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ABSTRACT
This article discusses the autobiographical writings of Amos Oz and Ronit Matalon and focuses on A Tale of Love and Darkness (2002) and The Sound of Our Steps (2008). Although the novels differ in terms of era, language, ethnic background, and the gender of the narrator/protagonist, the core plot of mother and child, the spatial concepts of home, garden, and land, and other shared structural elements invite comparison. This reading nevertheless pinpoints their disparity: whereas Oz’s own trajectory elicits empathy, redefines the notion of personal life stories and their ideological role in Israeli society, and eventually justifies the Zionist ideology, Matalon’s poetics of rupture creates unease that subverts the possibility to voice one’s personal story and challenges the national narrative and its validity.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Gilmore, Autobiographics, 11.
2. Hess, Self as Nation, 5.
3. Ibid., 2.
4. Lejeune, “The Autobiographical Pact,” 5.
5. See: Gilmore, The Limit of Autobiography, 2; and Miller, “Representing others.”
6. Smith and Watson, “Introduction,” 20.
7. Olney, Metaphors of Self, 38; and Memory and Narrative.
8. Kaplan, “Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness,” 122.
9. See for instance: Ashkenazi, “Ha-hakhi yafa,” 170.
10. Ibid., 11.
11. Gili Izikovitz, “Ha’im janer ha-auto-fiction hoo be-sakh ha-kol sifrut shel narkisistim [Is the Auto-fiction Genre Merely the Literature of Narcissists?],” Haaretz, February 1, 2019. https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/literature/.premium-MAGAZINE-1.6803878#hero__bottom. Accessed November 8, 2020.
12. Hess, Self as Nation, 2.
13. Ben-Dov, Haim ktuvim, 15.
14. Oz, Sippur, 36 (in Hebrew). see also Ben-Dov, Haim ktuvim, 14–15; and Hess, Self as Nation, 9.
15. See: Schwartz, Pulhan ha-sofer ve-dat ha-medina, 30.
16. Ari Shavit, “Ha-yehudi ha-sored – re’ayon im Amos Oz [The Surviving Jew – Interview with Amos Oz],” Haaretz, March 1, 2002. http://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.775818. Accessed November 13, 2020.
17. Elkad-Lehman, “Ha-bait hu ha-makom”; Balaban, Teysha imahot ve-ima, 82–99; Keren, “Hed psi’otenu.”
18. Matalon, Kro u’khtov, 13–4.
19. Matalon, The Sound of Our Steps, 133. All quotations from the novel are from the translation by Dalya Bilu, and are marked by page numbers only.
20. Although the father in the novel has many traits in common with the author’s biological father, his name in the story is Maurice, not Felix. The real name of Matalon’s mother is Emma, but she is called Lucette or Levana in the novel (11). The girl is described throughout the novel in the third person, although it is clear that the character is identified with the narrator. Her name is not identical to the author’s name either.
21. Dinah Assouline Stillman, “The Sounds of Memory in Writing: A Conversation with Ronit Matalon,” World Literature Today, May 2015, https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2015/may/sounds-memory-writing-conversation-ronit-matalon-dinah-assouline-stillman. Accessed November 8, 2020.
22. Matalon, Ad argi’ah, 156.
23. Tsal, “haster astir panay,” 73. Tsal sees this novel as the “third try to tell the story of the family.”
24. Smith and Watson. “Introduction,” 27. See also: Huddart, Postcolonial Theory and Autobiography.
25. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts.”
26. Matalon, Kro u-khtov, 45–6.
27. See for example: Anderson, Imagined Communities.
28. Bhabha, “DissemiNation,” 299.
29. On the dialectic between the narrative of aliyah and the narrative of immigration and their manifestations in Hebrew literature, see Mendelson-Maoz, “Amos Oz,” 70–76.
30. See also Porat, “Hayah be-yerushalayim pahad,” 143–154.
31. Feige, “Introduction: Rethinking Israel Memory and Identity,” vi.
32. Schwartz, Pulhan ha-sofer ve-dat ha-medina, 151.
33. Zerubavel, “The ‘Mythological Sabra,’”18.
34. All quotations from the novel are from the translation by Nicholas de Lange, and marked by page numbers only.
35. Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” 394.
36. Shapira, “Ha-sippur ha-tziyoni,” 164.
37. Jaffee, “The Victim Community.”
38. Schwartz, Pulhan ha-sofer ve-dat ha-medina, 145.
39. Schwartz, “Sus troyani,” 90–91.
40. Matalon, Kro u-khtov, 48.
41. Mendelson-Maoz, Multiculturalism in Israel, 120–122.
42. Deborah Starr discusses the role of this novel in Matalon’s writing. See: Starr, “Kriah, ktiva, ve-hizakhrut.”
43. See for example the grotesque descriptions by Dan Benaya-Seri in which the characters’ sexuality changes and bodily organs become autonomous, as well as detailed physical descriptions of characters who fail to comply with the Sabra bodily ideal which enable literature to deviate from the ideological concept of the Zionist body.
44. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 8.
45. The literature on empathy is intensive. See Coplan and Goldie, Empathy – Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives; Hoffman’s Empathy and Moral Development. For more on empathy in literature, see Keen, Empathy and the Novel.
46. On the criticism of empathy see Amiel Hauser’s and Mendelson Maoz’ reading of Levinas in “Against Empathy” and Mendelson-Maoz on the risk of imperialism, in “The Fallacy of Analogy.”
47. LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 78.
48. LaCapra argues that the film Schindler’s List works in this direction.
49. Ibid., 41.
50. Ibid., 78.
51. Hochberg, In Spite of Partition, 63.
52. Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 4–6.
53. Gurevitz and Aran, “Al ha-makom,” 11.
54. See: Robinson, “Exiled in the Homeland,” 66.
55. Almog, The Sabra, 164–171.
56. Gluzman, ha-guf ha-tziony.
57. Schwartz, ha-yadata et ha-arets, 13.
58. Ibid., 32.
59. Ibid., 448.
60. Milner, “Sippur mishpahti,” 74.
61. See also: Ben-Dov, “Ne’ilah she-hi be’ila,” 117–129.
62. Gertz, “ha-nofim shelo,” 216.
63. Yosef, The Politics of Loss, 143.
64. See: Mendelson-Maoz, “The Fallacy of Analogy.”
65. Alon and Markovich, “Yalda shehora,” 10–12.
66. Shimoni, Al saf ha-geula, 256.
67. Tsal, “He is missing,” 310.
68. This strategy also appears in the last line of her novel Sara Sara (Bliss): “They’ve murdered your Rabin,” which does not give the reader any relief from the political context. Matalon, Sara Sara, 262.
69. Koopman, Reading the Suffering of Others, 237.
70. Ibid., 240.
71. Miller, “I Killed My Grandmother,” 323.
72. Shaked, “Matzeva le-avot ve-siman le-banim,” 17.
73. Laor, “Be-mehozot ha-zikaron,” 39–40.
74. Avirama Golan considers the success of this novel to be a literary trick in which those at the margins are set within the consensus as a device for the return of the Zionist narrative. Golan’s claim that “the power of Love and Darkness resides in the use it makes of the legitimacy conferred by the multicultural concept to the marginal narrative simply in order to strengthen the central (or previously central) narrative” and presents the idea that by transforming the trauma of immigration from a private event into a collective trauma, he creates a counterfeit homogeneous text. See: Avirama Golan, “Ha’im ha-sippur shelo hu ha-sippur shelanu? [Is his story our story?],” Haaretz sfarim, August 31, 2005. https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/1.1040323. Accessed November 8, 2020.
75. Matalon, Kero u-khetov, 47.
76. On Matalon, bell hooks and the black female autobiography, see Galon and Mendelson Maoz, “An Autobiography of Her Own.”
77. hooks, “Taking Back,” 6, 9.
78. Smith and Watson, “Introduction”; and Galon and Mendelson Maoz, “An Autobiography of Her Own.”
79. Assouline Stillman, “The Sounds of Memory.”
80. Ben Yehuda, “Le-lo panim,” 86.
81. See note above 64.
82. Berg, “Mabat sheni.”
83. Dalia Ben-Ari, “Tmunot me-ha-haim: Re’ayon im Ronit Matalon [Pictures from life: An Interview with Ronit Matatlon],” La-isha, 2008. Re-published in “Ha-biographia ha-metzulemet shel Ronit Matalon” [The Pictured Biography of Ronit Matalon], La-isha, December 12, 2017. https://xnet.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5063182,00.html. Accessed November 6, 2020.
84. Berg, “Mabat sheni,” 134.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Adia Mendelson-Maoz
Adia Mendelson-Maoz is an Associate Professor in Israeli literature and culture in the Department of Literature, Language and Arts at the Open University of Israel. She investigates the multifaceted relationships between literature, ethics, politics, and culture, mainly in the context of Hebrew Literature and Israeli culture. Her recent books are Multiculturalism in Israel - Literary Perspectives (Purdue UP, 2014), and Borders, Territories, and Ethics: Hebrew Literature in the Shadow of the Intifada, (Purdue UP, 2018). Her book, Territories and Borders in the Shadow of the Intifada: Ethical Reading of Hebrew Literature 1987-2007, is a Hebrew adaptation of Borders, Territories, and Ethics and is forthcoming by Magnes Press (2020).