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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
In her book, Transparent Minds, Dorrit Cohn reminds us that one of the special powers of fiction lies in its ability to reveal the normally hidden inner life of people other than ourselves. Writers of fiction can, if it fits their purposes, place before our scrutiny the most intimate and private thoughts, feelings, motives, fears, and passions of their imagined characters, and can do so with a variety of techniques which, especially in twentieth-century fiction, take account of the complex, overdetermined, and largely unconscious processes of the human psyche. In modern Hebrew literature, no novelist has exploited this aspect of fiction with more passion and technical inventiveness than Y. H. Brenner. From the very outset of his career, Brenner's ability to make transparent the minds of his characters drew special attention and praise. Responding to his first collection of short stories, M. Y. Berdyczewski, for example, marveled that Brenner's characters had only to speak and they “stand before us naked, revealing all that is within.” And even Bialik, who was troubled by Brenner's fiction on other grounds, had to admit his impatience with literary theories when, as he put it, he was able to “see a living soul.”
1. Cohn, Dorrit, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
2. Berdyczewski, M. Y., “Shte ha'arakhot,” Sefer ha-shanah 3 (1902): 268–271;Google Scholar reprinted in Bakon, Yitshak, Yosef Haim Brenner: mivhar ma'amere bikoret al yetzirato hasifrutit (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1972), pp. 37–44.Google Scholar
3. Bialik, H. N., “Igeret al misaviv lanekudah,” Igrol Bialik (Tel Aviv, 1931), I, pp. 268–270; reprinted in Bakon, Yosef Haim Brenner, pp. 45–46.Google Scholar
4. Ha-Am, Ahad, “Te'udat HaShiloah,” Kol kitve Ahad Ha-Am (Tel Aviv. Hotsa'at Devir, 1956), p. 127.Google Scholar
5. See, for example, the comments of Y. A. Lubitzki, quoted by Bakon in Yosef Haim Brenner, p. 16.
6. Ibid., p. 21.
7. H. Y. Katzenelson, “Sihot al davar hasifruit,” reprinted in Bakon, YosefHaim Brenner, 3.54.
8. Ba'al Mahshavot, “Misaviv lanekudah,” Ha-Zeman, February 27, 1905, reprinted in Bakon, Yosef Haim Brenner, p. 61.
9. Halkin, Shimon, Mavo lasiporet ha'ivrit, ed. Hillel, Tsofia (Jerusalem: Bet Hotsa'ah shel Histadrut haStudentim shel ha' Universitah ha'ivrit, 1958), p. 334.Google Scholar
10. U. Z. Gnessin, on the other hand, understood the functional aspect of Brenner's ireaking of conventional narrative form. See Bakon, Yosef Haim Brenner, p. 15.
11. Bialik, H. N., “Ta'ut ne'imah,” Kol kitve H. N. Bialik (Tel Aviv: Hotsa'at Devir, 1971), p. 269.Google Scholar
12. See Bakon's introduction (esp. pp. 23–27) in his Yosef Haim Brenner.
13. Miron, Dan, “Al be'ayot signono shel Y. H. Brenner besipurav,” Gazit 19, nos. 9–12 (1961): 50–54; reprinted in Bakon, Yosef Haim Brenner, pp. 66–78.Google Scholar
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16. Even, Yosef, Omanut hasipur shel Y. H. Brenner (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1977).Google Scholar
17. “Psychological narrative,” writes Tzvetan Todorov, “regards each action as a means of access to the personality in question, as an expression if not a symptom.” Todorov, Tzvetan, “Narrative-Men,” in his The Poetics of Prose, trans. Howard, Richard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 67.Google Scholar
18. Edel, Leon, The Modern Psychological Novel (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), pp. 11–26.Google Scholar
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20. Génette, Gerard, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 212 ff.Google Scholar
21. See my “Mendele in Pieces,” Prooftexts 3 (1983): 169–188.
22. Gershon Shaked, “Lifne cas hamishpat,” in Lelo motsa, pp. 79–98; Yosef Even, Omanut hasipur shel Y. H. Brenner, pp. 175–195.
23. Romberg, Bertril, Studies in the Narrative Techniques of the First-Person Novel (Stockholm, 1962).Google Scholar
24. “The tone of autobiography tends to be ironic or comic, because it usually represents experience gazing backward at the innocent illusions of the child that fathered the man and because it reflects the individual's ability to rise above circumstances, if only through retrospective analysis.” Shapiro, Stephen, “The Dark Continent of Literature: Autobiography,” Comparative Literature Studies 5, no. 4 (December 1968): 447;Google Scholar see also Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).Google Scholar
25. Kol kitve Y. H. Brenner, I (Tel Aviv: Hotsa'at Devir, 1956), p. 25. All further references to In Winter will appear in the text. All translations are my own.
26. Genette, Narrative Discourse, pp. 256–257.
27. Miron, “Al be'ayot signono shel Y. H. Brenner besipurav,” p. 176.
28. Cohn, Transparent Minds, pp. 99 ff.
29. Sadan, Dov, “Perakim al hapsikhologia shel Y. H. Brenner,” Ahdut ha-avodah 3, nos. 1–2 (1931): 103–116; reprinted in Bakon, Yosef Haim Brenner, pp. 113–132.Google Scholar
30. See, for example, Shaked, Gershon, Hasiporel ha'ivril (Jerusalem: Hotsa'at Keter, 1977), pp. 375–376.Google Scholar