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- Title
כתב החידה: יהדות, נצרות ושואה במחקריו של דן פגיס ובשירו 'כתוב בעפרון בקרון החתום'
- Authors
הדס שבת נדיר
- Abstract
This article analyzes the poems of Dan Pagis, particularly 'Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car', as verse composed in the 'neck-riddle' genre, which Pagis, a scholar of medieval poetry, analyzed in his book A Sealed Secret (1976). This article argues that the riddle that Pagis subverts in that poem continues to hover over other poems by him, and at its basis is a game of identities, gazes between Cain and Abel, and between German and Jew. Within this intricate system, Pagis attempts to restore the Jewish narrative. A meticulous reading demonstrates that the murderous relationship between Cain and Abel reflects a clash between two perspectives: The Jew reflected in the Christian's gaze, signifying him as inferior - one who must be exterminated in a 'sealed railway car', and the Jew and the Christian reflected in the Jew's gaze as an attempt to escape the murderous Christian's gaze and overturn the relationship. Pagis, as this article demonstrates, seeks to save himself from the murderous glance of the German/Christian, to be extricated from that 'sealed railway car', and to return to Jewish History. However, despite his attempts to overturn the relationship between the Christian and the Jew, he does not succeed in solving the riddle. Rather, an infinite chain of murders occurs between Christian and Jew and between Jew and Christian, which unveils a chain of semiotics of the game of historic and private murder. this chain penetrates till the question of Pagis' original name.
- Subjects
GERMAN Jews; JEWISH history; GAZE; JEWS; MURDER
- Publication
Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature, 2024, Vol 33, p215
- ISSN
0333-693X
- Publication type
Article