Relations Between Jews and Poles in S. Y. Agnon's Work (review)

BookReviews 109 drawing in part on Freudian psychoanalytic theories, Edna Amir Coffin's analysis ofthe story "Yedidut" ("Friendship") is based on an understanding that much ofthe meaning of the story is in the tension between the manifest motivations ofthe narrator and the latent issues with which he is dealing, but ofwhich he is not consciously aware. Unique among these papers is a personal statement by the Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld. He describes how shortly after arriving in Israel in 1946, Agnon often visited him and his fellow HolocauSt survivors in their settlement, which was located near Agnon's home in Jerusalem, "to ask questions and tell usjokes" (p. 207). Since Agnon's home town ofBuczacz was not far from Appelfeld's home town of Czemowitz, the older writer was able to supply the younger writer with details about his past that he had repressed as a result ofthe trauma ofthe Holocaust. When in the 1950s Appelfeld turned to the writing offiction in Hebrew, "probably," he writes, "to open the darkness in me, to say something of my experience" (p. 210), he could not fmd models in contemporary Israeli literature. Instead, the European-born writers Kafka and Agnon served as his models. "If Kafka introduced me to my assimilated parents," writes Appelfeld, "Agnon opened the gates of oblivion and brought me to my grandparents, to my hidden home where beliefwas in full flame" (p. 211). Many of the works by Agnon discussed in these papers are available· in English translation. (A notable exception is the novel Temol shilshom). This book, therefore, can serve not only as a resource for scholars active in the field ofmodem Hebrew literature, but also as an insightful guide for readers of Agnon in English translation as they seek to understand the complex fictional world ofthis unrivaled master ofHebrew fiction. David C. Jacobson Program in Judaic Studies Brown University Relations Between Jews and Poles in S. Y. Agnon's Work, by Shmuel Werses. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1994. 128 pp. . What prominent features characterized the relations between Jews and Poles? What cultural elements were transferred between these two societies? How do Jews perceive their millennium-long sojourn among Poles? These are among the central questions addressed by Shmuel Werses in his study, Relations Between Jews and Poles in S. Y. Agnon's Work. To describe that symbiotic state by relying on fiction as evidence; the approach taken by Werses in this study, threatens to jeopardize the thoroughness of the presentation, including that measure of "objectivity" we find in works of history. Yet there is nothing more fitting to enliven dry facts, to make people and events come alive, than a literary lID SHOFAR Spring 1997 Vol. 15, No.3 presentation, particularly one by an accomplished storyteller such as Agnon. The pitfall, though, is dependence on the author's peculiar and stilted vision affecting the presentation 's completeness and objectivity. Were we to ask ourselves what thesis Werses is promoting, or what his argument may be (and against whom), our answer would have to be that this study seeks to map out the intricate, and often multivalent, relations between Jews and Polish society. Werses rightfully weights the scales against picturing an idyllic existence, presenting the period's traumatic experiences as affecting Jews' overall perception oftheir life in Polish society; this while most chose to remain there in the face ofcenturies of anti-Jewish feelings and policy culminating more than once in massacres. In referring to these events, Agnon adopts the role ofchronicler, making his work ever more complex.in its range ofmeaning. Rather than address these works critically, Werses accepts them as documentary testimony, thereby overlooking many nuanced attitudes. Werses' choice to present Jews' existence in Poland and their relations with Poles is certainly promising. To use the fiction of S. Y. Agnon (1888-1970), Israel's most accomplished author, Nobel Prize laureate (1966) and himself a "Galitzianer," means relying on one of the most talented imaginations to foreground the central aspects ofthat experience. Agnon's works are, as Werses observes, heavily based on cultural and historical facts and constitute a significant corpus to map out many aspects ofthese contacts in depth and detail. Werses constructs his work in...