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"And a Small Boy Leading Them": the Child and the Biblical Landscape in Agnon, Oz, and Appelfeld Author(S): Nehama Aschkenasy Source: AJS Review, Vol

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"And a Small Boy Leading Them": The Child and the Biblical Landscape in Agnon, Oz, and Appelfeld Author(s): Nehama Aschkenasy Source: AJS Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Apr., 2004), pp. 137-156 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4131513 Accessed: 11-05-2015 23:17 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4131513?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and Association for Jewish Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to AJS Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 137.99.31.134 on Mon, 11 May 2015 23:17:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions AJS Review 28:1 (2004), 137-156 "AND A SMALL BOY LEADING THEM": The Child and the Biblical Landscape in Agnon, Oz, andAppelfeld* by NehamaAschkenasy Each of the three childhood stories, S. Y. Agnon's "Baya'ar -vaCir"[In the Forestand in the Town] (1939), Amos Oz's Panter bamartef[Panther in the Base- ment] (1995), and Aharon Appelfeld's Layish (1994), offers a child protagonist who inhabitstwo parallel landscapes:his own environmentand the biblical uni- verse.' These child protagonists relive a biblical experience, but the degree to which the respectivewriters make them participantsin evoking the biblical sphere is differentin each story.These stories exhibit distinctlydifferent paradigms of the art of embeddingthe biblical text in a modern, secular narrativeand of the status it is given within it. In Agnon's tale, the scripturalintertext is inseparablefrom a dense networkof Judaicmaster texts, discoursingwith and commenting on each other.In Oz's novella, the biblical arenais the ancientparallel of present-dayreal- ity, the admiredyet challenged nationalepic that mirrorsand informs currentpo- litical and territorialaspirations. In Appelfeld's novella, the biblical pattern is a remote, forebodingmyth, not fully recognizedby the actors in the modem tale yet powerfulenough to hover over them and determinetheir destiny. In Agnon's and Oz's tales, the narrativevoice alternatesbetween that of a child, impartinga sense of immediacyto the events, and that of the adult looking back to relate a childhoodmemory; in Applefeld'stale, by contrast,only the boy's perspective is provided.Agnon's story opens with "when I was a youth, I spent most of my time in the forest"("Baya'ar fvaCir," p. 267), and Oz's story also starts with the adult'svoice: "I have been called a traitormany times in my life. The first time was when I was twelve and quarter.. ."(Panther, p. 1). Appelfeld begins with the fifteen-year old Layish introducinghimself in the presenttense: "My name is Layish,and those who like me call me Layshu"(Layish, p. 5). Thus,unlike Agnon's * Dedicatedto my uncle, EfraimGottlieb z"l, GershomScholem's distinguisheddisciple and a ground-breakingscholar of Jewishmysticism, in the hope thatfuture scholars will expoundon the Kab- balist elements in S. Y. Agnon's story and his entire body of work (and perhapsalso in the works of AharonAppelfeld, EfraimGottlieb's student at HebrewUniversity) more thoroughlythan I undertook in this article.-Nehama (Gottlieb)Aschkenasy. 1. References are made to the following editions: "Baya'aruvadir," in S. Y. Agnon, Elu Veelu (Jerusalem:Schocken, 1972), pp. 267-278 (the story is availablein English translation,"In the Forest and in the City" in ShmuelYosefAgnon, A Dwelling Place of My People: Sixteen Stories of the Chas- sidim, trans.J. Weinbergand H. Russel [Edinburgh:Scottish Academic Press, 1983], pp. 94-109); Pan- ther in the Basement,trans. Nicholas de Lange (New York:Harcourt, 1997), hereafterPanther; Layish (Jerusalem:Keter, 1994). 137 This content downloaded from 137.99.31.134 on Mon, 11 May 2015 23:17:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NehamaAschkenasy and Oz's children,who have grown to adulthoodand thereforeare able to alternate between the child's and the adult'sperspectives, Appelfeld's Layish, it may be pre- sumed,will be foreverlocked in the child's voice because he did not surviveto re- shape his story as an adult (even though the historicalmoment of the tale may be two generationsbefore the Holocaust). In each story,the biblical patternscaffolds the surfacenarrative and expands it spatially and chronologically,standing in direct and opposite relation to the child's experiences; yet its purpose and the degree to which each protagonistis awareof it differfrom story to story."'Baya ar fivacir" displays a multi-tieredstruc- ture,which is the markofAgnon's artisticmasonry, welding biblical style with oth- er layersof the entireJudaic literary heritage. It exemplifies the prototypicalAgnon narrative,which consists of multiple intertextuallevels from the entire historical spectrumof Hebrewletters and also reads,as GershonShaked has pointedout, "as if' it is itself one of those "sacred"or "semi sacred"texts.2 The biblical landscape in this story is the Gardenof Eden, to which the child transportshimself by saturat- ing the Galicianforest outside his hometownwith the languageof Genesisand Psalms as well as midrashiccommentaries and Kabbalist imaginings. Oz's biblical landscape is the Israelite national territory,more specifically, Jeremiah'sJerusalem during the Babyloniansiege. InAppelfeld's narration of a bizarrepilgrimage to Jerusalemin pre-holocaustEast Europe, the biblicallandscape is thatof the desertin whichthe an- cient Israelitesmeandered before enteringthe PromisedLand. Another desolate bib- lical scenery,the unspecifiedGenesis backdrop for the sale of Joseph,is also evoked. The discourseof home and homelessness is also addressedthrough the bib- lical embeddingsin each story.For Agnon's protagonist,home is the thicket of Ju- daic texts, producingan Edenic state of mind carriedwith the child whereverhe goes and contrastedwith the parents'rejectedhome and the "ZionistHouse" in the Galician town. In Oz's story, home is pre-statehoodJerusalem, about to become the official capital of the Jewish "nationalhome" and at the same time also the very same compoundof alleys and marketswhere the prophetJeremiah roamed. ForAppelfeld's orphan, "home" is a caravan,by definition rootless and imperma- nent, supposedly moving towarda home in Jerusalemyet actually on an endless circulartrajectory, never coming to a stop or reachingits destination. Agnon's story, set in the shtetl of the writer'schildhood in the latterpart of the nineteenth century, belongs to a cluster of pseudo-autobiographicalstories which the authorcollected under the title Be'ohel beiti [In the Sanctuaryof my Home] as partof the volume Elu Ve'elu.3Although the boy is unnamedin this sto- 2. Panim 'aherotbiezirato shel Shai TAgnon(Agnon-A Writerwith a ThousandFaces) (Hak- ibbutz Hameuchad,1989), p. 12. 3. Agnon's critics from Gustav Krojankerto Dan Laor have seen in Agnon's childhood stories strong autobiographicalelements. Krojankerdiscusses five stories in Yetziratoshel Shay 'Agnon [The Worksof S.Y.Agnon], trans.from the Germanby JacobGottschalk with Introductionand notes by Dan Laor, Jerusalem:Bialik, 1991, pp. 56-62. 7-50; Because Krojankersubmitted his manuscriptto Schocken in 1938 (Laor'sIntroduction, p. 15) he was unawareof the presentstory. But Agnon has seen the childhood stories as belonging together,later including the five stories discussed by Krojanker,to- getherwith other stories, as well as "Bay'aruba'ir," in a collection entitled "Beohel beiti" as partof the volume Elu ve'elu (Laor'sintroduction, p. 15). 138 This content downloaded from 137.99.31.134 on Mon, 11 May 2015 23:17:40 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "Anda Small Boy LeadingThem" ry (unlikein some of the otherstories), the narrativevoice is clearlyautobio- graphical.The adult voice betraysnostalgia towards an Edenicchildhood period, an attitudefound in manyof Agnon'sworks as well as in his otherchildhood sto- ries,notably "The Kerchief."4 Agnon'steenage boy creates a dualityof oppositesbetween the town and the forest,identifying the forestin whichhe strollsas the Genesisgarden that "God planted"before humanity built the town, "which enslaves the body and tortures the soul"("Baydaar ivair,'" p. 270). Theforest offers a timelesssphere where the boy can miraculouslyovercome temporal and geographical constraints and be trans- portedto the primordialGarden. Agnon's child-narrator escapes to the forestas botha placeand a stateof mind,seeing it as a pristineEdenic realm that displays andcelebrates the magnificenceof creation.The dichotomy of "forestand town" representsthe contrastbetween freedom and constriction, abandon and restraint, pristinebeauty and ugliness, a visionof God'shandiwork merged into one seam- less creationand a man-madereality in which demarcation lines are drawn between manand man, humanity and nature. Yet, the neatduality of oppositesentertained by the childprotagonist soon becomesmore
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