New Book: Natkovich, Jabotinsky’s Oeuvre in Its Social Context (In Hebrew)

נטקוביץ’, סבטלנה. בין ענני זוהר. יצירתו של ולדימיר (זאב) ז’בוטינסקי  בהקשר החברתי. ירושלים: מאגנס, 2015.

 

 

URL: http://www.magnespress.co.il/

 

Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky – journalist, cultural critic, translator, author, poet and politician – is an enigmatic and controversial figure in the history of Zionism. His presence in the political and intellectual discourse of the Zionist movement, from the early twentieth century to present day, made his ideological legacy a formative factor of Israeli reality, but the public image attributed to him positioned his life and work and his literary legacy in the shadow of his ideological discourse.

This book traces Jabotinsky’s intellectual biography as an author. It examines his literary oeuvre in the broad context of his life and his political activity and in relation to his writing in other genres and formats – his journalistic writing, his literary and art criticism, and his discourse of the self that was formed in his letters, in his autobiographical writings and in testimonies of his time. Alongside an indication on continuums and recurring motifs in his work, this book reveals conflicts and fissures between various periods, genres and themes in Jabotinsky’s writing, as well as between the literary, political and personal spheres in his life. In addition to engagement with his canonical work – the novels “Samson” and “The Five” – the book presents works that have not been hitherto discussed.