butsteady realisation that those Palestinian Arabs who had conveniently turnedsince 1948 into the abstract ‘refugee problem’ were, in fact, real people living inthe now Israeli Occupied Territories. This aroused a growing interest in bothnewly occupied Palestinians and their Israeli Arab counterparts largely ignoredso far.The earliest fruit of this changed attitude was the publication by ShimonBallas, 3 Hebrew writer and scholar, of two complementary volumes in the sameyear, 1970 – an anthology of Palestinian Stories and a Hebrew version of hisdoctoral thesis, Arabic Literature under the Shadow of War, that included hundredsof translated fragments of literary works. In the preface to his anthology Ballasexpressed his political opinions, extremely brave at the time, as follows:Through the present collection I have attempted to draw a representative picture ofPalestinian literature. I did not seek solely to find the best of what there is but also[sought to include here] the best of the representative short stories. I was thereforeforced to include some stories of mediocre quality or even much less. I wish to makeHebrew readers familiar with the mind, life and thought of the Palestinian who,although still separated from us by walls of estrangement and enmity, is our partner over thisland and under the blue sky above. (Ballas 1970: 18) [Emphasis mine]Preliminary norms, then, served to promote the two conflicting nationalitiesat two different points in time. Reaction norms can only be studied with regardto the second phase since there were no literary reviews in the Luah, as at thetime it was published Hebrew cultural activity in Palestine was at its initial stageand did not possess the full inventory of the instruments necessary for fullyfledged literary activity.Reviews of translations from Arabic into Hebrew have been common sincethe publication of the first translations from modern Arabic literature. 4 Althoughthey usually refer to full-length texts such as novels, anthologies, collectionsand plays, all of which constitute only about two per cent of the translatedinventory, they are important as the only available tool for studying readers’reactions to the translations. Like preliminary norms, reaction norms, too, mayvary. In spite of the gradual accumulation of a certain body of translations, some— 105 —www.taq.ir