The Aesthetics of

Austerity:
Nathan Zach
Yair Mazor, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

T he poet Nathan Zach became the most loud and effective

spokesman of the aesthetics of austerity in contemporary
Hebrew poetry. Zach’s poetry does not obey many trends displayed
in David Vogel’s poetics. Nevertheless Zach never forsook, nor did
he forget, the aesthetic lesson which Vogel bestowed upon Hebrew
poetry.
Nathan Zach was born in Germany in 1930. He immigrated to
Israel in 1935 and nowadays, next to Yehuda Amichai, he is
considered the most celebrated figure in contemporary Hebrew
poetry. Like Vogel, Zach was heavily exposed to German poetry of
the commencement of the century. Nevertheless, Zach found his
most natural element, the very icon of his poetic credo, in the
poetic movement of Imagism. Zach, a literature professor at
Haifa University, spent many long years in England, where he
wrote his doctoral dissertation, which is dedicated to the Imagist
poets.
However, Zach’s fervent preaching for aesthetics of austerity
cannot be divorced from his blatant attack on the poetry of Nathan
Alterman (1910-19701,the leading poet in Israel during the thirties
and forties. Zach’s preference of Vogel over Alterman not only
reflects his own poetic proclivities, his own “aesthetic cup of tea.” I t
Summer 1995
also obeys a literary-historical rule: the literary generation revolts
against the “giants”of the previous generation while advocating the
writers who were largely ignored by the previous generation.
Hence, while Alterman was a “giant”prior to Zach’s literary gener-
ation, Vogel was relegated t o the sidelines.
Why did Alterman’s poetry kindle such a fervent revolt on
Zach’s part? Alterman is known for his exceedingly metaphorical
language, which is highly innovative and daring; for his colorful and
spectacular fictional world; for his intricate symbolicthemes and his
sweeping metrical patterns. It was mainly the intensely figurative
nature ofAlterman’s poetry and its rhymed and precisely measured
rhythmical features that Zach wished t o exile from the dominion of
poetry.’
Zach does not deny Alterman’s poetic talent, but he seeks to
replace Alterman’s “sublimity”with a humble simplicity, his slash-
ing emotionality with a restrained and muted expression, and his
march-like meter with one that is flexible and tranquil. Perhaps
Zach‘s is a typical revolt against a dominant ancestor, arevolt which
always mixes rejection with adoration. But it is principally a clash
between two contradictory aesthetics.
Contemporary Israeli poetry has not been the same since Zach’s
poems or his critical essay, entitled “Meditations Over Alterman’s
Poetry,” in which Zach caustically attacks Alterman’s poetry. One of
the major targets of his bitingly piercing criticism is Alterman’s
metrical system. Zach claims that Alterman’s rhythmical patterns,
which are extremely precise and pedantically organized, create an
effect which is stiff and forced, hopelessly at odds with the content,
and consequently undermining of the thematic fabric of the poem.
Zach also criticizes Alterman’s sentimentality, artificial attitude
toward reality, and too-lofty metaphorical patterns.
Hence, it is not surprising that Zach demonstrates a strong
attraction to the Imagist movement in poetry, a movement which
engraved on its ideological banner the constant demand for compos-
ing “in sequence of the musical verse, not in sequence of a metro-
” ~is a matter for the literary historian to decide if Zach’s
n ~ m e . It
opposition to Alterman’s poetry first derived from his acquaintance
with the Imagist school, or whether an intuitive rejection of Alter-
man led him to look for a theoretical support. However, Zach’s recoil
from Alterman’s overblown symbolism and metrical precision re-
flects the major ideals of the Imagist movement: “clarity, exactness
or concreteness of detail,” “economy of language,” and rejection of
“the flabby, abstract language and structure” of symbolist p0et1-y.~

2 2lOME.S
 Literature
The verbal congestion of the overflowing metaphorical verse,
which was fervently adopted by the symbolist poets, and their
ardent devotion t o a tempestuous rhythmical shaping of the verse
were considered by the Imagist poets to be the supreme source of
poetic evil. As Ford Madox Ford put it, “I desired to see English
become at once more colloquial and more exact, verse more fluid and
more exacting of its practitioner^."^ And when Zach opened one of
his well-known poems with the words uwhen the sentiment fades,
the correct poem speaks,” he definitely makes a declaration of
allegiance t o Imagist poetry. Hence, Zach’s obstinate resistance t o
Alterman’s poetics, on the one hand, and his fervent acceptance of
the Imagist poetics, on the other, are the same side of the same
aesthetic coin. Indeed, not only did Ezra Pound and his disciples
influence Zach’s poetic views, but,also poets like T. S. Eliot, E. E.
Cummings, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams, poets
who were themselves influenced by the Imagists.6 We see, for
example, in Zach’s poetry the influence of Cummings’ puns, para-
doxes and inversions, Stevens’ comic devices, syntactical patterns
and intellectualism, and Williams’ concrete nature. In addition,
Zach is greatly impressed by Eliot’s sharp-witted irony, his pene-
trating intellect, and the “obscure coherence” of composition, all of
which serve as efficient arms against the sentimentality of Victori-
an poetry. In fact, Zach‘s revolt against Alterman has echoes of
Eliot’s revolt against Tennyson.’ And indeed, Zach’s poetry, in its
very essence, is a poetry of “desentimentalization,”of opposition to
overloaded expression, of rebellion against the direct statement of
feeling. Correspondingly, in his eternal battle against sentimental
congestion in his poetry, Zach mobilizes a most effective ammuni-
tion: irony. When irony is enlisted, sentiment is disarmed.
A principal aim in Zach’s poetry is t o exile the archfoe of
poetry-the sloppy sentiment. Control emotion, mute emotion,
restrain emotion: This could be the principal slogan of Zach’s am
poeticu. Emotion is not canceled in Zach’s poetry; it is concealed. To
meet this challenge, Zach mobilizes literary techniques, in addition
to those borrowed from his influential ancestors. Expectations are
set up and abandoned. Confusing syntax, rhetorical gaps, puzzling
rhyme systems, enigmatic statements-these are some of Zach’s
poetic ammunition against the sentimental effect. Again, it is not
sentiment that Zach objects to, but sentimentality. In his essay, “A
Note on Poetry,’’ William Carlos Williams states that the poet’s
function is “to lift, by use of his imagination and the language he
hears, the material conditions and appearances ofthis environment
Summer 1995
to the sphere of the intelligence.”8Zach’s poetry shows that he is a
faithful believer of this view. He uses the process of intellectualiza-
tion as a rhetorical filter through which sentiment is sifted. Under
these circumstances, Zach’s wish is fulfilled: sentiment fades and
what he calls the “correct poem” speaks. Robert Pack, in his thor-
ough study of Wallace Stevens’ poetry, emphasizes that “The irony,
the humor, the self-satire are means by which Stevens’ comic
imagination keeps the proper distance from thing^."^ Zach also
accomplishes the same goal by using irony. And it is also this goal
that has led Zach t o adopt the techniques of “nonsense.”lo
Many of Zach’s poems demonstrate an affinity to nonsense
poetry: they are based upon a confusing cluster of phrases which
seem t o be hopelessly disconnected from each other. No controlling
logic is at first apparent and the fictional world of the poem seems
puzzling and meaningless. For instance, in his poem “A burning
heat night,” he writes: “ . . . a town has burst into song-if it has not
done it yet. I A tourist in a hotel. I A pregnant woman I A senior
officer.”” But Zach’s poetry deviates from the fundamental nature
of nonsense poetry. Nonsense poetry is based upon “a carefully
limited world, controlled and directed by reason, a construction
subject t o its own laws.”12In contrast, Zach’s enigmatic texture does
not present an isolated alien world that operates according to logic
and laws of its own. Zach’senigmatic poems are anchored in the very
heart of our world. Like Chagall’s painting, which violates the
common order of reality’s composition to produce a statement about
that very reality, Zach’s puzzling poems breach logical and realistic
structures for one purpose: exposing the heart of the truth of that
reality.
One should not be deceived by the confusing features of many of
Zach’s poems: they don’twish to exile the reader from his own reality
but to reacquaint him with his reality. One should read Zach’s
“nonsense” poetry as one reads a metaphor: the “chaotic” verbal
surface should not function as a stumbling block, but as a cluster of
directions that lead t o the hidden meaning. The use of distorted logic
and odd combinations is not a flashy, attention-getting
sleight-of-hand, but part of the poet’s conscious process of intellec-
tualization that aims at evoking emotion but avoiding sentimental-
ity. Zach’s poetry is not nonsense poetry, but poetry that adopts
nonsense techniques for one goal: to restrain sentiment and permit
the “correct” poem to speak.13
Thus, perhaps the most significant aesthetic tool enlisted by
Zach in his war against sentimentality is intellectuality. Corre-

4 BOM!?3
 Literature
spondingly, Zach bestows upon his poetry such a blatant intellectual
touch that compels the reader to react t o the poem on an intellectual
level while preventing any possible sentimental reaction. Before the
reader is allowed to feel Zach’s poetry, he is forced to intellectualize
it. And intellect is the arch-enemy of sentiment.
In this respect, Zach is more of an admirer of Vogel than Vogel’s
disciple; the intellectual qualities and the irony which are such a
natural part of Zach‘s poetry are alien to Vogel’s poetics. Neverthe-
less, despite the fact that the two “speakdifferent poetic languages,”
they share the same ideological “dictionary.” Both oppose poetic
gaudiness and both produce aesthetics of austerity.
The following close reading of one of Zach’s poems may serve as
an effective example of his poetic proclivities.

I hear something falling.

- Nathan Zach14
I hear something falling, said the wind.
It is nothing, it is just the wind, the mother reassured.

You are guilty and he is also guilty, proclaimed the judge to

the accused.

A man is just a man

Explained the doctor t o the astonished family.

But why, why, the boy asked himself

Not believing his eyes.

He who does not live in the valley lives in the mountains

Stated the geography teacher

With no apparent difficulty.

But only the wind that dropped the apple recalled

What the mother concealed from her son:

That he will never, never, never, have

Anyone t o comfort him.

The impression that the poem presents at first glance is confus-

ing. The poem seems a random cluster of astounding components

Digest ofMiddl‘e mt Studies 5

Summer 1995
which are unrelated to each other. The expected common denomi-
nator among the poetic elements seems absent. What is there in
common between the wind and the accused? What binds the accused
and the doctor? What is the link between the doctor and the
geography teacher, and what is the thread that knots the geography
teacher to the dropped apple, the dropped apple to the astonished
family, the astonished family to the confused boy, and so on? And
indeed, many of Zach’s critics condemned this poem for being a
shallow performance of verbal j~gg1ing.l~ But there were critics who
were not led astray and made a sincere attempt to crack its riddle.16
And their refusal t o escape to the convenient shelter of denunciation
proved rewarding.
Since the gap among the concrete components that populate
the poem’s continuum (the wind, the mother, the judge, the doctor,
the geography teacher) seems unbridged, one should look for the
seemingly “lost unity” of the poem on a level beyond the concrete. If
the poem’s integrity cannot be explained in concrete terms (of
unifying situation or plot), it might be formulated in abstract terms.
Each of the concrete components might be an embodiment of a
certain idea. That idea could be the key to the poem’s integrity; that
idea should be the target of the critic’s search. Since the obscure
nature of the poem’s components seems to place an obstacle in the
way of the critic’s attempt t o “crack” the poem, to “decode”it, the
critic must look for a “vulnerable spot” in the poem’s opaque verbal
wall through which he can enter. Following this approach, let us
look into the second stanza:

You are guilty and he is also guilty, proclaimed the

judge t o the accused.

A man is just a man

Explained the doctor to the astonished family.

At first glance, the stanza seems t o combine two different

matters which seem unrelated. But a more thorough reading re-
veals both scenes-the court and the hospital scene-are rooted in
the same essential experience: a failure, a stumbling, a downfall. In
the court there is a moral fall: the fall of a person who committed a
crime, a sin, an iniquity, and is found guilty. The unexpected
statement of the judge-that both parties are guilty-multiplies
and consequently intensifies the sense of moral fall and gives it the
feel of a crushing defeat.

6 DOMES
 Literature
The idea of a fall, a human stumbling, is also multiplied in the
hospital scene: the professional fall of the doctor who failed to save
his patient is echoed by the fall of the patient himself, who takes the
most fundamental fall of any human being-to death.
Hence, a balanced equation is created in this stanza: the two
moral falls in the court’s scene meet the two falls in the hospital
scene. In light of this, the questionable concrete combinations in the
second stanza are fully justified by a tight thematic bond: the idea
of the human fall links the accused with the accuser, the dead
patient with his doctor. They are all variations; they are metaphors
for the most painful aspect of human life: the repeated failure, the
everlasting fall. Thus the absence of integrity in the stanza is a
delusion.
The idea of the fall in the second stanza is reflected in other
stanzas of the poem. The poem opens with the following stanza:

I hear something falling, said the wind.

It is nothing, it is just the wind, the mother reas-
sured.

The concrete fall reported by the wind gains a shocking meaning

through the mother’s reaction: the mother’s desperate attempt to
pacify, to calm, t o reassure, identifies the fall as a most threatening
fall indeed. This frightening nature of the fall explains the boy’s
terrified reaction:

But why, why, the boy asked himself

Not believing his eyes.

The motif of the agonizing fall reaches its peak in the two
stanzas that end the poem:

But only the wind that dropped the apple recalled

What the mother concealed from her son:

That he will never, never, never, have

Anyone t o comfort him.

The full meaning of the dreadful fall-which is realized by the

everlasting absence of comfort-is revealed. The fact that the poem
ends as it starts, with a reference to a concrete fall (the dropped
apple) evokes a sense of circularity in the poem which is intensified

DiBPJtof Middle %t Studips 7

since a repeated object-the wind-is involved in both concrete
falls, at the beginning and at the end. This impression of a complete
and sealed “roundness”provides a compositional compensation for
the first “chaotic” impression of the poem. Also, the “roundness”
evokes a sense of a doomed cycle with no way out, the idea of a
hopeless fall without any chance of redemption, which is at the very
heart of the poem.
At the beginning of the poem, the mother tries to “reassure.”
Towards the end, she converts this attempt to deny the agonizing
reality of the fall. This escalating response of the mother produces
an impression of an increasing threat; it is as if the danger comes
closer.
The mother is not the only one who tries to deny the sad reality;
the wind makes the very same attempt. The wind tries, in the
beginning, to make less of the threatening nature of the fall by
referring to it as an indefinite “something falling.” It is the very
same wind, at the end of the poem, that still chooses not to speak that
truth. The repeated motif of the wind and the mother continuing to
hide the grim reality, intensifies the severity of that reality: a reality
which is hopelessly controlled by a dominant presence of an uneras-
able failure, of a perpetual fall.
The poem alludes to the well-known Hebrew children’s poem:

Wind, wind, wind, wind,

In the orchard fell an apple,
It fell down from the top of the tree,
It fell down and there it burst.

The distance between the harmless fall in that children’s poem

and the bitter fall in Zach’s poem produces a tense irony. As
mentioned earlier, a rhetorical distance is the expectedresult of any
irony. Once the rhetorical distance is achieved, overidentification
by the reader is prevented, overloaded emotion is bridled, and the
time for Zach‘s “correct poem” has come.
In addition, the falling apple is, of course, a reference to the
Biblical fall, with its connotations of a moral fall, an irreparable
calamity-connotations which have an inevitably heavy overlay of
emotion, which make the need for such a system of emotional
restraint most urgent indeed. However, the allusive reference to the
Biblical fall, which is blatantly evident in the poem, significantly
fortifies the idea of the fall which prevails in the comprehensive
poem.

8 DOMES
 Literature
Deciphering the riddle of the second stanza and exposing its
thematic essence-the idea of the perpetual fall-supplies us with
an interpretative tool sufficient for decoding the other enigmatic
components of the poem. The fourth stanza, which includes the
eccentric declaration of the geography teacher, seems most disturb-
ing indeed. The humorous nature of this stanza, on the one hand,
and the seeming absence of the fall motif on the other, appears to
upset the poem’s integrity. The first impression of a “chaotic”
composition, in which different poetic elements are arbitrarily
patched together seems to return. Since an impressive integrity
among the rest of the poem’s components has been already estab-
lished, one may be tempted to assume that here is a single instance
of aesthetic clumsiness. But this impression is misleading!

He who does not live in the valley lives in the mountains

Stated the geography teacher

With no apparent difficulty.

This statement by the geography teacher is an allusion to the

well-known Aramaic saying: “From the top of the mountain to the
depth of the valley” (in Aramaic: ”Meigrah ramah el birah arnik-
tah”)which stands for a most painful human fall. Thus, the fact that
this geography teacher claims that the valley and the mountains are
the only options, and meaningfully skips the third and most com-
mon option-the plain-is highly significant. He omits the only
geographical option which does not “enable” falling.
What may have been taken as compositional negligence is
found t o be a sharp-witted device which elucidates the principal
meaning of the poem. In addition, the images of the valley and the
mountains join a larger thematic system which is found throughout
the poem: the “extremities system.” The death of the patient, the
multifold accusation of the judge, the astonishment of the family,
the terrified response of the boy-all represent extreme situations.
They all reflect a sense of polarity. The valley and the mountains,
like the previously mentioned components, are two metaphorical
sides of the very same thematic coin and representations of extrem-
ity. This motifis not accidental. It is carefully connected to the major
aim of the poem: sense of extremity intensifies and sharpens the
might and magnitude of the fall.
Hence, a poem that may, at first, have seemed incoherent, a
poem of careless structure, a poem that seemed an arbitrary cluster

Digest of Middli! Eust Studies 9

Summer 1995
of unrelated components, a poem that seemed loose and in violation
of logic-that poem is seen now t o be highly organized and carefully
orchestrated. The seemingly chaotic combinations, the irony, the
humor, the intellectual process of decoding, all serve as a “pathos
brake,” a rhetorical dam against sentimentality. Thus, while the
poem is moving, it is not sentimental.
The poetry of Zach is not nonsense poetry, but the lesson he took
from nonsense poetry was highly beneficial: its worthy offspring is
a “correct” poem indeed.
As already alluded to, Zach does not speak David Vogel’s poetic
language, and vice versa. Zach shares none ofVogel’s neo-Romantic
tendencies, and Vogel is not as shrewdly ironic and intellectual as
Zach. But they use the same dictionary: one that does not include
definitions for “baroque,”for “ROCOCO,” for “gaudy.”Their dictionary
lists termc such as “rhetorical modesty,” “daily,” “down-to-earth,”
“mild poetics.” Their dictionary highlights entries such as “poetics
of poverty.” And when it comes to quality poetics, see under “aes-
thetics of austerity,” see under “Vogel,” see under “Zach.”

Notes

1.I discuss the nature of Zach’s revolt against Alterman in Mazor,

“Israeli Poetry: Between Bridled Sentiment and Exiled Sentimen-
tality-the Case of Nathan Zach,” Modern Judaism, Vol. 8
(1988h157-165. In this article I also discuss Zach’s poem “I Hear
Something Falling.” That paper is included in my bookA Sense of
Structure. Hebrew and Biblical Literature (in Hebrew).
2.Cf. Achshav (in Hebrew), Nos. 3-4 (1959): 109-122.
3.See. J. T. Shipley (ed.). Dictionary of World Literature (New
Jersey, 1972), p. 221.
4. See Alex Preminger (ed.). Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics (Princeton, 1974), p. 357.
5.See Ford Madox Ford, “Those Were the Days,” in his (ed.)lmagist
Anthology, 1930 (London, 1930), p. XIII.
6. See: Shimon Zandbank. “T.S. Eliot and the Hebrew Poetry.” (in
Hebrew) Siman Kri’a (Exclamation Mark-Literary Quarterly),
No. 5 (February 19761, pp. 179-189.
7.Ibid. p. 189.
%Also quoted by James Guimond in his The Art of William Carlos
Williams (Urbana, 19681,p. 14.
9. See Robert Pack. Wallace Stevens:An Approach to his Poetry and

10 DOMES
 Thought. (New Brunswick, NJ, 1958), p. 14.
10. Elizabeth Sewell. The Field ofNonsense (London, 19521, p. 5.
11. See Lei1 Sharav (“A burning heat night”). In: Nathan Zach,
Shirim Shonim (Various Poems) (Tel Aviv, 1974), p. 12.
12. See Shipley, p. 221.
13. A detailed study of Zach’s “nonsense” poetry can be found in Miri
Baruch, The Bitter Romantic, A Study in Nathan Zach’s Poems
(Tel Aviv, 1982), pp. 13-14 (in Hebrew).
14. In Shirim Shonim, p. 59, trans. Y.M.
15. See Gideon Katzanelson, “Circus Feats Instead of Poetry,” (in
Hebrew). Moznaim (Balance-Literary monthly published by the
Hebrew Writers Association in Israel), Vol. 13, (July 19611, pp.
127-129.
16. Two attractive interpretations are included in the following
works: Miri Baruch, The Bitter Romantic. A Study in Nathan
Zach’s Poems, pp. 62-68; Menahem Perry, “Crossing Circles:
About One Phenomenon in Modern Poetry,” (in Hebrew) Siman
Kn’a, No. 1 (September 19721, pp. 269-281. The interpretation
here suggested has been previously published in part, in Hebrew.
See: Yair Mazor, “The Correct Poem: Pure and Refined; More
Reflections About Nathan Zach’s Poetry.”Hadoar (The Post). Vol.
61, No. 26 (June 1982), pp. 417-418; No. 27 (June 19821, pp. 430-
431. That study is included in my book A Sense of Structure.
Hebrew a n d Biblical Literature (in Hebrew) (Tel Aviv, 19871,
pp. 121-126.

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