S. Y. Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (; August 8, 1887 – February 17, 1970) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. In Hebrew, he is known by the pseudonym Shai Agnon (). In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.

Agnon was born in Polish Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, and died in Jerusalem.

His works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world. They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions of the European ''shtetl'' (village). In a wider context, he also contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrator's role in literature. Agnon had a distinctive linguistic style, mixing modern and rabbinic Hebrew.

In 1966, he shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with the poet Nelly Sachs.

Biography

Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes (later Agnon) was born in Buczacz (''Butschatsch'' in German), Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then within the Austro-Hungary and now Buchach, Ukraine. Officially, his date of birth in the Hebrew calendar was 18 Av 5648 (July 26). However, he always said his birthday was on the fast day of Tisha B'Av, the commemoration of many disasters in Jewish history.

His father, Shalom Mordechai Halevy, was ordained as a rabbi but worked in the fur trade and had many connections among the Hasidim. His mother's side had ties to the Misnagdim, a parallel religious movement opposed to Hasidic Judaism.

Shmuel did not attend school; he was schooled by his parents. In addition to studying Jewish texts, Agnon studied writings of the Haskalah, and was also tutored in Standard German. At the age of eight, he began to write in Hebrew and Yiddish. At the age of 15, he published his first poem – a Yiddish poem about the Kabbalist Joseph della Reina. He continued to write poems and stories in Hebrew and Yiddish that were published in Galicia.

In 1908, he moved to Jaffa in Ottoman Palestine. The first story he published there was "Agunot" ("Chained Wives"), which appeared that same year in the journal ''Ha`omer.'' He used the pen name "Agnon," derived from the title of the story, which he adopted as his official surname in 1924. In 1910, "Forsaken Wives" was translated into German. In 1912, at the urging of Yosef Haim Brenner, he published a novella, "Vehaya Ha'akov Lemishor" ("The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight").

In 1913, Agnon moved to the German Empire, where he met Esther Marx (1889-1973), the sister of Alexander Marx. They married in 1920 and had two children. In Germany, he lived in Berlin and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe (1921–24). Salman Schocken, a businessman and later also publisher, became his literary patron and freed him from financial worries. From 1931 on, his work was published by Schocken Books, and his short stories appeared regularly in the newspaper ''Haaretz'', also owned by the Schocken family. He continued to write short stories in Germany and collaborated with Martin Buber on an anthology of Hasidic stories. Many of his early books appeared in Buber's ''Jüdischer Verlag'' (Berlin). The assimilated, secular German Jews, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig among them, considered Agnon a legitimate relic, religious man familiar with Jewish scripture. Gershom Scholem called him "the Jews' Jew".

In 1924, a fire broke out in his home, destroying his manuscripts and rare book collection. This traumatic event crops up occasionally in his stories. Later that year, Agnon returned to Palestine and settled with his family in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot. In 1929, his library was destroyed again during anti-Jewish riots.

Agnon's place in Hebrew literature was assured when his novel ''Hakhnasat Kalla'' ("The Bridal Canopy") appeared in 1931 to critical acclaim. In 1935, he published ''Sippur Pashut'' ("A Simple Story"), a novella set in Buchach at the end of the 19th century. Another novel, ''Tmol Shilshom'' ("Only Yesterday"), set in early 20th century Palestine, appeared in 1945.

Agnon was a strict vegetarian in his personal life.

During much of the 20th century, there was debate about whether Agnon or Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog was the actual author of the Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel in 1948. Herzog was generally considered the author until a 1983 article in ''Ma'ariv'' by scholar David Tamar raised the possibility of Agnon's authorship. However, findings by scholar Yoel Rappel and corroborated by the National Library of Israel in 2018 confirmed Herzog's authorship but confirmed that Agnon had edited the work.

Literary themes and influences

Agnon's writing has been the subject of extensive academic research. Many leading scholars of Hebrew literature have published books and papers on his work, among them Baruch Kurzweil, Dov Sadan, Nitza Ben-Dov, Dan Miron, Dan Laor and Alan Mintz. Agnon writes about Jewish life, but with his own unique perspective and special touch. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Agnon claimed "Some see in my books the influences of authors whose names, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while others see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writings I have not read." He went on to detail that his primary influences were the stories of the Bible. Agnon acknowledged that he was also influenced by German literature and culture, and European literature in general, which he read in German translation. A collection of essays on this subject, edited in part by Hillel Weiss, with contributions from Israeli and German scholars, was published in 2010
''Agnon and Germany: The Presence of the German World in the Writings of S.Y. Agnon''.
The budding Hebrew literature also influenced his works, notably that of his friend, Yosef Haim Brenner. In Germany, Agnon also spent time with the Hebraists Hayim Nahman Bialik and Ahad Ha'am.

The communities he passed through in his life are reflected in his works:
* Galicia: in the books ''The Bridal Canopy'', ''A City and the Fullness Thereof'', ''A Simple Story'' and ''A Guest for the Night''.
* Germany: in the stories "Fernheim", "Thus Far" and "Between Two Cities".
* Jaffa: in the stories "Oath of Allegiance", "Tmol Shilshom" and "The Dune".
* Jerusalem: "Tehilla", "Tmol Shilshom", "Ido ve-Inam" and "Shira".

Nitza Ben-Dov writes about Agnon's use of allusiveness, free-association and imaginative dream-sequences, and discusses how seemingly inconsequential events and thoughts determine the lives of his characters.

Some of Agnon's works, such as ''The Bridal Canopy'', ''And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight'', and ''The Doctor's Divorce'', have been adapted for theatre. A play based on Agnon's letters to his wife, "Esterlein Yakirati", was performed at the Khan Theater in Jerusalem.

Language

Agnon's writing often used words and phrases that differed from what would become established modern Hebrew. His distinct language is based on traditional Jewish sources, such as the Torah and the Prophets, Midrashic literature, the Mishnah, and other Rabbinic literature. Some examples include:

* ''batei yadayim'' () for modern ''kfafot'' (gloves).
* ''yatzta'' () rather than the modern conjugation ''yatz'a'' () ("she went out").
* ''rotev'' () meaning soup in place of modern ''marak'' (). In Modern Hebrew the term 'rotev' means 'sauce'.
* ''bet kahava'' for modern ''bet kafe'' (coffee house / café), based on transliteration of the word 'coffee' from Arabic, rather than the contemporary term common in Hebrew, which comes from European languages.

Bar-Ilan University has made a computerized concordance of his works in order to study his language.

Awards and critical acclaim

Agnon was twice awarded the Bialik Prize for literature (1934 and 1950 – which omits the award in 1934). He was also twice awarded the Israel Prize, for literature (1954 and 1958).

In 1966, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people". The prize was shared with German Jewish author Nelly Sachs. In his speech at the award ceremony, Agnon introduced himself in Hebrew: "As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem". The award ceremony took place on a Saturday during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Agnon, who was religiously observant, postponed attendance at the awards ceremony until he had performed two Jewish ceremonies of his own on Saturday night, to end the Sabbath and to light the menorah.

In later years, Agnon's fame was such that when he complained to the municipality that traffic noise near his home was disturbing his work, the city closed the street to cars and posted a sign that read: "No entry to all vehicles, writer at work!"

Death and legacy

Agnon died in Jerusalem on February 17, 1970. His daughter, , continued to publish his work posthumously. Agnon's archive was transferred by the family to the National Library in Jerusalem. His home in Talpiot, built in 1931 in the Bauhaus style, was turned into a museum, ''Beit Agnon.'' The study where he wrote many of his works was preserved intact. Agnon's image, with a list of his works and his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, appeared on the fifty-shekel bill, second series, in circulation from 1985 to 2014.

The main street in Jerusalem's Givat Oranim

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