A Dream and a Delusion in Oz's Hamatzav Hashlishi

A Dream and a Delusion in Oz's Hamatzav Hashlishi A DREAM AND A DELUSION IN OZ'S HAMATZAV HASHLISHI by Harris lenowitz Harris lenowitz is Professor of Hebrew in the Department of Languages and Uterature and the Middle East Center at the University of Utah. He teaches Hebrew language and literature, Aramaic, and Ugaritic. 1 It is difficult to talk about the work of Amos Oz without considering his politics and his biography too. It seems that his physical body may even have its place in any consideration of his work. Oz has been the crown prince of Hebrew prose since the Sixties, clothed in the native dress of his upbringing among the SOcialist, intellectual aristocracy, his pure Zionism, his kibbutz background and his experience ofJerusalem and the Hebrew University before the fall. His mother's suicide when he was 12, his moves to the kibbutz (Hulda), then back to the city and finally out to the dry air ofArad parallel the themes of estrangement and the actions and psychology of his alienated heroes. His light colored hair, his clear eyes, and his sculpted features stamp him as fit for the role he has played. His crystalline linguistic skills give the picture the sort of stunning permanence proper to (an Israeli) Achilles.! Israelis attend to his writing and his political activities, and his automobile accident in 1976 engaged the attention of the nation. He is something of a symbol. This tends to overwhelm critics and leave them to emphasize at random and passionately some particular aspect while thinking of something else entirely. His style may be the 'Most of this summary appears at the beginning ofYehudit Oryan's review ofHamatzav hashlishi Oerusalem: Keter, 1990; all translations quoted in this article are my own) in Yediot aharonot Oanuary 4, 1991). Other important reviews include those mentioned below and those ofBatya Gur in Ha'aretz ofJanuary 11,1991 and Gawiel Moked in Akhshav 56 (Spring 1991), pp. 305ft'. Oryan attends closely to Fima's relationships with women, which are not central to this article. 2 SHOFAR Spring 1995 Vol. 13, No.3 topic, but his politics are the subtext. His politics may be the topic, but then his fictional heroes are taken as figures representing his own biography and political position.2 Oz participates actively, coyly at times, in promoting this confusion. He makes stories of his own life in interviews anyway. His grandfather's offer to see to his sexual provisioning if he hadn't done so himself by the age of seventeen is a favorite tale, appearing slightly modified in the interviews with Helit Yeshurun and with Frederick Goldman.3 Yet Oz has said to me that he feels a close kinship to Sumkhi (the hero of his "novel for youth"), and at least one other writer feels that Hamatzav basblisbi is closely connected to Sumkbi, perhaps its continuation .4 It would be better to concentrate on the politics, psychology, and sexuality in the life of a character in a novel written by Oz than to see the character through Oz-colored glasses. To do so means to get a hold on how Oz determines in the work itself the way we are to read his work cum life. Adream-the field on which such hidden-and-exposed representations are played out-is the focus of this paper. We are all most helplessly and completely exposed in our dreams-even those we dream through characters we invent to dream-so that understandingwhat this one dream conveys concerning its dreamer and in particular how it does so is a valuable first step on the several different expeditions mentioned. The dream comes from Hamatzav basblisbi (The Third Condition) (a recent English translation [New York, 1993] titles the work Fima), Oz's latest novel. The novel delivers classically Freudian conflicts; its portrayal of those conflicts is epitomized in the hero's dreams, the classic place for such revelations, and the method for revealing them is that of dream analysis, though this at least we are left to do for ourselves. In fact, our role is that of the analyst. We are reading Fima's story, written by Oz as Fima is writing...