Shmuel Yosef Agnon: A Revolutionary Traditionalist (review)

Volume 10, No.2 Winter 1992 123 The Walden collection on Roth is a timely addition to Roth scholarship and suggest that Roth's next book, which, given his fertility as a writer, surely will come along soon, will be worth reading. Thomas Klein Department of English Bowling Green State University Shmuel Yosef Agnon: A Revolutionary Traditionalist, by Gershon Shaked, translated by Jeffrey M. Green. Modern Jewish Masters Series 3. New York: New York University Press, 1989. 293 pp. $35.00. The notion that the fiction of S. Y. Agnon, Hebrew literature's foremost author, is preoccupied with sentimental retrospects of days gone by, and is thereby disengaged from contemporary reality, is among the chief points refuted by scholarship. Like others before him, though in a new and unique approach, Gershon Shaked has amply demonstrated the same in his present, premier, study, Shmuel Yosef Agnon: A Revolutionary Traditionalist. For while Agnon's fiction-particularly works lacking discernible links with actual experiences beyond the parameters of the fictional construct-might often seem remote and oblivious to reality, it was fully engaged with it. In fact, Agnon's stories present the author's Weltanschauung, including his view of the ethical responsibilities of the artist in the world. For Agnon, as Shaked notes, "historical events are internalized, intensified, and transformed in his work. . .. History becomes an integral part of the individuality of his characters and transforms the characters to become reflectors of major historical events" (pp. 6-7). In this study, Gershon Shaked, among Israel's foremost scholars of modern Hebrew literature and one who has written extensively on Agnon and his fiction, has grouped together many of the insights and concerns occupying him through prior studies-Agnon's early years in 'eretz yisra'el, Brenner and Agnon, changes in the author's art as exemplified by textual revisions , his style, parallel structures, irony and ambivalent feelings as to the Zionist enterprise-while breaking new ground with regard to a number of issues heretofore not addressed. Shaked's stated aim is "to capture the author 's artistic character both factually and interpretively" (p. xi). To do so, Shaked-with the assistance of Jeffrey Green's generally lucid translationhas presented to scholars who do and do not read Hebrew a most enlightening , penetrating, and readable work of research on Agnon's literary corpus in the realm of the short story, novel, and novella. He does so by focusing on the theme of his study's title-an elegant concept wherein the single issue 124 SHOFAR enfolds a whole world of ideas-showing its multiple meanings while demonstrating the traditional and the revolutionary in Agnon's literary art. The study also draws attention to a number of Agnon's works heretofore given but cursory treatment. Following a brief preface, Shaked sets out his study in six chapters. In each, he addresses one or several of Agnon's works, analyzing them from the point ofview of their innovativeness and contribution to modern Hebrew literature . At each juncture, Shaked points out the affinities between the story discussed and the thesis of his work, each time demonstrating another aspect of Agnon's state as a revolutionary writer who maintained his ties with the tradition. The tradition, and the revolutionary departure, may have to do with either specific issues of Jewish classical texts, ideological matters in the realm of Zionism, religion, society, or metaphysics, or literary matters of form and content. Shaked's oxymoronic title of the study aptly contains the gist of its thesis : whereas Agnon was relatively conservative in his choice of genres, he consistently broke new ground in extending their boundaries. For Agnon to play the role of a revolutionary traditionalist meant many things. And, as Shaked meticulously points out throughout the study, this apparent inconsistency has taken on various guises, some thematic, others intertextual, and still others technical. As Shaked argues, Agnon's revolutionary role in modern Hebrew literature may be discerned in many ways. Thus, while employing.similar themes as his contemporaries of the second 'aliya, Agnon treated the subjects with a strong measure of ambiyalence and irony, thereby exposing other writers' romanticism and disengagement with reality. In other ways, Agnon departed from traditional...