Dwelling in the Stanzas of the Text:

The Concept of “Bayit” in Hebrew Poetry SHMA.COM VERED KARTI SHEMTOV

aving grown up outside the United destruction of both the physical and the poetic States, I’m aware of the comfort I feel space is tied together thematically and happens Vered Karti Shemtov is the seeing a familiar landscape, taking in simultaneously. For Pagis, in this and many H Eva Chernov Lokey Senior my native culture, or hearing, speaking or writ- other poems, poetry cannot provide a safe and Lecturer in ing in Hebrew — when I am immersed in secure home for the speaker who has experi- and Literature at Stanford Hebrew texts. Heinrich Heine and, years later, enced a trauma. The destruction of both the University, and coordinator of George Steiner associated this feeling with physical and the poetic space described in these the Hebrew@Standford: Multimedia website. She being Jewish, claiming that for the wandering three stanzas, or batim, is tied together themat- served as the co-director of the 1 2 Jew, the text is the homeland. But when look- ically and happens simultaneously. The third Taube Center for Jewish ing at Hebrew poetry, one can find much older stanza presents a slightly more optimistic pic- Studies at Stanford University and not necessarily Jewish origins for the idea ture: “among the ruins, / the pen is absolved of until 2011. Shemtov is the of feeling at home in literature. One of these all its duties. / It scribbles on the page as it author of “Discontinuous roots is the double meaning of the word bayit. pleases, / joins all the threads in the center, / a Spaces in A. B. Yehoshua’s Novel The Liberated Bride,” 3 Khalil ibn Ahmad, the eighth-century Arab master plan / for a spider’s den.” Here, Pagis Intersecting Sights: Critical philologist and scholar of prosody — the pat- suggests that poetry in the modern age is re- Essays on A.B. Yehoshua's terns of meters and rhymes — named the line lieved of form and convention; there is a com- Work, Heksherim and Ben of verse “bayit.” The word means “a dwelling mitment neither to old poetic structures nor to Gurion University Press, 2010, place” in both and Hebrew and “a tent” clear poetic meter, rhyme, or other conventions. and co-editor (with Charlotte Fonrobert) of Jewish in the Arabic of the time. Ibn Ahmad, in nam- The earthquake of modern art has left the hand Conceptions and Practices of ing the line “bayit,” referred to the origin of this of the poet too free; it now lacks a stable struc- Space, Jewish Social Studies, form in the pre-Islamic poetry of the desert ture within which to work. In the ruins, the poet Summer, 2005. Her book Arabs. Influenced by Arabic culture, medieval can only weave together spider webs that create Changing Rhythms: Towards a Jewish scholars adopted the figurative meaning a perforated sketch or draft of a new poetic Theory of Prosody in Cultural of the term. However, the idea that prosodic structure, a new home. Writing thus becomes Context will be published by Bar-Ilan University Press in forms bounded speech in an artistic way, as if an act of rebuilding from the ruins fragile, tem- 2013. Dan Pagis’ poem building a structure or a home for that speech, porary homes — or batim. “Batim” can be read on did not derive from this term alone. In medieval The poetry of the social movement that shma.com. Hebrew poetry, the first half of the line was brought thousands of Israeli citizens into the 1 H. Bieber, Heinrich Heine: Confessio called “the door” and the second half “the streets in the summer of 2011 exemplifies how Judaica: Eine Auswahl aus seinen lock.” Over time, the meaning of “bayit” in the old metaphorical use of “bayit” has been Dichtungen, Schriften und Briefen (Heinrich Heine: Selections of his Hebrew poetry changed from one line to groups given new life. In , a poetry reading poetry, writings and letters; Berlin: Welt- of lines, and it became the most common sig- was dubbed, Dwelling in the Homes/Stanzas of Verlag, 1925) 91–92. For a discussion of this quote in the context of Jewish 4 nifier for a stanza. the Poem, a play on the double meaning of perspectives of space, see C. E. Today, “bayit” is still used to refer to the po- “bayit” — with the possible implication that the Fonrobert and V. Shemtov, “Introduction: Jewish Conceptions and Practices of etic form as well as to a home. While the word rising costs of housing have left the poetic stanza Space,” Jewish Social Studies 11:3 has lost some of its figurative meaning and as the only affordable home. Dwelling in the text (2005): 1–8. The quote from Heine was translated by C. E. Fonrobert for "George speakers rarely notice the connection between is also the theme of at least two poems pub- Steiner: Our Homeland, the Text," the two meanings of the word, we continue to lished in the collection The Revolution Song- Salmagundi 66 (Winter-Spring 1985): 4-25, Skidmore College. 5 find references to the double meaning in some book: Tents Poetry: Sigal Ben Yair’s “A Poem in 2 See Vered Karti Shemtov, “Dan Pagis: contemporary Hebrew literature and poetry. Two Rented Homes/Stanzas” and Salman Poetic lines without a Home” in Collected Essays on the Work of Dan One such example is “Batim” (the plural of Masalha’s “Bayit Song.” The first stanza in Ben Pagis, ed. Hannan Hever, forthcoming. “bayit”), a poem by the Israeli poet and scholar Yair’s poem describes an attempt to rent a place; 3 Dan Pagis, “Houses” New Republic 17 of medieval poetry, Dan Pagis. In the first two the second addresses the issue of feeling home- June 2002: 34. Translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller. Originally stanzas of the poem, Pagis describes the limita- less in the city. In Masalha’s poem, each stanza published in Hebrew in 1982. tions of poetry in predicting or capturing the de- is preceded by a title: first bayit, second bayit, 4 In Hebrew, lagur b’bayt shel shir. struction of the physical home: The artist’s pen third bayit, and personal bayit. In each bayit 5 The collection was edited by a long list of poets and editors and came out in is a seismograph, and it cannot “draw even the there is a list of different kinds of homes (good 2010 (first edition) and 2011 (second tip of the truth” that “the house has collapsed / home, Arab home, apartment home, national edition) as a collaboration among the following publishers: Daka, Maayan, and the earth has opened underneath.” The home, etc.). The lists also include some of the Erev-Rav, Etgar, and Gerilla.

JUNE 2012 | SIVAN 5772 [7] different uses of the word “home” in Hebrew but places of wandering and exile. By playing (beit midrash, beit olam, shalom bayit, etc.). with the ambiguous meaning of “bayit,” Masalha’s poem, although included in the “Po- Masalha writes in the space where his own two SHMA.COM etry of the Tents,” seems to respond not to the languages intersect, and thus continues the di- 7 6 Salman Masalha, “I Write in Hebrew,” economic crisis but to his identity as a alogue between Hebrew and Arabic cultures. Translation by Vivian Eden. Ariel: The dwelling in both the textual home of Hebrew po- Whether it stems from not feeling at home Review of Arts and Letters 104, Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, etry and the land of Israel. In a poem published in the language (in the case of Masalha), from Jerusalem, 1997 several years earlier, Masalha noted, “I write the inability to afford an individual home (in the 7 For the double meaning of bayit in Palestinian culture and the idea of the Hebrew, to / get lost in my words, and also to case of the speaker in Ben Yair’s poem), or the poem as home for the poet in exile, see find / a bit of interest for my footsteps / I have impossibility of feeling at home as an existen- interview with Mahmud Darwish in Simon Bitton’s movie, “As the Land is not stopped walking. Many paths / have I trav- tial state (as in the poetry of Dan Pagis), these the Language,” 1997. eled. Engraved by my hands.”6 For a poet born brief examples show that even after Hebrew po- in an Arab village in Israel, writing in Hebrew etry returned to the homeland and years after cannot but create an awareness of the exclusion Zionism offered an end to wandering, Hebrew or limitation one can feel in the Hebrew text or writers still play with the ambiguous use of Jacqueline Nicholls is an artist language — especially when using the word “bayit” and readers both inside and outside the and Jewish educator who uses “bayit” with all its cultural, religious, national, state of Israel can continue to engage — in new her art to explore traditional Jewish, and Zionist contexts. Hebrew and He- ways — with the idea of feeling at home in lin- Jewish ideas in untraditional brew poetry, for Masalha, become not homes, guistic and textual spaces. ways. She exhibits internation- ally. An artist-in-residence with the Forward, Nicholls also teaches at the London School My London: Tradition and Reinvention of Jewish Studies, a Modern- Orthodox adult education col- JACQUELINE NICHOLLS lege. She is currently preparing for a solo show in New York in am a London based artist. My art, including revolves around the subject of “home.” I realize the fall. Her latest project is a paper cut (below) from a series that con- I’m also heavily influenced by this city. www.gatherthebroken.blogspot. fronts rabbinic misogynist texts using sexu- London can be a place where people are co.uk, a drawing-a-day online I omer counter with Amichai Lau- alized images of women, engages with tradi- angry with the status quo. People gather from Lavie. Her work can be viewed tional Jewish texts and ideas. Sometimes it’s a around the country to protest and articulate at jacquelinenicholls.com. conversation; often it’s an argument. My work their dissatisfaction with authority. A punk, an- archic spirit infuses that anger and inspires me. London’s street fashion doesn’t abandon tradi- Jacqueline Nicholls tional forms, but finds new ways to reinvent Don’t Talk to and subvert them. For example, the once- Women conformist bowler hat becomes a paper menacing icon in Stanley Kubrick’s cut film “A Clockwork Orange,” and is worn today by punk musi- cians and artists. London is full of peo- ple from elsewhere. Waves of immigrants from all across the globe have lay- ered the city, a fact that is reflected in the many spo- ken languages and cuisines. One’s appetite for food, cul- ture, or art can cross the globe without having to leave this city. Being Jewish is being part of that mix. Seeing other artists engage with their ethnicity has encouraged me to shrug off my “too Jewish” self-consciousness. Being Jewish is my voice in the multilingual

[8] JUNE 2012 | SIVAN 5772