David Grossman

Allusions to Henrik Ibsen’s plays in the works of two prominent Israeli modernist writers, Amos Oz’s autobiographical A Tale of Love and Darkness (2004) and David Grossman’s The Zigzag Kid (1994) examined in the context of the Israeli reception of Ibsen in the 1950s and 1960s. To establish the variety of meanings Ibsen’s plays had for the audiences of the Habimah production of Peer Gynt in 1952 and The Kameri production of Hedda Gabler in 1966, this article draws on newspaper reviews and actors’ memoirs, as well as providing an analysis of Leah Goldberg’s translation of Peer Gynt. It emerges that both authors enlisted Ibsen in their exploration of the myths surrounding the formation of Israeli nationhood and identity

Trauma is a central concept in the historiography of the Holocaust. In both the historiographical and the psychoanalytical research on the subject, the Holocaust is perceived not as a finite event that took place in the past, but as one that continues to exist and to affect the families of survivors and the Jewish people. In the 1950s-1960s, evidence began emerging that Holocaust trauma was not limited to the survivors themselves, but was passed on to the next generation born after the Holocaust and raised in its shadow. It is possible to see the effects of growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust and transgenerational transmission of trauma in many aspects of the second-generation children's lives. In this article, I examine the representations of these symptoms in David Grossman's novel See Under: Love, which deals with the subject of the Holocaust through the perspective of Momik, a child of Holocaust survivors. Grossman teaches us that writing itself has the potential to heal. He also shows us that every one of us contains both victim and aggressor, and that, under certain circumstances, the "Nazi beast" may awaken within each of us.

This article addresses the national-political functions of mainstream Hebrew literature, focusing on one question: What are soldiers’ mothers in the canonical literature ‘allowed’ to think, feel and do, and what is considered transgressive? How has the presence of soldiers’ mothers in Israeli public life changed since the first Lebanon War? At the center of the discussion is David Grossman’s novel To The End Of The Land (2008). I argue that the author posits ‘the flight from bad tidings’ as both a maternal strategy and the author’s psycho-poetic strategy. This paper examines the cultural and gendered significance of the analogy between the act of flight and the act of writing which Grossman advances in his epilogue.

O leitor familiarizado com os grossos volumes de "Ver: amor", de 1996, pela editora Nova Fronteira, e 2007, pela Companhia das Letras, ambas com tradução de Nancy Rozenchan; ou "A mulher foge", de 2007, com tradução de George Schlesinger, já publicados no Brasil, pode se surpreender com a aparente leveza de "Fora do tempo" e a “cidade dos enlutados” percorrida por seus personagens mudos, melancólicos, transtornados. No texto, a forma do drama medieval, a parábola e o maravilhoso são elementos que trazem ao leitor ecos de "As cidades invisíveis", de Italo Calvino (Companhia das Letras, 1990, tradução de Diogo Mainardi).

In this paper, I explore the intertextual links between two novels that engage in the ethical dilemmas raised by traumatic conflicts: Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs (1992) and David Grossman’s To the End of the Land (2008). Though the two novels are separated by language, culture, and time, both—interestingly enough—explore the nature of conflict through the ancient metaphor of the “dogs of war”: each is punctuated by a scene describing a violent struggle with wild dogs—a scene that crystalizes the ethical questions driving the story. In both, the battle with the wild dogs serves as a key symbol for how confrontations unfold, pointing to an inherent human capacity for violence and cruelty. This cruelty seeps into all areas of human life, be it the public sphere of politics or the private context of family.
Yet comparing the parallel scenes of the dogs’ attack reveals essential differences in how the two novels conceptualize conflict and its resolution. I propose reading this difference as Grossman’s reflection on, and revision of, McEwan's position in Black Dogs, analyzing it in light of the differing historical backdrops of the two novels. If in McEwan’s novel, the recurring image of the black dogs comes to symbolize the impossibility of overcoming violence and uprooting the evil that "lives in us all" (172), in To the End of the Land, the episode of the dogs opens a possibility of hope. In this novel Grossman points to the political implications of caregiving, framing it as an appropriate tool for dealing with situations of violent confrontation.

מעשה הכתיבה ראשיתו במבט של אורפאוס המסב פניו לאחור. הצהרה זו של מוריס בלאנשו משמשת בספר זה כנקודת מוצא לקריאה פרשנית ביצירה הספרותית־העברית בת־ימינו, בניסיון להצביע על הזיקה של מיתוס ליצירה.
אורפאוס היורד שאולה, איקרוס הנוסק למרומים, נרקיס הכּלֶה בתשוקתו אל דמותו הנשקפת במים, תמוז הגווע ושב לתחייה, הם ועמיתיהם גיבורי המיתוסים של העמים השונים חושפים את הרובד הסמוי של חיינו, בהצביעם על האַלמוֹתי והנצחי שבקיומנו הנידון לִכליה. בעגנם את היצירה האנושית ברבדיה הבראשיתיים של ההוויה, הם מספרים את סיפורה של הנפש האנושית, על צפונותיה.

Allusions to Henrik Ibsen’s plays in the works of two prominent Israeli modernist writers, Amos Oz’s autobiographical A Tale of Love and Darkness (2004) and David Grossman’s The Zigzag Kid (1994) examined in the context of the Israeli reception of Ibsen in the 1950s and 1960s. To establish the variety of meanings Ibsen’s plays had for the audiences of the Habimah production of Peer Gynt in 1952 and The Kameri production of Hedda Gabler in 1966, this article draws on newspaper reviews and actors’ memoirs, as well as providing an analysis of Leah Goldberg’s translation of Peer Gynt. It emerges that both authors enlisted Ibsen in their exploration of the myths surrounding the formation of Israeli nationhood and identity.

À partir de la comparaison de quatre romans écrits à différentes périodes du XXe siècle, dans des langues et de lieux différents, mais tous marqués par un commun héritage juif polonais – Dans les forêts de Pologne de Joseph Opatoshu, Satan à Goray d’Isaac Bashevis Singer, Le Dernier des Justes d’André Schwarz-Bart et Voir ci-dessous : Amour de David Grossman – l’objet de cette étude est d’observer les transformations et les déplacements de la mémoire juive dès lors que celle-ci passe de l’univers sacré à la littérature profane. L’attention portée aux phénomènes d’imitation et de subversion permet de saisir les phénomènes de continuité et de discontinuité qui accompagnent la dissolution des communautés traditionnelles et le passage à la modernité. Pour comprendre comment ces transformations s’opèrent au niveau textuel, dans l’opération de mise en récit par laquelle se redéfinit la culture, on mettra en relation les stratégies proprement littéraires d’intertextualité, de pastiche, de citation ou de parodie avec les actes mimétiques d’identification, de projection et de jeu auxquels se livrent les personnages. La récurrence des questions de fidélité et de trahison, d’imitation et de rivalité, invite à interroger le rôle des modèles culturels et la manière dont le transfert et le renouvellement de ceux-ci participent à la redéfinition de la mémoire du groupe. Le romanesque, parce qu’il met en acte des processus mimétiques qu’il observe de manière distanciée, rejoue et déjoue tout à la fois les mythes identitaires créés par la modernité.

In this paper, I explore the intertextual links between two novels that engage in the ethical dilemmas raised by traumatic conflicts: Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs (1992) and David Grossman’s To the End of the Land (2008). Though the two novels are separated by language, culture, and time, both—interestingly enough—explore the nature of conflict through the ancient metaphor of the “dogs of war”: each is punctuated by a scene describing a violent struggle with wild dogs—a scene that crystalizes the ethical questions driving the story. In both, the battle with the wild dogs serves as a key symbol for how confrontations unfold, pointing to an inherent human capacity for violence and cruelty. This cruelty seeps into all areas of human life, be it the public sphere of politics or the private context of family. Yet comparing the parallel scenes of the dogs’ attack reveals essential differences in how the two novels conceptualize conflict and its resolution. I propose reading this difference as Grossman’s reflection on, and revision of, McEwan's position in Black Dogs, analyzing it in light of the differing historical backdrops of the two novels. If in McEwan’s novel, the recurring image of the black dogs comes to symbolize the impossibility of overcoming violence and uprooting the evil that "lives in us all" (172), in To the End of the Land, the episode of the dogs opens a possibility of hope. In this novel Grossman points to the political implications of caregiving, framing it as an appropriate tool for dealing with situations of violent confrontation.