Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam

Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam

S. Y. Agnon

(2014)

Rating: ★★★★☆

Tags: Literature & Fiction, Literary, World Literature, Jewish, Literary Fiction

Literature & Fictionttt Literaryttt World Literaturettt Jewishttt Literary Fictionttt

Two newly revised translations from the Hebrew, with new and illustrated annotations, of two novellas by Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon. Two stories clearly in dialogue with one another, sharing elements of moonstruck sleepwalkers, disengaged academics, and the typically Agnonian unfulfilled love.

In Betrothed, Jacob Rechnitz, a marine biologist arrives in pre-World War I Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast of the Land of Israel. His scholarly pursuits and gentle dalliance with six girls is interrupted by the arrival of his benefactor Ehrlich and his daughter Shoshanah, who is destined to rouse Jacob from his waking slumber through the power of their childhood betrothal oath.

The idyllic peace of Betrothed is counterpointed in Edo and Enam by restlessness leading to tragedy. The scholars Ginat and Gamzu are wanderers; men like the narrator himself, gambling on travel for some magical answer to their problems. Ironically, Gamzu’s wife Gemulah, a sleepwalker, puts an end to their quest in a manner as tragic as it is unexpected.

Review

"Within
Two Tales
, "Betrothed" and "Edo and Enam" are two narrative jewels, each belonging to a different cycle in Agnon's literary corpus. "Betrothed" is part of his Jaffa tales while "Edo and Enam" is about the sages of Jerusalem. Both stories transcend their respective locales and cast of characters as tradition and mythic symbols interplay with reality.
    Agnon weaves Jewish and classical European themes into "Betrothed".  The implicit counter-narratives of this tale are Jewish stories about neglected brides that involve demonic and supernatural worlds. But unlike the men of these stories, Jacob Rechnitz, the scientist of the sea, resists the allures of the six seductive nymphs, and remains faithful to his childhood love and his first marriage vow.
    In contrast "Edo and Enam" is symbolically totally grounded in Jewish tradition; in fact tradition itself becomes the tale's central theme. The narrative triangulation of two scholars and a woman—motivated by jealousy, envy and desire—projects the tragic dimension of the revival of Jewish society in Zion. The ideal and aspired ingathering of exiles inevitably caused the destruction of tradition-steeped communities. Uprooted, tradition transformed from a lived experience to an object of research and the gaze of tourists, squeezed out of its quintessential vitality."—Dan Ben-Amo

"[Rechnitz] is a man who has to be overtaken, surprised by Eros." —Allen Mandelbaum

"The man is tremendously good. . . . [Agnon’s stories] . . . have an international currency."—James Michener

From the Publisher

Library of World Fiction

Terrace Books

1966 cloth, 1986 paperback, Schocken Books

Wisconsin edition not for sale in the traditional British Commonwealth, South Africa, and Ireland; it is for sale in Canada. 

Two Tables

Betrothed
Edo and Enam

The
Toby Press S.Y. Agnon Library
Jeffrey Saks, Series Editor

Books from this series

A Book That Was Lost: Thirty-Five Stories

To This Day

Shira

A Simple Story

Two Scholars That Were in Our Town and Other Novellas

Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam

The Book of State: Agnon’s Political Satires (forthcoming)

A Guest for the Night (forthcoming)

The Bridal Canopy (forthcoming)

And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight (forthcoming)

In Mr. Lublin’s Store (forthcoming)

Forevermore & Other Stories of the
Old World and the New (forthcoming)

Illustrated:
From Foe to Friend & Other Stories
by S.Y. Agnon
A Graphic Novel by Shay Charka

TWO TALES

B
ETROTHED
E
DO AND
E
NAM

S.Y.AGNON

TRANSLATED FROM THE HEBREW BY
WALTER LEVER

NEWLY REVISED AND ANNOTATED BY
JEFFREY SAKS

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY
ROBERT ALTER

The
Toby Press

Two Tales
by S.Y. Agnon
Translated by Walter Lever
Revised and Annotated by Jeffrey Saks
© 2014
The
Toby Press
LLC

These two stories are available in Agnon’s Hebrew volume
‘Ad Henah
, part of the Collected Writings of S.Y. Agnon –
Kol Sippurav shel Shmuel Yosef Agnon
, © Schocken Publishing House Ltd

(Jerusalem and Tel Aviv), most recent edition 1998.

First English Edition © 1966
Published by arrangement with Schocken Publishing House Ltd,
an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing
Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted, images accompanying annotations
appear under Creative Commons License,
CC-BY
2.0

The
Toby Press
LLC
POB
8531, New Milford,
CT
06776–8531,
USA
&
POB
2455, London
W1A
5
WY
, England
www.tobypress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN
978-1-59264-356-1

Typeset in Garamond by Koren Publishing Services

Printed and bound in the United States

Contents

Preface
by Jeffrey Saks

BETROTHED

Annotations

EDO AND ENAM

Annotations

Afterword
Agnon’s Symbolic Masterpieces
by Robert Alter

About the Author, Translator & Editor

Preface

A
s we near the fiftieth anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to S.Y. Agnon, Toby Press is pleased to issue this revised and newly annotated edition of
Two Tales
, which, when published in 1966 – the year he received the prize – was the first sampling of his “modern” stories made available in English.

Although the product of the same period of creativity, the conjoining of the two stories in one stand-alone volume was a conceit of the English-language edition (in Hebrew they appear as part of a much larger collection,
‘Ad Henah
). Nevertheless, the two stories are clearly in dialogue with one another, sharing elements of moonstruck sleepwalkers, disengaged academics, and the typically Agnonian unfulfilled love. On the other hand, the divergent tones of the two stories are remarkable when read side by side: “Betrothed” is set in a world of familiar reality (albeit with the intrusion of a surreal and indeterminate conclusion); “Edo and Enam” projects a dreamlike unreality, infused with mystery and mysticism, from beginning to end.

“Betrothed”
(the story’s title is more properly translated as “Betrothal Oath”; a promise to marry) was first published in 1943, and quickly became the subject of significant scholarly and critical debate. A childhood oath between Jacob and Shoshana, sworn at the edge of a Viennese garden pool (recall Biblical Jacob and Rachel’s well, Genesis 29), is reintroduced with force in their adult lives when they are reunited in Jaffa at the story’s outset. Set in pre-World War I Palestine, it is this reunion, after many years, and its conjuring of memories of childhood promises and pains, which drives the plot.

Among the revisions to this edition is calling our heroine by her given name, Shoshanah. In the original translation, she had inexplicably been christened “Susan” – perhaps “Shoshanah” was considered too ethnic a name for mid-century American readers. This revision to the translation will hopefully allow the reader to sense some of the symbolism and word-play at work – Shoshanah meaning “rose” in Agnon’s most botanical of tales should not be a fact the reader can be allowed to overlook. (The precise meaning of “Shoshanah”, alternatively lily or rose depending on the layer of Hebrew one is speaking, is less important than the floral echo lent to the story.) Those familiar with Jewish liturgy will recall the line of the Purim song
“Shoshanat Ya’akov tzahalah ve-samehah” – “Jacob’s rose rejoiced and was glad” –
that is “The joining of Jacob and Shoshanah was a source for rejoicing and gladness” highlights the bitterness of the fact that, as Gershon Shaked has pointed out, the union of Jacob and Shoshanah does
not
seem to foster such joy. Or, as Dina Stern suggests in her unraveling of the story’s subterranean sources (or, in “Betrothed”, submarinal) – Shoshanah Ehrlich is the tragic incarnation of the heroine of Song of Songs: “My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the spice beds, to graze in the gardens and to gather roses. I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine, who grazes among the roses” (6:2–3).

Dov Sadan pointed to “Betrothed” as proof that even Agnon’s stories that do not appear puzzling or enigmatic or deeply allegorical on the surface can still be interpreted as rich allegories – in fact they almost demand it. Nevertheless, the narrative accomplishment allows the work to function on the “revealed” level of surface reading (
peshat
, in the language of Biblical interpretation) while hiding a complex allegory underneath. Not for nothing did Shaked compare “Betrothed” to Oedipus, Sleeping Beauty, Hamsun’s Scandanavian provincial novels, and Roth’s
Portnoy’s Complaint!

On the other hand,
“Edo and Enam”
(first published in Fall 1950) is a story so enigmatic and seemingly inexplicable that it can hardly sustain a “simple reading” at all. While Arnold Band has inveighed against the unfortunate focus on its complexity, which “distracts the reader and critic from the aesthetic charm of the story,” we are still confronted with an exceedingly rich tale; rich in themes, symbols, allusions, and Agnon’s intertextualities, with an unusually heavy dose of kabbalistic resonances. (That being said, for the non-Hebrew reader, Band’s treatment of the tale is still the best available in English, for its plot summary, review of the criticism that had preceded him, exploration of themes, and overall literary analysis; see Arnold J. Band,
Nostalgia and Nightmare: A Study in the Fiction of S.Y. Agnon
, pp. 382–396.)