To the Editor:
Cynthia Ozick has done superbly well with S.Y. Agnon Englished [“Agnon’s Antagonisms,” December 1988], but there are even more imbrications to be unearthed on this subject. . . . I’ll bring up just three. . . .
1. In searching beyond Agnon’s twinkling comment to Saul Bellow, “Ah, we have him [Heine] beautifully transplanted into Hebrew. He is safe,” Miss Ozick is intuitively on target. Underlying the national “we” is Ahad Ha’am’s essay, “The Question of Jewish Culture.” . . . Ahad Ha’Am writes:
Our “Jewish literature” is often taken in a wide sense to include everything written by a Jewish writer in any language. If we accept that definition, we could not complain of the poverty of Jewish literature, which would include Heine’s love poems. . . . But the definition is fundamentally wrong. A people’s literature is the literature written in its national language. . . . Thus, for example, the name of Levanda, who wrote popular sketches of Russian-Jewish life, is almost forgotten. But Smolenskin’s stories, similar to those of Levanda in subject and much inferior, . . . are still widely read. . . . I can find no explanation except that Smolenskin wrote in Hebrew, and Levanda in Russian.
Agnon, in cautioning Bellow that he had better see to it that his books are translated into Hebrew immediately because they would survive only in the Holy Tongue, jests not. . . . Having Heine beautifully translated into Hebrew not only restores him to his Jewish roots, but ensures that his poetry will survive. . . .
2. When Agnon designates the earthquake as a judgment that came upon those who abandoned Jerusalem . . . , he is drawing upon his own experiences. Agnon has said that his writings were destroyed by a fire in Hamburg because he left the land of Israel to go to Berlin (conversation with Dr. A.M. Habermann, reported in Hado’ar, May 24, 1974). Agnon’s self-condemnation has its source in the Talmud and Midrash. Elimelech and his sons were punished because they were leaders of their generation and they left the land (Bethlehem) to go abroad (Moab). . . .
3. Gamzu in Agnon’s story “Edo and Enam” who, Miss Ozick suggests, was left blind in one eye because of a sandstorm, “as a divine judgment for preferring intrinsic beauty to the discipline of the codes of conduct,” has his counterpart, in fact, in the talmudic sage Nahum of Gimzo who inflicted blindness and other bodily defects upon himself for neglecting the code of conduct. . . .
Having traced in my own research on Agnon many of the sources in his multifaceted “allusions and elusive echoings,” I find that with every new archeological find in our treasure tomes of tradition, Agnon becomes dearer and clearer. Agnon Hebraized is the Jewish people writ large.
Ruth Birnbaum
Department of Judaic Studies
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts
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To the Editor:
It is gratifying that Cynthia Ozick alludes to Heinrich Heine in her article. It is also good to know that Heine’s poem, “Die Lorelei,” which could not be suppressed in Nazi Germany, is “safe,” according to the anecdote Miss Ozick relates about Agnon and Saul Bellow.
From the thrust of her article it can be inferred that Miss Ozick sees in Heine’s depiction of the mythical figure of the siren of the Rhine and her song leading to “death” by “allurement” nothing more than a moral fable. But in fact “Die Lorelei” stands as an immortal work in world literature. . . .
If Cynthia Ozick, who is, of course, well read in foreign literatures, sees in the figure of Lorelei a moral, a warning, perhaps a caution against the danger of paganism, then she may be giving a proper interpretation. If, however, Heinrich Heine’s Jewishness is thereby being questioned, then attention should be drawn to Heine’s many poetic works with Jewish themes, from his early ballad Belsazar (based on Daniel 5 and a Passover hymn), to his novel Der Rabbi von Bacharach, to his Hebrew Melodies which include heartfelt poetry confirming his Jewish commitment.
Henry Regensteiner
New York City
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