LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

etween myth and history10. Both Oz Almog’s and Emmanuel Sivan’s books examine this nexus in detail.11. For the cult of the dead soldier and its relation to the construction of modernnationalism, see Mosse’s Fallen Soldiers (1990).12. Mikhal Arbel argues that at the core of the world of the kibbutz lies the ethos ofcreatio ex nihilo, of a refusal passively to accept the given. While she maintains thatUri understands that in order to authentically return to the kibbutz he has notmerely to return, but also to repeat the act of heroic creation, I argue that this is notUri’s major concern (Arbel 1999).13. I am here indebted to Dan Miron’s work on Shamir’s novels, which underscores thepreoccupation with questions of history and historical forces. At the same time,Miron underscores what he identifies as Shamir’s anti-historicist attitude, especiallyas manifested in Shamir’s later work (Miron 1975: 466), while I argue that this is butone aspect of the structure of the novel.14. See, for instance, Lea Goldberg (1948); David KnaÆani (1955: 145); Yaæakov Malkin(1948a, 1948b); Shalom Kraemer (1959); David Merani (1948); H. M. Rottblatt(1951); Zila Rubin (1948); A. B. Yafe (1950); Yisrael Zemora (1948); and MosheZilbertal (1948).15. It should be noted here that I do not argue that one could politically map the criticswho reviewed He Walked in the Fields according to party lines. There are a fewimportant exceptions that would undermine any such attempt.16. For the Marxist component in the ideology of Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir, see, forinstance, Yaari 1972: 21–6, 31–43, 223–5.17. See Shamir (1999: 148–9); Mohar (1973); Halperin (2000). The publication of thenovel was allowed, in fact, only after a play based on the novel was staged.Significantly enough in the play, Shamir modified the end and Uri actually falls inbattle (Shamir 1989). The play gained enormous success, was produced abroad, andfinally filmed in 1967. Two points should be noted here. First, that the play is hardlyever mentioned in the critical discussion of Shamir’s work. Second, to the extentthat it is mentioned, no one, to the best of my knowledge, discusses the discrepanciesbetween the novel and the play (see, for instance, Gat 1966; Shoham 1974).From the journals and newspapers of the time, it is difficult to gauge not onlywhether the audience was aware of such discrepancies but also how the reception ofthe play affected the reception of the novel and vice versa. A full discussion of theplay in relation to the novel is, however, beyond the scope of this paper.18. For similar reading of Shamir’s novel, see, for instance, Yehuda Burla (1954);Avaraham KnaÆani (1950); Avraham Shea’anan (1948); Shelomo Zemach (1952;1956: 254–5); and Shlomo Zui (1948).19. Nurit Gertz (1978) and Gershon Shaked (1971, 1993) are the most noticeableamong these critics, but see also Reuven Kritz (1978); Reuven and Ori Kritz (1997);Zevi Luz (1970) and Eliezer Schweid (1957). Hillel Weis is unique among thesecritics in paying attention to the paradoxical structure of Shamir’s earlier works.However, as do the critics mentioned above, he ends his essay by reaffirming theimage of Shamir’s protagonists as the people’s agents during the political conflict(1983: 75). Only recently have critics begun to pay attention to the ideologicalambiguity at the foundation of the novel. See, for instance, Mikhal Arbel (1999);Michael Gluzman (2002).— 125 —www.taq.ir