A Palestinian-Israeli poet declares a new state whose language,
"Homelandic," is a combination of Arabic and Hebrew. A
Jewish-Israeli author imagines a "language plague" that infects
young Hebrew speakers with old world accents, and sends the
narrator in search of his Arabic heritage. In "Poetic Trespass,"
Lital Levy brings together such startling visions to offer the
first in-depth study of the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic
in the literature and culture of Israel/Palestine. More than that,
she presents a captivating portrait of the literary imagination's
power to transgress political boundaries and transform ideas about
language and belonging. Blending history and literature, "Poetic
Trespass" traces the interwoven life of Arabic and Hebrew in
Israel/Palestine from the turn of the twentieth century to the
present, exposing the two languages' intimate entanglements in
contemporary works of prose, poetry, film, and visual art by both
Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel.
In a context where intense political and social pressures work
to identify Jews with Hebrew and Palestinians with Arabic, Levy
finds writers who have boldly crossed over this divide to create
literature in the language of their "other," as well as writers who
bring the two languages into dialogue to rewrite them from within.
Exploring such acts of poetic trespass, Levy introduces new
readings of canonical and lesser-known authors, including Emile
Habiby, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Anton Shammas, Saul Tchernichowsky,
Samir Naqqash, Ronit Matalon, Salman Masalha, A. B. Yehoshua, and
Almog Behar. By revealing uncommon visions of what it means to
write in Arabic and Hebrew, "Poetic Trespass" will change the way
we understand literature and culture in the shadow of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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