ABSTRACT
In the 1920s and 1930s, Uri Zvi Grinberg’s (UZG) poetry produced a fascinating reservoir of rhetorical figures, fashioned in a wide variety of contexts: ideological, political, biographical and aesthetic. Among the most blatant figures are Albion, the primordial serpent, Flavius, Pilatus, Sanballat and the Sikrikin. This chapter discusses the ways in which two of these central figures were constructed: Sanballat and the Sikrikin. Both of these were supported by historical subject-matter from the days of the First and Second Jerusalem Temples. It examines UZG’s use of the frequent repetition of these two characters in his attempt to refashion the contemporary discourse in his time and to define, for the readers of his poetry and essays, the prism through which they should view and interpret reality.
