LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

shai ginsburgJewish settlement (Zerubavel 1995: 222). In both the cases of Trumpeldor andUri, the ambiguity in question is erased from the final account by extending theconclusion of the story and locating it in a different historical (or textual)context that diminishes the significance of the immediate failure. The death’scircumstances do not define the fallen as heroes. The fallen are heroes becausethey realise an ideal according to which the individual has to sacrifice everythingfor the nation; thus, they express the ultimate sacrifice of an ultimatecommitment to the national struggle. The fallen do not serve as ideals in theirown right; rather, they symbolise the heroic sacrifice. 24Two interpretative mechanisms in particular have enabled the above readingof Uri. First, the narrative is displaced from World War II to the Israeli War ofIndependence: while the novel takes place during World War II, it is commonlyread as if it takes place during the War of Independence. The two periods arefused together and the time separating them is erased. Thus, Yaakov Malkin,reviewing the book in May 1948, writes that ‘such is the quality of our life today;such is the book’ (1948a). Malkin sets Shamir’s novel within a historicalculturalcontinuity that erases the historical specificity of the novel. Second,Uri is identified with the dead of the War. This was helped by the fact thatMoshe Shamir dedicated the novel to his brother Elik who was killed during thefirst weeks of clashes between Palestinian Jews and Arabs. In 1951 Shamirpublished a biography of his brother, With His Own Hands. In it, Shamir idealiseshis brother and his generation in terms far less ambiguous than the ones he usesin his earlier novel. 25 From the moment of its publication, and despite thedifferences in genre, tone and complexity, Uri was often identified with Elik,and many critics read them as one and the same. For example, Gershon Shakedaffirms that ÆElik and […] Uri were made of the same substance’ (Shaked 1971:30). 26 In sum, the dramatic effect of the establishment of the State invited amythification of events in an attempt to produce an explanation and givemeaning to the moment. 27 In this case it means the collapse of history into asingular moment, the moment of death.While the reception and interpretation of He Walked in the Fields were nodoubt shaped and formed by these and similar cultural texts and forces, again itshould be noted that not all critics accepted such an apotheosis of Uri. For mostcritics of the time, the events of the Israeli War of Independence confirmed thatthe ‘new Hebrew man’ was not a myth but a reality. The main bone of contentionbetween those who commended and those who condemned the novel was,then, whether in Uri’s character one could equate the idealised image of theHebrew settler and the historical Hebrew youth. The above discussion dealsextensively with those critics who idealised Uri. The critics who questionedUri’s character pointed to his inability to reflect on the circumstances in whichhe finds himself, or, more seriously, to his defective character and egotistical— 122 —www.taq.ir