Disguised Wrath and Hidden Heresy: On Bialik's 'Dance of Despair'

Dance of Despair (Poem); Bialik, Hayyim Nahman, 1873-1934; Hebrew poetry; Modern Hebrew poetry; Anger in literature; God in Judaism; Literary criticism; Poetry (Literary form)

A critical examination is given to the poem "dance of Despair," by the Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bailik. It attempts to show that the work is a "poem of wrath" in which the voices are those of a prophet and the God of Israel. Topics addressed include editorial confusion over how to classify the poem due to a conflict between the poem's formal organization and semantic content, the origin of the term "poem of wrath," and the ways in which the denial of God's existence is expressed.