Between Exile and Return: S. Y. Agnon and the Drama of Writing

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. 1. This is along the lines of the "deterritorialization" of which Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari [1986] speak: there is no firm ground for definitive interpretation of the text; the text resists the claim of any ideology. 2. "Ifush harea[t," or "The Sense of Smell," is discussed in chapter 6. For a discussion of the pervasive influence of this image of the son's exile in the formation of the identities of Hebrew writers at the turn of this century, see Alan Mintz, 1989. 3. Jacques Lacan notes that "the paternal function concentrates in itself both imaginary and real relations, always more or less inadequate to the symbolic relationship that essentially constitutes it" [1977, 67]. 4. "Not only does language provide the agency of self-loss, but cultural representations supply the standard by which that loss is perceived," observes Kaja Silverman [1983]. 5. M. M. Bakhtin examines this quality of polyphony and values texts in which the play of voices is particularly rich and unconstrained. Julia Kristeva develops the concept of intertextuality out of this play of voices or fragments of utterances in any text. 6. Hillel Barzel describes Agnon's familiarity with tales of the Baal Shem Tov and the shared affinity of Kafka and Agnon to Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav [1972, 168-70, 177]. Arnold Band notes that Agnon read Shivfte Haran, tales of Rabbi Nahman, as an adolescent; he emphasizes the impact of Rabbi Nahman's style on Agnon. Y. H. Brenner was the first to notice the influence of Rabbi Nahman on Agnon's "'Agunot" [Band 1968, 9, 60, 92]. Franz Kafka knew Rabbi Nahman's tales through Martin Buber's work. 7. I compared Hebrew editions by Yisrael Har [1981] and Yehudit Kuk [1973] and translations by Martin Mantel [1977] and Howard Schwartz [1983]. "The Tale of the Menorah," also titled as "The Tale of the Menorah of Defects," is not among the original thirteen collected by Rabbi Nahman's 185 186 Notes disciple Rabbi Nathan. See editions prepared by S. A. Horodetzky [1922] and Band [1978]. 8. One further note: In the tradition of the Bratslaver Hasidim, the prayer that is recited before one of R. Nahman's tales is told breaks down distinctions between teller, listener, and text [Schwartz, 223]. Through the telling ofthe tale, teller and listeners participate in and transmit traditional tales of the deeds of holy men. The act of telling brings the teller closer to those deeds, imparting to teller and audience a measure ofthe holiness ofthe deeds themselves. The teller participates actively in the realization of the tale and draws his audience into the narrative fabric that he weaves. The Bratslaver prayer is an invocation ofthe power of narrative to transform the experience of its participants. Chapter 2. 1. Critics began to compare Franz Kafka and S. Y. Agnon early on in Agnon's literary career. The first full-length sustained comparison was Hillel Barzel's [1972], Gershon Shaked has demonstrated the complex intertextuality that Agnon's relationship to Judaism makes possible. With specific attention to Kafka's "need to stand outside ofhistory," Shaked contrasts Kafka's delineation ofan "abstract universal world in a detailed and concrete manner" to Agnon's transformation of "a concrete, historical world" in his surrealist works [1987, 15], 2. "In der Strafkolonie" was originally published in 1919. Page numbers refer first to the 1971 edition of The Complete Stories, edited by Nahum Glatzer and then to the 1946 German edition. In some instances, translations may have been modified. 3. "Now some time ago there came upon the market, under the name of the 'Mystic Writing-Pad,' a small contrivance that promises to perform more than the sheet of paper or the slate. It claims to be nothing more than a writing tablet from which notes can be erased by an easy movement of the hand. But if it is examined more closely it will be found that its construction shows a remarkable agreement with my hypothetical structure of our perceptual apparatus and that it can in fact provide both an ever-ready receptive surface and permanent traces of the notes that have been made upon it" [Freud, v. 19, [1925], p. 228], 4. Clayton Koelb [1989, 69] has written suggestively on the parallel between Freud's metaphor ofthe mystic writing pad, as Derrida discusses it, and Kafka's more brutal and overtly sexual representation of the writing machine. Notes 187 5. The Bratslaver Hasidim recite a prayer before the...