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ABSTRACT
This article examines Oz’s novel The Same Sea (1999) and argues that it marks the novelist’s attempt to join a new phase in Israeli literature. Comparing The Same Sea to two novels by Yoel Hoffmann, one of the most famous representatives of this phase, the article sheds light on Oz’s struggle to balance between the writing norms that helped establish his status as “the shaman of the tribe” and the new norms, associated with Israeli postmodernism.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. In an interview with Maya Kosover and Sari Shavit, “Sefer ehad – Amos Oz al Oto ha-yam” [One Book – Amos Oz on The Same Sea], Kan Tarbut, February 20, 2018. https://www.kan.org.il/podcast/item.aspx?pid=12474. Accessed November 27, 2020.
2. Oz explained that re-reading his other work frustrates him, as he either thinks that today he could do better or that he would never be able to write as good. As to The Same Sea, he said that he simply enjoys reading it, perhaps because he does not entirely believe that it is his.
3. I will return at the end of the article to Oz’s 2007 novel, Rhyming Life and Death, which is the only novel of his that shares some qualities with The Same Sea, but is still written in the same style and structure as the rest of his corpus.
4. Gertz, Amos Oz: Monographia, 16.
5. Gertz designates this audience as the members of the Kibbutzim. See: ibid., 16.
6. Ibid., 16.
7. Ibid., 16.
8. Ibid., 40-41.
9. Ibid., 42.
10. Schwartz, Pulhan ha-sofer, 47.
11. Oz himself defined his role in Israeli society as that of an author who functions as “The shaman of the tribe”, the man who tells stories around the fire and through them gives his people a source of comfort, guidance and healing. On Oz as the shaman of the tribe, see: Zilberman, Mekhashef ha-shevet.
12. Schwartz, Pulhan ha-sofer, 47.
13. In 1988, following the publication of Hoffmann’s first collection of stories Sefer Yosef (The Book of Joseph), Yigal Serna published in Yediot Ahronot an article that tried to introduce the author by interviewing Hoffmann’s students and giving a short biographical summary of his life. In an article that was published in Akhbar ha-ir in 2010, following the publication of Hoffmann’s last novel, Matzavei ruah (Moods), Shai Greenberg attempted to answer some of the questions about Hoffmann’s private life that Serna has left unanswered, but without much success. Greenberg’s article ended up documenting Hoffmann’s great efforts to guard his privacy, expressing frustration and at the same time a sort of admiration for the author’s success in shielding himself from the public. See: Yigal Serna, “Yoel Hoffmann,” Yediot achronot, shiv’a yamim, January 1, 1988, 34-35, and Shai Greenberg, “De-Hoffmanizia,” Akhbar ha-ir, April 15, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/art/1.3313284. Accessed November 27, 2020.
14. Two of his works, a 1988 story and a novel that was published in 2007, are called Curriculum Vitae. However, they hardly grant a real access to the actual author behind them.
15. Nuyen, “The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse.”
16. “Postmodernism,” https://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/index-frame.html, retrieved November 28, 2020.
17. Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus, 15.
18. Throughout the 1990s other writers such as Yitzhak Laor, Avraham Hefner, Gafi Amir, Gadi Taub, and Etgar Keret joined this new trend.
19. Shaked, Modern Hebrew Fiction, 235. Shaked refers the reader to Conner, Postmodernist Culture.
20. Shaked, Modern Hebrew Fiction, 236.
21. Shaked, “Afelah tahat ha-shemesh,” 46.
22. See note 20 above.
23. Scharf Gold, “Bernhardt’s Journey,” 272.
24. Schwartz, “Hebrew Prose: The Generation After,” 7-8.
25. Balaban, Gal aher.
26. Shaked, Gal hadash.
27. Together with Orly Castel-Bloom. See for example, Shiffman, “Orly Castel Bloom and Yoel Hoffmann.”
28. Gurevitch, Postmodernism. Gurevitch focuses on Oz’s Ha-matzav ha-shelishi (Fima), in which, according to Chaya Shacham, Oz already started his journey into postmodernist writing. See: “Bein Bat Yam le-Xanadu,” 235. See also: Horwitz, “Oto ha-yam,” 102.
29. Holtzman, “Be-karov bein shishim,” 190. First appeared in Yediot achronot, December 11, 1998.
30. Horowitz, “Oto ha-yam,” 104-112.
31. Schacham, “Bein Bat Yam le-Xanadu,” 175-182.
32. Kartun-Blum, “Ha hipus ahar halaltit ha-em,” 175.
33. Ibid., 177.
34. See for example: Yosef Oren, “Zore’a shirim be-dim’a” [Seeding Poems with Tears], Makor Rishon: Musaf Shabbat, December 28, 2012. https://musaf-shabbat.com/2012/12/28/%D7%96%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A2-%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%93%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%94-%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A3-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%9F/. Accessed November 30, 2020; Kartun-Blum, “Ha-hispus ahar halalit ha-em,” 177.
35. Oz, The Same Sea, 72. I have modified the translation slightly to reflect the use of the word “rikma” in the Hebrew original, which de Lange replaced here with “pattern.”
36. Hoffman, The Christ of Fish, 213.
37. For a discussion of the allusions to his family’s roots in Europe in Oz’s work, see: Ben-Dov, Haim ktuvim, 97-108.
38. Hoffmann, Bernhardt, 7.
39. Oz, The Same Sea, 24.
40. Holtzman, “Be-karov bein shishim,” 190.
41. In an interview with Maya Kosover and Sari Shavit, Kan Tarbut.
42. Oz quoted these lines from Zach’s poem already a few years earlier when he discussed his writing in general in a speech that he gave in Frankfurt in the ceremony for a reception of the Peace Award from the Union of German Press in October, 4, 1992. The speech was printed in his book Kol ha-tikvot.
43. Oz, The Same Sea, 3.
44. In her book Place and Ideology in Contemporary Hebrew Literature, Karen Grumberg deals with Oz’s affinity to places such as the desert and the garden and counters this tendency with works by Hoffmann as well as Orly Castel-Bloom, Sayed Kashua, and Ronit Matalon.
45. See: Holtzman, “Be-karov bein shishim,” 193; Batya Gur, “Oto ha-yam,” Ha’aretz December 25, 1998; Ziva Shamir, “She-tehe ha-musica yam-tichonit” [Let the Music be Mediterranean], Moznayim, April 1999, 14-20; Kartun-Blum, “Ha-hispus ahar halalit ha-em,” 176; Shacham, “Bein Bat Yam le-Xanadu,” 245-6.
46. Shaked, Modern Hebrew Fiction, 236.
47. Oz, The Same Sea, translator’s Note, 198.
48. Stahl, Ha-poetica shel Yoel Hoffman, 69-84.
49. Hoffmann, The Christ of Fish, 21.
50. Kartun-Blum argues that Oz replaced the use of metaphors and hyperboles that were typical to his style with lots of metonymies which shed a different light on the souls of his characters. See: Kartun Blum, “Ha-hispus ahar halalit ha-em,” 180.
51. Oz, The Same Sea, 128.
52. In an interview with Maya Kosover and Sari Shavit.
53. Oz, The Same Sea, 75.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. See also, Shacham, “Bein Bat Yam le-Xanadu,” 238; Holtzman, “Be-karov bein shishim,” 192; Kartun-Blum, “Ha-hispus ahar halalit ha-em,” 181.
57. Oz described in many interviews his struggle with the fact that his mother did not leave any clue as to her decision to end her life.
58. Anat Waxman, “Af milah al Christus” [Not a Single Word on Christus], Davar, July 12, 1991.
59. Hoffmann, The Christ of Fish, 4-5.
60. Ibid., 80.
61. Ibid., 5.
62. Oz, The Same Sea, 111.
63. See note 52 above.
64. See Shacham, “Bein Bat Yam le-Xanadu,” 235.
65. In an interview with Maya Kosover and Sari Shavit,
66. Oz, Rhyming Life and Death. Originally published as Ha-sipur ve-ha-haruz, Jerusalem: Keter, 2007.
67. I would like to thank Prof. Tamar Sovran for sharing with me her paper “Early and Later in the Language of Amos Oz’s Kibbutz Stories” (NAPH Annual Conference, Boston, June 2019).
68. Daphna Shchori, “Para kedosha u-shma Hoffman” [A Holy Cow Named Hoffmann], Ha’aretz Sefarim, April 16, 2007. https://www.haaretz.co.il/literature/prose/1.1550160. Accessed November 30, 2020.
69. Oz, The Same Sea, 42.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Neta Stahl
Neta Stahl is an Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Director of the Stulman Program in Jewish Studies at Johns Hopkins University. TZELEM YEHUDI, her Hebrew book on the representation of Jesus in 20th-century Hebrew literature, was published in 2008. An expanded English edition, Other and Brother: The Figure of Jesus in the 20th-Century Jewish Literary Landscape, was published in 2013 with Oxford University Press. Her book, Drawings of the Heart: The Poetics of Yoel Hoffmann (in Hebrew) appeared in 2017 with Resling press. A collection of articles she edited, titled Jesus Among the Jews, appeared with Routledge (2012). Her most recent book, The Divine in Modern Hebrew Literature appeared in March 2020.