The Prince as a Pauper: A Disfigured Royalty In S. Y. Agnon's A Guest for the Night

38 SHOFAR Fall 1993 Vol. 12, No. 1 THE PRINCE AS A PAUPER: A DISFIGURED ROYALlY IN S. Y. AGNON'S A GUEST FOR mE NIGH'r by Stephen Katz Stephen Katz is Associate Professor of modern Hebrew language and literature in the Department of Near Eastern languages and Cultures, Indiana University, Bloomington. He is also a member of the university's Jewish Studies Program and the Middle Eastern Studies Program. He is currently completing a study on the evolving fiction ofS. Y. Agnon. ----------------le -IfayimDedicated to Professor Henry A. Fischel Mentor, teacher, friend. -Still mighty at eighty. Among the characteristics of modern literature has been a tone often attained by rendering ironic those classical texts sacred to the particular 'The original Hebrew version of this paper was accepted for publication, with some differences, in a forthcoming anthology of essays on s. Y. Agnon. The author hereby wishes to thank the editor of the Hebrew edition, Professor Hillel Barzel of Bar-Han University, for permission to publish this revised and translated version in Shofar. A Guest for the Night, tr. M. Louvish (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), is the title of the translated version of the novel, entitled by Agnon as 'Oreaf.! nata lalun, a phrase he borrowed from Jeremiah 14:8. The Hebrew original now constitutes the fourth volume of Agnon's collected works,. 'Oreaf.! nata lalun: kol sippurav shel shemu'el yosef 'agnon, 4 (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1966). For purposes of this paper, all citations and most spellings of terms and names will be from the English translation. Page numbers referring to this source will follow any reference in parentheses within the text. The Prince as a Pauper 39 heritage out of which they sprang. Not to be left out, Hebrew and Jewish writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are also noted for challenging values previously elevated by their national literature to the realm of the inviolable. In so doing, these' writers looked to sway the hearts and minds of readers to question paternal values and bring about a change in world-views as a mark of the Jews' re-entry into history. One of the far-reaching notions in ancient Hebrew literature, which would later adversely affect many Jewish lives, concerns the biblical assertion that the People of Israel are a nation selected by and having an eternal covenant with God. This idea, phrased in a number of alternative fashions such as "of all the peoples on earth the LORD your God chose you to be His treasured people,"2 has been understood byJewish sources of old as a given truth. In ancient, post-biblical, Hebrew literature, the biblical verses regarding the chosenness oftheJews spawned phrases such as "all Israel are royal children" (BT Shabbat 128a and elsewhere).3 2Thus in Deuteronomy 7:6; similar phrasing may be found in Exodus 19:5, Dt. 14:2 and 26:18. The notion ofthe election ofIsraei is expressed, in addition to the above, in different ways in the Bible. Citations from the Bible are based on Tanakh, the Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text (philadelphia, New York, Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1988). 3This phrase is repeated variously in Mishnah Shabbat 14:4; BT Shabbat 67a, 128a; BT Bava Metsiah 113b; BT Yevamot 79a; Zohar Pt. 3, 28a, 223a, 225a as published by Mossad Harav Kook, Jerusalem, 1946. A similar saying-"all Israel are children of ministers"-may be found in Mishnayot, Shabbat. Also of no'te is "a scholar and a king, the scholar preceded the king. If a king dies, all Israel merit kingship. R. Shimeon says all Israel are children of kings," (see Meir Ish Shalom, ed., Seder 'eliyahu rabba ve-seder 'eliyahu zuta [tana devey 'eliyahuj, 2nd edition [Jerusalem: Bamberg and Werman, 1960), and particularly Derekh 'erets, ch. 1, Seder 'eliyahu zuta, ch. 9, 7, p. 4). Also: "until David's election all Israel merited kingship and when he was elected, all Israel were exempt," in Moshe David Gross, ed., 'Otsar ha-'agada: me-ha-mishnah ve-ha-tosejia ha-talmudim ve-ha-midrashim ve-sifre ha-zohar, 3rd ed., vol. 2 Oerusalem: Mossad...