Amos Oz: The lighthouse

ABSTRACT

Yigal Schwartz, Amos Oz’s long-time editor and a prominent Oz scholar, reflects on the author’s impact on Israel culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Amos Oz
• Hebrew literature
• Israeli culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Original Hebrew title: Menuhah nekhonah (literally: “a proper rest,” an expression that appears at the opening of the liturgical prayer “El malei rachamim” [“To the Merciful One”] usually recited at the graveside during the burial service for the soul of a person who has died. Translated into English as A Perfect Peace.

2. Original Hebrew title: Poh ve-sham be-Erets-Yisraʼel bi-setav 1982 (literally: “here and there in the land of Israel in the autumn of 1982”). The book records various encounters Oz had during that year with various segments of Israeli society, including members of an ultra-Orthodox community, settlers, Palestinians, and more. Though the interviews Oz conduct were first published in the weekly Davar ha-shavua between November 1982 and January 1983, Oz did not consider the book to be merely a journalist or documentary piece but a hybrid fusing together journalistic and literary elements. Translated into English as In the Land of Israel.

3. Original Hebrew title: Kufsah shehorah. Translated into English as Black Box. Les Liaisons dangereuses, de Laclos’s sensationalist novel, was first published in 1782, and tells the story of a rivalry between to French aristocrats who used seduction to control and exploit other.

4. Original Hebrew title: La-da’at ishah. Translated into English as To Know a Woman.

5. Original Hebrew title: ha-Matsav ha-shelishi (literally: The third condition). Translated into English as Fima.

6. An 1859 Russian novel whose main protagonist, the lazy and dreamy aristocratic Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, is often read as the literary incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbol of the old order in 19th-century Russian literature.

7. Menachem Brinker (1935–2016) was a professor of literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University. He was one of the founders of the Peace Now movement, served as literary editor at Keter Publishing, and as the inagural Henry Crown professor of Hebrew Studies at the University of Chicago. Notoriously prolific and interdisciplinary thinker, Brinker’s works deal with philosophy, esthetics and the theory of literature and interpretation, Hebrew and general literature, modern Jewish thought, literary criticism and journalism.

8. Original Hebrew title: ha-bsora al-pi Yehuda (literally: The Gospel According to Judah). Translated into English as Judas.

9. Translated into English as Where the Jackals Howl and Other Stories.

10. Joseph G. Klausner (1874–1958): a Jewish historian and professor of Hebrew Literature at Hebrew University, and chief redactor of the Encyclopedia Hebraica. Klausner was the uncle of Dr. Yehuda Arieh Klausner (1910–1970), Amos Oz’s father.

11. A term used by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to refer to the configurations of time and space invoked by a given narrative.

12. In the present context, the term “act of reprisal” echoes the name used in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s to describe the IDF’s raids and various deterrence operations, which were carried out in response to terrorist acts against Israeli residents or military provocations carried out by the armies of the countries bordering Israel.

13. Original Hebrew title: Makkom Aher (literally: a different place). Translated into English: Oz as Elsewhere, Perhaps.

14. Translated into English as My Michael.

15. The protagonist of Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel.

16. The protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play.

17. The protagonist of Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel.

18. The protagonist of Theodor Fontane’s 1895 novel.

19. Shalev, “Aharit davar,” 293–300.

20. The protagonist of Jules Verne’s 1876 novel.

21. Original Hebrew title: Oto ha-yam. Translated into English The Same Sea.

22. Oz and Hadad, Mi-mah `asui ha-tapuah?

23. Original Hebrew title: Sipur al ahava ve-hoshekh. Translated into English as A Tale of Love and Darkness.

24. Schwartz, Ha-ashkenazim.

25. Baudelaire, Charles. “The Albatross.” Translated by Eli Siegel. In Eli Siegel, Hail, American Development. New York: Definition Press, 1968, 78. The French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) included the poem “L’albatros” in the second edition (1861) of Les Fleurs du mal (The flowers of evil), famously comparing the large seabird to the poet. In the French original: “Le poète est semblable au prince des nuées/Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;/Exilé sur le sol, au milieu des huées,/Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.”

26. Original Hebrew title: Pitom be-omek ha-yaar. Translated into English as Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest.

27. Original Hebrew title: Ad mavet. Translated into English as Unto Death: Two Novellas: Crusade and Late Love.

28. Original Hebrew title: Tmunot mi-hayei ha-kfar. Translated into English as Oz, Amos. Scenes from Village Life.

29. Original Hebrew title: Ben haverim. Translated into English as Between Friends.

30. Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator.

31. Original Hebrew title: Be-or ha-tekhelet ha-azah. Translated into English as Under This Blazing Light: Essays.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yigal Schwartz

Yigal Schwartz is a Professor of Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he serves as Director of “Heksherim”: The Research Institute for Jewish and Israeli Literature and Culture. Additionally, he serves as the editor-in-chief of the Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir publishing house. He edited several of Oz’s books, and wrote extensively about Oz’s literary work. Schwartz’s publications include Zemer nuge shel Amos Oz: Pulhan ha-sofer ve-dat ha-mdina [A Melancholy Song by Amos Oz: Cult of the Author and the State Religion] (Tel Aviv: Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, 2011), The Zionist Paradox: Hebrew Literature and Israeli Identity, translated by Michal Sapir (Lebanon: Brandeis University Press, 2014), and Ha-ashkenazim: Ha-merkaz neged ha-mizrah [The Ashkenazim: Center Vs. East] (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2014). His other works include Aharon Appelfeld, From Individual Lament to Tribal Eternity, Translated by Jeffrey M.Green, Foreword by Arnold J. Band. Brandeis University Press, Hanover and London, 2001 and The Rebirth of Hebrew Literature, Pegisha-Encounters, Jewish Studies, Volume 9, Peter Lang Edition, 2016.