Nathan Alterman - Literary and Political Career

Literary and Political Career

Alterman's first published book of poetry was Kokhavim Bakhuts ("Stars Outside"), published in 1938. This volume, with its "neo-romantic themes, highly charged texture, and metrical virtuosity," as Israeli critic Benjamin Harshav puts it, established him as a major force in modern Hebrew literature.

His next major book was "The Joy of the Poor" (Hebrew: שִׂמְחת עניים ṡimḥàt aniyím, 1941), which many regard as his magnum opus. This is a kaleidoscopic phantasmagoria consisting of 31 interconnected poems, all from the viewpoint of the ghost of a dead man obsessed with the living woman he loves – a reversal of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. The dead man wants to protect his living love from war and poverty, but more than anything he wants to drag her into his world. His plans are continually frustrated. The light from a humble candle is enough to drive him back. The story reads like a supernatural thriller, but the rhyme and the meters are regular and elegant.

In 1942, when the first news about the Holocaust reached the Zionist Jewish community in British Mandate Palestine, Alterman wrote a poem, which can be described as a sarcastic paraphrase on the Jewish prayer, "Praised are You ... who has chosen us out of all the nations". In this poem Alterman says, "At our children's cry, shadowed by scaffolds, we heard not the world's furor. For you have chosen us out of all nations, you loved us and favoured. For you have chosen us of all nations, of Norwegians, Czechs and Britons. As they march toward scaffolds, Jewish children of reason, they know their blood shan't be reckoned among the rest, they just call to the mother 'turn away your face'." In 1943, Alterman wrote the maqama "The Swedish Tongue", in which he praised Sweden's willingness to welcome Jewish refugees from Denmark.

In 1943, he also wrote a poem that was critical of Pope Pius XII, a poem that is featured at the Yad Vashem museum.

During the 1945–1947 years of the Zionist movement's struggle against British rule, Alterman's weekly column in the Labour Movement "Davar" newspaper was highly influential, strongly denouncing the British army's oppressive measures and praising the illegal immigrant boats landing Jewish holocaust survivors on the country's shores, in defiance of British policy. The most well-known of these is the 1945 "In Praise of an Italian Captain".

In the early stages of the Israeli War of Independence he wrote numerous patriotic poems, the most well-known of which is "The Silver Platter" (Hebrew: מגש הכסף magásh ha-késef). Having become a canonical text read on Israel's Remembrance Day, this poem was written in response to Chaim Weizmann's words in December 1947, after the adoption of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, "No state is ever handed on a silver platter... The partition plan does not give the Jews but an opportunity". In his poem, Alterman describes a scene similar to the Biblical Revelation on Mount Sinai, where the Jewish People is waiting to receive the Jewish state, as the Israelite were waiting to receive the Torah. And yet, instead of Moses descending with the Tablets of Stone, the people see two unfamiliar youths, a boy and a girl, wounded and near dead with exhaustion. When asked, "Who are you?" they reply, "We are the silver platter on which the state of the Jews was handed to you".

During the 1950s, Alterman was opposed to the martial law imposed at the time on Israel's Arab citizens (until 1966), and was also strongly supportive of workers' struggle such as the 1952 sailors' strike which was suppressed by the Ben Gurion Government.

After the Six-Day War, Alterman was one of the founders of the Movement for Greater Israel, finding himself in alliance with right-wing activists whom he greatly opposed in earlier times of his career. He criticized David Ben-Gurion (who held at the time only the position of a Knesset member, but was still influential) for being too willing to give up the territories captured during the war in return for a peace agreement.

Alterman translated Shakespeare, Molière, Racine and Russian classics into Hebrew and Yiddish. He wrote the lyrics of the famous Moshe Vilenski song Kalaniyot, sung by Shoshana Damari.