Abstract
Isaac Rosenberg composed his last poems in response to the Balfour Declaration and Jabotinsky's creation of the Jewish Regiment. These thoroughly Hebrew poems are not allegories of the Great War, as critics have supposed, but a summary of his lifelong preoccupation with the House of David. Reworking Hebrew national elegy as derived from Jeremiah, he backdates the origins of the Babylonian Captivity to the time of Solomon, conflates ancient and modern epochs through a secularised Jewish typology, and enters Hebrew history by placing his speaker in analogous relation to the Davidic line. By comparison with other Jewish poems about Balfour and Jabotinsky, Rosenberg's sequence ends by confronting the reality of a ‘national home’, not a myth.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
