SOURCE: "Farewell to Arms and Sentimentality: Reflections of Israel's Wars in Yehuda Amichai's Poetry," in World Literature Today, Vol. 60, No. 1, Winter 1986, pp. 12-17.

In the following essay, Mazor examines Amichai's unsentimental approach to the brutality of Israel's wars.

      War's a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art,
      Unless her cause by right be sanctified.
 
                                Byron, Don Juan, 9.4

One may convincingly argue that all art is enduringly besieged by an intriguing paradox. A considerable part of any work of art is founded upon emotion. Even the most ambitiously intellectual, logical, artistic creation that aspires only to analytical insight is not completely devoid of emotion. Such a lack would undoubtedly devitalize the piece, leading to shallowness. Thus emotion is not only laudable but crucial to any work of art. When feeling deteriorates into over-emotionality, however, when the delicate balance between depicted object and artistic depiction is upset or destroyed, the work suffers. The artistic...