A Red Rose in the Dark: Self-Constitution through the Poetic Language of Zelda, Amichai, Kosman, and Adaf

How can we characterize the uniqueness of poetic language? How can we describe the evasive enchantment of the paradox that is created by both universal and autobiographical expression? How does ordinary language function aesthetically while motivating the reader to acknowledge himself, and to reveal how far his thinking belongs to the present, the future, or the past?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the central founder of the linguistic turn and the inspiration of countless works, inspires the search of this book for various linguistic functions: Dialogic, aesthetic and mystical. The search investigates four Modern Hebrew poets: Zelda, Yehuda Amichai, Admiel Kosman, and Shimon Adaf based on their family resemblance of intertextuality in their language-games. The book resists social-cultural categorizations as religious vs. secular poetry or Mizrahi vs. Ashkenazi literature, and instead, focuses on Wittgenstein’s aspects, suggesting universal interpretation of these corpuses.