19 pages • 38 minutes read
Yehuda AmichaiThe Diameter of the Bomb
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
War, and anti-war poems, already had a long tradition in global literature when this poem was written, but Amichai was innovative in his ability to take ancient themes and make them uniquely relevant to the modern world’s events and its catastrophic violence. He was Israel’s most famous poet; his poetry contains Biblical references in a modern, clean style reminiscent of mid-20th century American and British poets such as Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes, who he worked with on translations of his works. The influence of his contemporaries is felt especially in the way that he uses a non-ornate, direct language to convey mood and atmosphere. His metaphors operate on many levels, and in this particular poem the metaphor of the circle of suffering brought about by war is especially haunting. Amichai took contemporary situations and everyday events and revealed deeper facets of these events by presenting them through a mythological and spiritual lens. This poem is one of Amichai’s most famous poems, and it is often read in public situations as a call for peace.
Historical Context
This poem was published in 1979 following two world wars and numerous conflicts in the Middle East where Amichai grew up and served in the Israeli Army. This poem was inspired by Amichai’s childhood, in which his family fled Germany in the wake of the Holocaust, as well as his later experiences serving in both the British Army during World War II and the Israeli Army during later conflicts such as the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Amichai uses the metaphor of the circle of “pain and time” (Line 6) to create a devastating emotional effect in the final lines, grappling with the theme of the absence of God that dominated much war poetry in the wake of World War I. The world wars of the 20th century caused the deaths of so many people worldwide and were so destabilizing globally that they were viewed as apocalyptic in nature. Amichai achieves a uniquely universal voice while also remaining firmly grounded in a singular bombing and the lives of the many who are affected by this one event. Through his unique combination of elegance and depth, Amichai conveys the nature of global political drama on a small scale.
The poem is political in the sense that it is anti-war, but it is not pointed toward any particular countries or series of events in the real world, though it was originally inspired by a bombing that Amichai heard about on the radio. Amichai avoids making a political comment that might divide his audience, writing to unite people by showing the universal human emotions and the interconnected circle of suffering that is drawn by war’s terrible consequences. He also brings unity at the end by repeating the imagery of the circle, but this circle is no longer limited to the small range of the bomb or even the immediate countries where the bombing took place. Instead, it implicates all of humanity, suggesting we are all connected to and responsible for the horrors in the world that we can’t seem to prevent.
