The Realism of S. Yizhar's ימי צקלג (Days of Ziklag)

Abstract

ימי צקלג (Days of Ziklag; published in 1958) is the greatest novel, both in scale and in quality, to emerge from what has come to be called "Dor Tashach" (The generation of 1948) or "Dor Ba'aretz" (The generation born in the Land [of Israel]). It is a huge novel, the longest in Hebrew. Some critics have considered it to be so massive, repetitive, and dense as to render it virtually unreadable, doomed to loom on the edge of the field of Hebrew literature like some immense, deserted, dusty old pyramid that nobody visits. This article presents a new reading of one aspect of this great work, that is, its relation to historical reality. This topic has been thoroughly discussed by Avi Ma'apil and Gershon Shaked. In their astute analyses of this aspect, both critics, in different ways, measure Days of Ziklag according to a time-honored, normative, regulatory model. My contention is that the model both critics use does not do justice to the novel for it is not able to capture the full depth of its pathos and its ethos, its ardor and its moral commitment, as well as many of its artistic charms. This article proposes an alternative model.