Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Politics, and Culture: Books on Israel, Volume II

9. Exploring Answers to Zionism's Decay: Two Israeli Authors Rediscover Happiness

Eve Jacobson Exploring Answers to Zionism's Decay: Two Israeli Authors Rediscover Happiness Amos Oz. Black Box. Trans. Nicholas de Lange. San Diego: Harcourt. Brace, Jovanovich. 1988. A.B. Yehoshua. Five Seasons. Trans. Hillel Halkin. New York: Doubleday , 1989. The most recently translated novels of Israel's two pre-eminent writers. Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua. refer only obliquely to the country's political situation. However. both contain curious parallels which illuminate Israeli literature's complex psychological relation to Zionism. One could make a strong case that Yehoshua. at least. intended to produce a novel dealing only with its characters' interior psychologicaljourneys. without commenting on the state of the state.l Along with Oz. however. Yehoshua was drawn inexorably toward social comment by choosing to create a style ofnarrative that has great meaning in relation to the milieu in which he created it. These works are complex and multilayered. open to a wholevariety ofinterpretations- Freudian and Jungian. for example. as fruitfully explored in the work of Israeli critic Avraham Balaban- and need not be read as social-political allegory. But. in the words of another Israeli author. Anton Shammas. we might still argue that. given the country's particulars. "It is impossible to write something in Israel 146 Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Politics, and Culture that is not political." The narrative structure of both Oz's Black Box and Yehoshua's Five Seasons is the "revitalization" cycle: an evocative choice for Israeli writers. Indeed, both novels underscore this choice of narrative structure by making repeated. self-conscious references to classic examples of the epic cycle. Black Box openly patterns itself after the Nibelungenlied (one character in this round-robin epistolary novel even goes so far as to sign himself "Keeper of the Signet") and makes repeated references to the Arthurian legends. Five Seasons contains long passages which allude to both the aforementioned work and the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.2 As in these two classic examples. the novels revolve around a central problem that takes the form of a quest. In the case of Five Seasons. the protagonist Molkho searches for a woman with whom to make love. In Black Box. a divorced couple. Alexander Gideon and Ilana Gideon Somo. must locate and struggle to civilize their runaway. prodigal son Boaz. In these. as in all revitalization epics. an initial situation of disorder among (or within) the characters is- through their physical and spiritualjourneys- resolved in a cycle of redemption. rectification. and renewal. The gUiding myth of the revitalization cycle. broadly understood. is "Paradise Lost and Regained"- the re-fructification of the wasteland. the reunification of the family. and the reaffirmation of life after some period of degradation. Given that this is a constituent myth of the Zionist endeavor in "repopulating" and revitalizing Eretz Israel. its appeal to Zionist authors is not surprising. It appears often in Israeli literature- especially in the work of Amos Oz. His 1982 novel. A Perfect Peace. for example. follows the revitalization cycle's logic: discord amongfamily members on a kibbutz gives way. after severaljoumeys. a birth. and the intercession ofa "magical" stranger. to this family's rejuvenated happiness. Yehoshua. on the other hand. has a well-deserved reputation as an author who exposes the darker side ofthe Exp/.oJing Answers to Zionism's Decay 147 Israeli psyche and the Zionist dream.3 One way he achieves his disconcerting effects is by destroying the reassuring myths- arresting or imploding the revitalization cycle by reveling in his characters' perversities and tensions and producing bizarre. disturbing. "unfinished." or unhappy endings. The Lover. a 1977 novel which-like Five Seasons - employs as a central motif its protagonist's quest to regain his lost virility. ends on such a discordant note. The protagonist Adam (literally. man) fails to revive the vivacity of his increasingly distant. morose wife. even after he has spent a year in a truck scouring the country trying to locate her lover who has disappeared during the 1973 war. Worse still. from Adam's point ofview. is the unfolding rebellion of his nubile 14-year-old daughter. At the end of The Lover, a young Arab employee Adam had enlisted to aid him in the peregrinations on his wife's behalf deflowers the girl. Defeated . both of his women disloyal. Adam is exposed as a hollow. impotent figure: a deposed king. His degraded condition was taken by many critics to...