Tradition and Trauma: Studies in the Fiction of S. J. Agnon (review)

106 SHOFAR Spring 1997 Vol. 15, No.3 Book Reviews Tradition and Trauma: Studies in the Fktion of S. J. Agnon, edited by David Patterson and Glenda Abramson. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. 236 pp. $59.50 (c); $19.95 (P). When Slunuel YosefAgnon (1888-1970) received the Nobel Prize for Literature with the German-born Jewish writer Nelly Sachs in 1966, Hebrew readers could not have agreed more with the choice ofAgnon to be the fIrst Hebrew writer to receive this prize. To this day, most readers ofHebrew would agree with David Patterson's statement in the preface to this collection: "[Agnon] remains unquestionably the outstanding fIction writer in modern Hebrew literature" (p. ix). Some significant critical work on Agnon is available in English, including the following book-length studies: Arnold J. Band's Nostalgia and Nightmare: A Study in the Fiction ofS. Y Agnon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); David Aberbach's At theHandles of the Lock: Themes in the Fiction ofS. J. Agnon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984); Gershon Shaked's Shmuel Yosef Agnon: A Revolutionary Traditionalist, trans. Jeffrey M. Green (New York: New York University Press, 1989); Anne Golomb Hoffinan's Between Exile and Return: S. Y. Agnon andthe Drama ofWriting (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1991); and Nitza Ben-Dov'sAgnon's Arl ofindirection: Uncovering Latent Content in the Fiction ofS. Y Agnon (New York: E. J. Brill, 1993). This new collection is a welcome addition to this growing body ofAgnon criticism in English. . In the collection, which draws mainly on papers delivered at it conference organized by David Patterson at Mount Holyoke College in celebration ofthe centenary ofthe birth of J\gnon in 1988, a number of ongoing issues in Agnon criticism are addressed. Particularly striking is the persistence in these papers of three issues: the difficulty of appreciating Agnon in translation, the comparison of Agnon to Franz Kafka, and the applicability ofFreudian psychoanalytic theory to the interpretation ofAgnon's fIction. As David Patterson notes in his introduction, those who read Agnon in English translation often respond much less positively to his work than do readers of Hebrew, presumably because so much of the greatness of Agnon lies in his use of the Hebrew language. A central feature of Agnon's fIction that is conveyed only fully in the original Hebrew is his complex view ofthe Jewish tradition. The title ofthis collection, Tradition and Trauma, echoes the title of Band's study, Nostalgia and Nightmare. Both titles capture the conflict in Agnon's soul between a deep and highly knowledgeable attaclunent to tradition and a modem crisis offaith. To a certain extent, even in English translation one can appreciate the centrality of this tension between tradition and modernity in Agnon's experience. In her paper Judith Wegner Romney discusses the ways that in Agnon's novel Book Reviews 107 'Orea~ natah lalun (A Guest/or the Night) the narrator's interactions with characters in his home town in Galicia make clear to him that while modernity may hold out no "viable alternative ... to traditional Judaism," at the same time "[t]he ancient faith and values are gone forever; the gap between tradition and alienation cannot be bridged" (p. 117). In the end, however, one can :fully appreciate Agnon's ability to convey the complexity of the tension between tradition and modernity only by reading his works in the original Hebrew. In his analysis of Agnon's early story "Vehayah he'aqov lemishor" ("And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight") Arnold Band characterizes the Hebrew style of that work as "an artful pastiche of an older style ... [in which] under the 'pious' text of the novella lay a subtext that qualified, ironized, or even subverted the text" (pp. 43-44). In her paper devoted to analyzing the first paragraph of Agnon's novel Hakhnasat kallah (Bridal Canopy), Esther Fuchs argues that"[0]ne ofthe most common pitfalls of allusion hunters is the premise that the Agnonic text not only echoes the themes, structure, and style oftraditional Jewish literature but also endorses and promotes their underlying creeds and values" (p. 130). Careful attention to the original Hebrew style of the work reveals the...