It seems that in parallel with the continuing decline in the reading and sales of books, recent years have been characterized by an abundance of literary journals set up for morning news, and devoted to a variety of topics.
At its best, a journal is not just a collection of texts, good as they may be, but a representation of a particular literary voice, of a new direction that can be drawn precisely from the differences between the texts it includes.
The first issue of "Sefer - a magazine for stepping literature", edited by Elad Nevo and Dvir Tzur, certainly states such a direction: "Stepping literature seeks to transcend the boundaries of language, cognition and common spaces of existence. ... and to reveal a hidden presence, a reality that can only be revealed through the text ”(p. 4). Slightly paradoxically, the direction is a lack of direction: "The book offers a wander ... the boundary drawn in the book changes frequently" (p. 3). The very attempt to define the book means it, takes the primacy and uniqueness to which it strives.
Most of the stories in the issue are short to very short - the longest of which do not exceed ten pages of a thin booklet - and the whole journal can ostensibly be read in one afternoon. But such a reading would be a mistake: the texts require breathing space, a pause that makes it possible to discern their unique poetics. Many of the stories (there are also two poems and a review article) are characterized by linguistic density and are of a fragmentary nature, supposedly coming from nowhere and suddenly fading away. Trying to decipher some of them is like watching a meteor shower: a long wait to see something sparkles for a moment in the night sky and disappears as it comes.
Perhaps in order to deter hasty reading, the two stories that open the issue are among the most complex and demanding in it.
Michal Govrin's "Hairy Poetry" consists of three parts: the first revolves around Olga, a new immigrant from Russia, her sexual experiences and a family tragedy hinted at in the background;
The second part describes a pagan fertility ceremony from the perspective of the girls who take part in it;
And the third part, "Bibliographic Note," is written as an academic text that ostensibly clarifies the second part, though it leaves many question marks and mostly does not shed any light on the connection between it and the first part.
The following story, Amit Hecht's "Mother Tongue", tells the story of Mali, a young woman who is apprenticed to a witch and has a strange relationship with a guy named Joel.
The text is written in long sentences and yet fragmented, broken, and so saturated with Kabbalistic allusions that it can be read as an allegory for the myth of the Divine Exile.
Surprisingly in relation to his avant-garde character and the fact that this is the first issue, "Sefer" boasts very impressive names such as Nurit Zarchi, and alongside her, the issue includes stories by Sharon S., Oded Volkstein, Daniela Carmi, Tal Nitzan, and many others. Zarhi's story, "The Fire Buzzing Below," is indeed one of the best in the issue: a kind of original and poignant encounter between Nils Holgerson's stories and the experience of the first and second generations of the Holocaust, which demonstrates how so much has been written about so much.
Also noteworthy is Almog Behar's "Donkeys in Jerusalem," which weaves together the idea of the Messiah and ecological issues into a vision of warm pre-modern simplicity; And Haviva Pedia's "used" story, which describes the life of a young man on the fringes of society and whose use of language is painfully beautiful, as here: "We were all children of the sun. Or a great one who used it. And then we became such children of the sun constantly seeking enlightenment that tears and sometimes some of us drowned deep in the mud "(p. 55).
Precisely because of the great variety of texts, it is interesting to point out common denominators.
Many of the stories deal with encounters with animals: "the song of the goat," "the fire that burns beneath," "donkeys in Jerusalem," and "used ones," already mentioned;
And next to them also "Assaf" by Assaf Rahamim, which deals with a person who transforms into a mole;
And Sharon S.'s "Mouse," which opens with a discussion laden with quotes about the figure of the mouse and gradually becomes a description of a one-time, unmediated encounter between a girl and a mouse, one that copies boundaries: "They both thought they were at home but found themselves in foreign territory" (p. 96). ).
The human-animal encounter is an intermediate experience, especially suited to the character of the journal.
Such is also the preoccupation with mental or physical disintegration, in those places where the self has ceased to function in the way expected of it: Amichai's "Anhadonia" and Daniela Carmi's "oops" both occur in the treatment room (and both disintegrate more than just the heroes' souls).
Nimrod Barko's "Cyclamen," which has more atmosphere than meaning, depicts a man who knows his face is about to be sharpened;
The slitting of the face is understood as the erasure of identity, and the boundaries between the narrator and the world blur.
Elad Nevo's "Noa is a Gate" at first seems like a story about youthful love, but instead of love having a physical realization, the boy goes through an ecstatic experience of sinking into the girl's body, of being.
Many of the texts express a mystical-magical desire to break beyond the boundaries of the media towards a more thorough experience: in Volkstein's Rodent, a grandson listens to his grandmother Sarah when suddenly the voices cease.
In a moment of enlightenment his manner of hearing changes, and since then "he has heard the noise of the unraveling of carpets and the sawing of the night in the thick of the walls ..." (p. 35).
The song "Written in Objects" by Adi Sorek seeks to read the language that underlies physical existence.
And in Dvir Tzur's 'Khawarzmit for Children', a father experiences his children's imaginations as more real than life itself.
All in all, this is an intriguing file, even if not always easy to read.
It was also possible to do more meticulous work in terms of proofreading - the system thing, a little older than a page, including two errors in body tilts.
But in the goal he has set for himself - to collect literary voices into "a unique interweaving, a multidimensional image of a literary space, which may succeed in revealing the least familiar" - he certainly stands well.
Subsequent issues will testify if he also succeeds in meeting the goal of "becoming the basis for the known and the known."
"Book - a journal of step-literature"; Editors: Elad Nevo and Dvir Tzur, Galilit Publishing