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Fantasies of Deviance in Mendele and Agnon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2009

David Aberbach
David Aberbach
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montreal P.Q.
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Extract

Fantasies of deviance, including latent homosexuality, are not a major or overt theme in the fiction of Mendele Mocher Sefarim (pen name of S. Y. Abramowitz, 18357–1917) and Samuel Joseph Agnon (1888?–1970) but are, nevertheless, an unmistakable part of the characters whom they depict. These characters, for various reasons and to varying degrees, are deflected from normal heterosexual attachments and are inclined, for this reason, to forms of perversion which at times mirror the distortions and breakdown in the societies in which they live.

Type
Articles
Information
AJS Review , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 45 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1994

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References

1. On the harsh climate for the depiction of homosexuality in Western literature during the latter period of Mendele'S career and the early period of Agnon'S career, see Meyers, J., Homosexuality and Literature, 1890–1930 (London: Athlone Press, 1977).Google Scholar

2. References to Mendele'S writings are from the one-volume Kol Kifte Mendele Mocher Sefarim(Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1947). When two dates are given, the first refers to the Yiddish and the second to the Hebrew text. Translations from the Hebrew are by David Aberbach, unless indicated otherwise.Google Scholar

3. See Bieber, I. et al., Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study(New York: Basic Books, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a clear account of various theories on the origins of homosexuality, see Storr, A., Sexual Deviation (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977).Google Scholar

4. Compare this with Exodus, chap. 1. For images of the horse as a male symbol, see Swift'S Gulliver'S Travels, Bialik'S “Avi,” and D. H. Lawrence'S “St. Mawr”; perhaps the best-known clinical example is Freud'S case of Little Hans.

5. Unless indicated otherwise, quotations from Agnon are taken from Kol Sippurav shel Shmuel Yosef Agnon, 8 vols. (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1953–62).

6. Kurzweil, B., Massot al Sippure S. Y. Agnon(Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1970), pp. 2160 ff.Google Scholar

7. For pertinent discussion of the feminine images and symbolism in Sippur Pashutin relation to the Hebrew literary tradition, see Aschkenasy, N., Eve'S Journey: Feminine Images in Hebraic Literary Tradition(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986).Google Scholar

8. “In all homosexual love, there is an element of narcissism.” Storr, Sexual Deviation, p, 88

9. Kurzweil, Masot al Sippure S. Y. Agnon, pp. 61, 62.Google Scholar

10. Hochman, B., The Fiction of S. Y. Agnon(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970), p. 1410.Google Scholar

11. Trans. Lask, I. M., in Twenty-One Stories by Agnon, S. Y. (New York: Schocken Books, 1970), p. 86.Google Scholar

12. Ibid, pp. 88–89.

13. Storr, Sexual Deviation, p. 89.

14. See Aberbach, D., At the Handles of the Lock: Themes in the Fiction of S. J. Agnon(Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 66–69.Google Scholar

15. Trans. Louvish, Glatzer M., in Twenty-One Stories by Agnon, S. Y., p. 76.Google Scholar

16. Ibid, p. 74.

17. The wrestling match between Gerald and Birkin in D. H. Lawrence'S Women in Loveis clearly intended by Lawrence as symbolic of a desired sexual encounter. See Meyers, Homosexuality and Literature, pp. 146–147.Google Scholar

18. Trans. Lever, W., Two Tales ofS. Y. Agnon(London: Gollancz, 1967), p. 69.Google Scholar

19. On the dead mother in Agnon, see Aberbach, At the Handles of the Lock, pp. 81–99.Google Scholar

20. “No one writing in Hebrew in the 1920s concerning Eastern European Jewry of the early-nineteenth century and using various plot features of Hakhnasat Kallahcould possibly do so without confronting Mendele psychologically and ideologically.” Band, A., Nostalgia and Nightmare: A Study in the Fiction of S. Y. Agnon(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), p. 130.Google Scholar

21. See Aberbach, , At The Handles of the Lock, p. 217, index s.v. “biographical basis of writings,” “life and career of,” “personality.”Google Scholar

22. For a fuller account of the relationship between Mendele'S early life experiences and his writings, see Aberbach, D., Realism, Caricature and Bias: The Fiction of Mendele Mocher Sefarim(Littman Library, 1993).Google Scholar

23. On the beggar motif in Agnon, see Aberbach, At the Handles of the Lock. 213. Moses Mendelssohn: “Die Bildsaule-Ein psychologisch-allegorisches Traumgesicht.” Eingeleited und erlautert von Alexander Altmann. Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Philosophic No. 3/1981, Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt, pp. 1–26. (Ed.)Google Scholar