humanities Article Exile, Pistols, and Promised Lands: Ibsen and Israeli Modernist Writers Irina Ruppo Discipline of English, School of English and Creative Arts, National University of Ireland Galway, H91 TK33 Galway, Ireland;
[email protected] Received: 2 August 2019; Accepted: 12 September 2019; Published: 17 September 2019 Abstract: 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. Keywords: Ibsen; Henrik; Oz; Amos; Grossman; David; Goldberg; Leah; modernism; Israel; Israeli literature; Peer Gynt; Hedda Gabler; translation; adaptation; Zionism 1. Introduction The year is 1970, the setting is a Jerusalem school, and the dramatis personae are an irate teacher, the near-13-year-old Nonny Feuerberg, and Gabi, his beloved guardian and his father’s secretary. Gabi demands that Nonny be given one more chance to stay in the school despite his ‘limitations’: ‘What you may see as limitations, I happen to consider advantages!’ She swelled larger in front of Mrs Marcus, like a cobra protecting her young.