August 30, 2017
The Complex Greatness of the Jewish National Poet, Part Two
By Hillel HalkinḤayyim Naḥman Bialik was called upon by his contemporaries to play the role of a prophet. By consenting, he believed he had betrayed both his talent and his true calling.
This essay is the seventh in a series by Hillel Halkin on seminal Hebrew writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The first six dealt with the novelists Joseph Perl, Avraham Mapu, and Peretz Smolenskin, the poet Yehudah Leib Gordon, the essayist and Zionist thinker Ahad Ha’am, and the writer, journalist, and intellectual Micha Yosef Berdichevsky.
The essay appears in three consecutive parts, of which this is the second. The first part, comprising sections 1 through 4, was published yesterday, August 29; the third and final part can be found here.
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