In the major novel A Guest for the Night, the first-person narrator leaves his eastern European hometown, taking with him the key to the town’s Beit Midrash and citing the belief that in the future all houses of study will move to the Land of Israel. He resigns himself to waiting for that day. In “A Book That Was Lost,” the writer depicts himself at the other end, waiting in the Land of Israel for the book that he sent from Buczacz to arrive.
This section of tales of the artist in the Land of Israel closes with “From Lodging to Lodging,” a story that follows the moves of its first-person narrator from one residence to another as he claims to seek greater comfort and fresher air. In an expressionistic enactment of conflicts between illness and health, passivity and activity, death and life, “From Lodging to Lodging” moves through a variety of settings in the Land of Israel. From the noise and bustle of Tel Aviv to the seashore and from there to a rural setting, the narrator finds himself restless and ill at ease. His discomforts in each new setting suggest an inability to settle into anyone address or identification.
In the fourth section, then, when the narrator finds himself in a house on a hill that is described with the biblical imagery of the Zionist return to the land, his response acknowledges the fulfillment of that return and yet distances himself from complete identification: “I was glad that a man in the Land of Israel had all this, and I had my doubts that this place was for me.” The couple who live in this house recount stories that are the counterpart of the setting: of their own emigration to the Land of Israel and of their daughter, who willingly sacrifices comfort for the physical hardships of kibbutz life. The fulfillment in a relationship to the land that they express is something Agnon’s fiction tends to acknowledge, but from a distance. In novels as well as short stories, Agnon acknowledges the need for community while positioning his protagonists as solitary figures. The daughter’s commitment to collective life in “From Lodging to Lodging” finds its counterpart in several novels: in A Guest for the Night, we find the description of young Zionists who prepare themselves for aliyah to the Land of Israel by working on a farm in eastern Europe, and in the posthumously published novel Shira we have the involvement of the protagonist’s daughter and her family in a collective farm.
The Artist in the Land of Israel
In the logic of this particular story, the room to which the narrator returns suggests acceptance of a part of himself that he had sought to escape. The narrator returns to find the sickly child of his landlady on the doorstep, eager as ever to poke his dirty fingers into the narrator’s eyes, in search of his own reflection there. It was the intrusive presence of this child that caused the narrator to go in search of quieter surroundings in the first place. His return to a reluctant involvement with the child thus evolves into an emblem of identity by suggesting acceptance of an aspect of himself he has hitherto sought to escape.
Through these stories of the artist, we encounter shifting identifications and transient affiliations, all of which comprise facets of the artist’s identity. Whether by detaching the writer from the community of his peers or linking him to those who preserve tradition, these stories offer insight into the structures that define Agnon’s fictional world. The stories position the writer on the margins, never wholly inside or outside of a traditional Jewish world view.
Hill of Sand
1
It was most curious, Hemdat’s having agreed to give Yael Hayyut literature lessons. Yet since it struck him as being but one more insoluble psychological riddle, he took the moralist’s advice and did not probe what was beyond him. You made a promise? Keep it.
The evening before their first lesson he happened to find out more about her. He had always considered her an empty-headed flirt who never did a day’s work in her life, but now he discovered that she was terribly poor and hard up. She had more than her share of troubles. Although life had treated her well as a girl in Russia, she had not seen a cloudless day since coming to Palestine, and a stocking knitter’s wages were all she could look forward to. Or rather, while she was learning to knit stockings, a wage was far from certain, since she had a bad arm and was not supposed to strain it. As sad as it was to see anyone down on his luck, it was sadder to see a girl from a good family who had to work for a pittance, a princess banished to the spinning wheel.
How unfair he had been. Thank God he could make up for it. He opened his Bible as she opened the door of his room. He would teach her Hebrew. With a knowledge of the language she could be a nursery-school teacher instead of having to knit all her life. He had been providentially chosen to rescue her.
She was hungry, quite simply hungry. Not that she said so. But he could tell from the way she asked for a glass of water that she had not eaten lunch. Hemdat took out bread and wine. Oh, no, Yael said, she did not want anything. Just some water. In the end she took and ate a slice of bread, pecking at it like a bird. Exactly like a bird: that was all she touched. Pizmoni the poet once said that only birds ate aesthetically. Well put, Mr. Pizrmoni!
It was a fine time of his life, the one in which Hemdat tutored Yael Hayyut. The summer was over; the first rains had fallen and the days were no longer blistering deserts for the sun to beat down on. Hemdat liked to spend his afternoons in bed until clouds formed in the west. Beauteous were the evenings in Canaan.
One Wednesday Yael came late. When she arrived, she sat down on the divan instead of on the chair by the table. You could see she did not feel like studying. She looked at Hemdat and said:
“What makes you so quiet? I used to think you were happy, but now that I know you better I can see that you’re not. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”
Hemdat bowed his head and said nothing.
Once, when he was more of a ladies’ man, Hemdat had liked nothing better than talking about himself. He had had a happy childhood and his stories about it had won many hearts. Now that all this was behind him, however, he preferred silence. He picked up his Bible and sat down with Yael.
She was a good head taller than he was. He had noticed yesterday how this made her bend, and so he propped the Bible on another book for her. Yet though he had meant to be helpful, she now had to arch her neck like a swan. What did Yael’s tutor think he was doing?
Hemdat took a small pillow and placed in on Yael’s chair. “That’s better, much better,” she nodded. After two hours of study she could sit in comfort at last. She gave him a grateful look with her green eyes. Before they could return to their book, he said:
“If you have no objection, it’s dinner time. I’d like to ask you to join me.”
Yael shook her head. “Oh no, thank you.”
“All right,” said Hemdat, putting away the tablecloth he had taken out. “Let’s get on with the lesson.” He was not going to eat without her. In the end she agreed. She did not have much choice.
If you have never met Hemdat, you might as well meet his room. It stood in the dunes of Nevei Tsedek and had many windows: one facing the sea, and one facing the sand that Tel Aviv is now built on, and one facing the railroad tracks in Emek Refaim, and two facing the street. And yet by drawing the green curtains, Hemdat could cut himself off from the world and the bustle of Jaffa. The room had a table spread with green wax paper, which doubled as the desk he wrote his poems at. Next to it stood a small chest full of good things. There were olives, and bread, and oranges, and wine, and you could take whatever you wanted, and whatever you took was washed down with the coffee that Hemdat made on the alcohol stove on top of the chest. Bright beads of flame twinkled around the beaker while it cooked. Yael glanced up at them from her book. Hemdat looked at her and said: