Polish and Hebrew Literature and National Identity

During many meetings and conversations in the last ten years about ourprofession or even one could say passion – literature, we had the impressionthat there is much in common between our two literatures – Polish andHebrew.
We decided to put our intuition to the test and see how much truththere is to it, and we organized the conference “Polish and Hebrew Literatureand National Identity”, which took place at the University of Warsaw inOctober 2009.
We invited brilliant scholars from both sides, Poland andIsrael, who picked up the gauntlet, offering their reflections and promptingdiscussion on the relations between nationhood and literature from differentperspectives.
This book compiles extended and revised versions of the paperspresented at the conference.During the conference sessions, discussions, conversations, as well as thesocial events in the evenings, we came to the conclusion that there are somevery important questions and problems which both literatures address andstruggle with.The first, and perhaps most central issue is the construction of theconcept of nationality; namely, the symbols, myths and images which createnational identity.
This question has several aspects: Polish, Jewish, Polish-Jewish, Israeli, with another important element being whether the authorwrites in his/her homeland or in the diaspora.
Within these aspects we couldrecognize similarities between Polish and Hebrew literatures.
Here we haveto underline that, in our understanding, what defines a literature as Polishor Hebrew is the language of the work and not the national-religious identityof the writer.In the opening article, Anita Shapira illustrates Hebrew literature’sreciprocal relations with Zionism, a complex link with a dual perspective,both encouraging and doubting.
In her wide-ranging study she shows thatit was common for different literatures to shape their respective national10consciousnesses.
Through their works, the likes of Pushkin, Mickiewicz,Byron, Smetana, Scott, Hugo and many others formed national identities andpolitical consciousness.
Secularization played a great role in this.
Instead of theScriptures, which had lost their hold among the intelligentsia, it was secularliterature that created a national-cultural community in the language of thenascent nation.
The power of literature was decisive because it is literaturethat impacts the imagination and emotions most effectively.
However, Shapirashows that it was not only Hebrew literature which shaped the Zionist mind,as by and large the highbrow of Hebrew belles-letters consisted of elitistwriters who created critical, challenging, pessimistic, and individualistic works,which were by definition intended for a relatively limited readership.
Shapiraclaims that the canon that shaped the Zionist narrative included Hebrew andtranslated literature, highbrow and lowbrow alike.
In that light she points tothe influence Polish literature had on the Zionist narrative.