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I begin my discussion of Nitzan Lebovic's Zionism and Melancholy with a short quote from the opening of Israel Zarchi's story ‘Sambatyon’:
One day Reb Moshe Yehoshua found that his heart was empty. Walking from Etz Haim Yeshiva in the courtyard of the ruins of Rabbi Judah the Pious, he realized he had lost his purpose, and the trails were winding and the road ahead was bad and he did not know what direction to take. For a moment he imagined he had lost something, but could not remember what it was he had lost; in any event his composure was shattered and in its place a sense of dejection swept his heart, and he still did not know what had befallen him. (Zarchi, 1947, p. 97)
When we read these lines in Zarchi's story, we are summoned to the road. But the road is forgotten. This was also the road of the forgotten author Israel Zarchi (1909-47), a Hebrew writer of a short and sad life, who left behind a minor collection of stories, a few novels and some other writings, all of which vanished into the archives of Hebrew literature. Zarchi was born in Jedrzejow, Poland. He immigrated to Palestine in 1929 as a halutz (pioneer) and worked as a road builder and a farmhand before entering the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied Hebrew literature. Around that time, he took expeditions to the Near East and to Europe. During the last decade of his life, he lived in Jerusalem, writing and working, until he fell ill and died.
Lebovic's book reflects (not without irony) his own attempt to restore Zarchi's work and offers a new reading of his oeuvre. The result is a splendid essay, learned and diligent. Lebovic's primary focus is Zarchi's melancholic poetics. Zarchi's literature, he argues, is mainly about desire and loss; its protagonists are often sunk into abysses of despair and depression. Yet, Zarchi was and remains an outsider who did not adapt himself properly to the literary orders of the Hebrew Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in pre-1948 Palestine. Lebovic's aim is