בלשון האבות ובלשון האימהות
ביאליק כסופר דו-לשוני
פורסם: תעודה Teuda כרך 24, 2011
...תופעה זו של דו-לשוניוּת סימביוטית ראתה אפוא ב יידיש הספרותית והמדוברת שפת עראי עד שתכֶה העברית שורש (ולא שפת עראי עד שיצטרף העם אל תנועת הפועלים הבין-לאומית וימיר את לשון יידיש בלשונות אירופה) מרכזה של התופעה היה באודסה, שביטאוניה, רובם ככולם, היו בשליטת אחד-העם. אחד-העם עצמו נרתע מן המודוס העממי, מן הכתיבה בלשון יידיש ומן ההשלכות שיש לאלה על התבססותו של רעיון 'היהודי החדש'...
ABSTRACT
Mother Tongue and Father Tongue - Bialik as a Bilingual Poet
Bialik's early literary career was marked by an antagonistic attitude towards Yiddish as a literary language. He devoted all his energy and talent to Hebrew, as advocated by Achad-Ha’am. Nevertheless, at the turn of the century, he composed several Yiddish poems, after Y. Ch. Ravnitsky, a devout Zionist, founded a new Yiddish magazine and was looking for new material. Both the editor and the poet knew that Achad Ha’am's influence was on the decline, due to Herzl’s enormous popular AB S TR AC TS XVI appeal, and decided to regain the support of the Yiddish speaking masses through Yiddish writings. Bialik knew how to take advantage of the dual nature of the Yiddish as a national language using Hebrew letters and Hebrew terms, as well as an international language based on German morphology and syntax. Thus, Yiddish addressed the simple working classes and uneducated women, and simultaneously was aimed at intellectuals who were looking for modern, revolutionary innovations. In his Yiddish version of “In the City of Slaughter”, Bialik knew how to capture both reading publics: he included sentimental motifs for the simple reader, together with allusions to classical and modern European literature for the intellectual reader. After the Czernowitz Conference, Bialik stopped writing Yiddish poems, since Yiddish had turned into an instrument in the hands of anti-Zionists circles to weaken the status of Hebrew and the status of Eretz Israel. His nursery rhyme “In the Vegetable Garden” may manifest his conflicts as a newcomer who has recently joined a new community, and lacks the linguistic skills of the experienced old timers. The last two stanzas of this poem, which contain a comic self-portrait of the old poet, are written in Ashkenazi pronunciation, representing Bialik’s linguistic conflicts upon his late arrival to an old-new land.