Perhaps the best way to comprehend Agnon is to invoke the examples of two modern masters in the English language whose lives were roughly contemporaneous with his: James Joyce and William Faulkner. Both writers are ultimately concerned with the experience of aloneness in the cosmos and with efforts to overcome that state; yet their exploration of these ultimate issues is undertaken entirely through the particular and unfamiliar — and often exotic and arcane — materials of their national and regional cultures. In truth, the mores and speech habits of the American South and the geography and politics of Dublin at the turn of the century lie far beyond the competence of most of us. Yet we read Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! and Joyce’s Ulysses because it is only in such works of radical parochialness that we find the great themes of human fate and the quest for renewal most vividly portrayed. Agnon’s art partakes in this same mysterious dependence of the universal upon the particular.
Introduction
The immense achievements of writers such as Faulkner, Joyce, and Agnon are self-evident. So are the difficulties. If the way to the universal is through the particular, still one cannot be expected to glimpse the greatness if the path is strewn with opaque symbols and foreign references. In Agnon’s case, the issue is not merely one of translation. Even the contemporary Israeli reader, fluent in Hebrew, is likely to miss key allusions to classical texts and to find the account of some ritual practices baffling, in much the same way that the contemporary English reader of Ulysses is likely to miss important allusions from Greek mythology and Irish politics.
How then does a reader of these supposedly great works get at their greatness? To begin with, one has a right to expect some help. Few would embark upon a reading of Ulysses without a reader’s guide in hand or at least an edition with some annotation. Yet once we have plugged up some of the holes in our knowledge, we expect the larger message to become luminous. Lacking mastery of the culture in which a great work is embedded, we accept a certain level of unfamiliarity as inevitable, and we rely upon a common vocabulary of human emotions to get our bearings. But if we are given some help and the greatness still fails to shine through, then we must conclude that the work in question is too rooted in its time and place, and cannot transcend those boundaries to speak to readers either from other cultures or at least located at a cultural remove.
It is our conviction — and that of many longtime readers of Agnon in both the original and translation — that Agnon belongs in the company of the great modern writers and that, given some help, general readers who are not rooted in the culture about which he writes can find pleasure and illumination in his works. One of the purposes of this volume is to provide that crucial margin of help. Although the approach is not in itself revolutionary, it does represent a genuine departure from previous efforts to present Agnon in English. The assistance offered the reader is of two kinds. The first is presented through the glossary of recurrent terms from Jewish life and the notes to particular references in each of the stories, as well as through the general and section introductions. This explanatory material aims to supply the essential “cultural literacy” necessary for a good grasp of the stories. We have sought to avoid weighing down the stories with needless erudition. This moderate and selective level of annotation is intended to be of use both to the general reader, who wants central cultural allusions glossed, and to a reader more familiar with Jewish culture, who would welcome having specific textual references supplied.
The second kind of assistance has to do with the fact that this is a collection of short stories. Agnon wrote novels and novellas as well as short stories, but it is in the latter genre that he most characteristically distinguished himself, and it makes abundant sense that a new effort to present Agnon in English should begin here. The challenge is that Agnon wrote hundreds of short stories over seven decades in a wide variety of styles. To compile an anthology that is simply “The Best of…” would not help the reader find an orientation within the epic Agnon world. Our goal has therefore been, in accordance with a principle of overall excellence, to find a plan of organization that would deliver the best of Agnon in meaningful categories.
In searching for this shape, we let ourselves be guided by Agnon’s own preoccupation with autobiographical self-invention. Throughout his long career, Agnon fashioned and refashioned the myth of himself as a writer. He told the story of his upbringing in Galicia, his journey to the Land of Israel, his extended sojourn in Germany, and his return to Jerusalem in many different versions, placing the persona of the writer at times at the center of the story and at times at the margins as a kind of ironic scaffolding. We have therefore chosen to organize the volume along a rough autobiographical-geographical axis, while making some exceptions for themes that profit from being taken separately. The introductions that preface the six sections of the volume establish a context for each grouping of stories and present some background as to how the texts have been read by previous readers.
Introduction
When it was his turn to be presented, Mr. Agnon jumped to his feet and enthusiastically shook the King’s hand as he received the prize. Then, instead of the usual single bow to the King, he kept on bowing until he got back to his chair. He was obviously a very happy and flustered man. When he learned in October in Jerusalem that he had won the Nobel Prize, Mr. Agnon said that going to Stockholm would give him special pleasure “because there is a special benediction one says before a king and I have never met a king before.” Tonight at the banquet, as the King looked on, Mr. Agnon, speaking in Hebrew, recited the blessing, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given of His glory to flesh and blood.” The Israeli author said that “some see in my books the influences of authors whose names, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while others see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writing I have never read.” The true sources of his inspiration, he went on, were, first and foremost, the sacred scriptures and, after that, the teachings of the medieval Jewish sages, and the spectacle of nature, and the animals of the earth.
— The New York Times, December 11, 1966
The sight of the little round man in the black tails, white tie, and large velvet skullcap receiving an international prize from the king of Sweden was remarkable on a number of counts. Though a sophisticated participant in modern culture, Agnon presented himself as a pious and naive representative of the lost world of East European Jewry who is ignorant of European literature and has been instructed only by the Bible and the spectacle of God’s Creation. No scene could provide a more powerful instance of the writer’s ability to fashion and refashion his artistic persona. Agnon’s construction of an autobiographical myth of the artist, with its deliberate blurring of the boundaries between life and art, is a key to understanding his work.
Over the years, Agnon shaped the narrative of his own beginnings to produce an image of the artist as a figure at once solitary and part of a community, both a rebel and a redeemer. He may not have left us a formal autobiography, but through his letters and public statements we do have evidence of his engagement in a remarkable process, carried out over most of a lifetime, that amounts to the fashioning of a public name and history of the writer.