SOURCE: Schacham, Chaya. “Novellas under This Blazing Light: Transformations in the Novella Writing of Amos Oz.” Orbis Litterarum 53, no. 5 (1998): 318-35.

[In the following essay, Schacham asserts that Oz's novellas have developed over the course of his literary career from traditional to experimental to iconoclastic.]

I.

In a talk given in 1972 and later included in Amos Oz's first collection of essays entitled Under This Blazing Light (which was also the title of the collection), the author spoke of the possibilities of flowering of great literature. He stated that “the best works of literature are written in times of ending and destruction” and that “the times are not propitious for the creation of great literature,” mainly owing to the fact “that the light in Israel at the moment is the light of midday, of midsummer, a bright blue light […] What can a storyteller do in this light, with this overwhelming rush of energy?” He added that true writers are known not to submit to the demands of diverse ideologists requiring that they reflect positive reality in all its wonder, for even if they do make such a demand, “the writers go on scratching, retreating into their various dungeons, ‘as a servant desireth the shadow’” (Oz, 1979; trans. 1995: 25-26).

As one who considers the story-teller as the tribe's witch-doctor, whose task it is “to bring to light all the terrors and demons in the depths of one's psyche—which may echo those in the tribal psyche […],” Oz takes the opportunity to assess the problems he faces as an Israeli writer: “Maybe it is harder to conjure spirits if you live in a modern housing development in Israel. It is harder still because of this pedantic light, that does not favour magic. This is a world without shade, without cellars or attics [p. 30]. In this blazing blue light it is of course possible to try to huddle in the shade. It is possible to turn your back on the time and the place, to ignore tribal problems and write what they call ‘universally’ about the human condition, or the meaning of love, or life in general. But in point of fact, how is it possible? [emphasis in original—CS]. Surely the time and place will always burst in, however hard you try to hide from them” [p. 31].

By these statements, quoted at some length, Oz points out important principles in his literary concepts, primarily keeping distant from circumstances of time and place, and in particular he indirectly reveals that he is situated at a sort of poetic crossroads, which requires decisions one way or another. This was said in 1972, three years after the first publication of the novella Crusade (Keshet, 1969)¹ and one year before the Yom Kippur War, generally considered a breaking point that put Israeli society in turmoil and dissipated many concepts that had prevailed until then in all spheres of its life. In 1974, the year after the Yom Kippur War, Amos Oz wrote The Hill of Evil Counsel and in 1975 Longing. These three works will be at the centre of our consideration.

The purpose of this study is to examine this writing mainly in terms of its genre, and to view these works as way-stations in Oz's development as a story-teller sensitive to genre. At the same time, the discussion will include considerations of the period in which the pieces were written and of the ways in which it is reflected in them.

Crusade was from the first described by critics as a novella. As for the others, which were included in the book The Hill of Evil Counsel, these are called “stories,” and this term appears in the English translation of the book's title (printed in the Hebrew version).

Critics treat them variously—sometimes as stories and sometimes as novellas. The writer himself, who chose to call them stories, did not single out the term “novella” when he included Late Love and Crusade in one volume (Unto Death). The English translation of the title (printed in the Hebrew version) has Two stories by Amos Oz. However, one should bear in mind that Amos Oz dedicated this book—perhaps not by chance—to the memory of his father, Yehuda Arieh Klausner, author of the comprehensive study on the novella in Hebrew literature (1947).

The definition of the novella was basically agreed upon by both theoreticians and writers chiefly in the nineteenth century and especially in Germany. With time, particularly after the First World War, the degree of accord about the novella as a literary genre gradually diminished. As it changes with the progress of the twentieth century, it has become a focus for the debates of theoreticians and critics, some trying to defend the old definitions and some placing obstacles before them, refreshing them, or refuting them.²

In any event, even after deconstructivist attempts of interpretation, some identifying marks still remain, whose presence or absence may determine the belonging—or the non-belonging—of a work to the novella genre.

There is broad agreement, for example, that the novella is supposed to deal with an unusual event.³ Some argue that in modern times the unusual event is no longer the purpose of the story as in the past, but its starting point.⁴ Another of the conspicuous marks of the novella, distinguishing it from the story, and by inference determining its other qualities, is its concern with extreme situations, mostly those to do with settling fate, not episodic occurrences that allow a return to regular life in some way or other.⁵

The outlook underlying the novella is fatalistic. Usually the novella is concerned with the event, which by hindsight proves to be a cause of fateful change in the hero's life. The protagonists of novellas unwittingly step onto a path from which there is no return, and they are unable to make out the warning signals present in the reality around them, or they misinterpret them. An identifying mark accepted by most scholars of the novella is the play of chance and destiny,⁶ where chance usually turns out to be fatal, that is, the agent of destiny.⁷ To these major features of the novella one should add its specific structural elements, some deriving from these features; these will be mentioned later on.

As intimated above, a reading of Amos Oz's novellas reveals the author's sensitivity to genre, but also interesting ways in which he contends with the European novella tradition, which serves as their inherent model. Each of the three works considered here represents a stage in this contention, which largely involves the search for a way and poetic uncertainty, in some way associated with the extra-literary expressions by Oz cited above.

II.

The first of the novellas we are concerned with is Crusade, a tale of a crusade led by Count Guillaume of Touron, who sets out from his country home in late eleventh-century France with Jerusalem as his destination. This crusade did not get beyond a deserted monastery, where his men passed the cold winter days, slowly losing their minds or wasting away in some other fashion, and where Count Guillaume puts an end to his life. The singular oddity of the plot lies in several factors: the reasons for the departure on crusade, involving a series of inexplicable phenomena; the strange combination of the Count's departure for the Holy Land to participate in its redemption on the one hand and to find peace for his soul on the other; and an unexpected development in the course of the crusade, when the Count realizes by some painful inner knowledge that an opposing force, by inference the Jews, has taken control of his camp from within. To extirpate the Jew whom he finally believes is locked deep within him, de Touron runs his body through with a spear and dies.

From the outset, two clear elements appear in this piece: the indecipherable signs emitted by reality, and the sense of determinism. Both are to be found enfolded in the words of Claude Crookback, the recorder, who writes, among other things: “We are touched by inaminate objects. There is a secret sign language which weaves a net between things. Not a leaf falls to the ground unless it is touched by some purpose …” However, even Claude himself, who formulates his words rather aphoristically and lyrically, cannot really fathom the signs with which the expedition is replete, and thereby alter one jot the journey leading to the loss of the column. Claude is one of two narrators who unfold the account of the journey. The other dons the garb of Chronicler, who uses Claude's written chronicles as testimony that he threads into the flow of his delivery. The information in the story is thus filtered through these two persons' consciousness, one belonging expressly to the witness-narrator (Claude), who steadily occupies a more considerable place in the story. As with other cases, doubt must be raised as to the veracity of this witness-narrator and his capacity to fully understand and interpret the manifestations that he describes at first hand through intense involvement. But the reliability of the other narrator too, who is seemingly later, is flawed, when he occasionally assumes the identity of one of the crusaders.⁸ The significance of this is that after the double filtration of the information much room still remains for its amendment and fresh clarification by the addressee through the scattered clues of the implied author.⁹

In this manner the story strongly exemplifies one of the basic indications of the novella concerning the characters' blindness to destiny and its signs. The principle that shows up this indication in the story is that of duality or double vision. Almost everyone of the phenomena described in the work is presented according to this principle: “In everything there could be seen the mounting evidence of a heavy, thick reality—or, at a second glance, the slight impulse of some abstract purpose,“says the Chronicler-narrator, “everything was somehow open to several interpretations.” These words voice a direct instruction by the implied author to the recipient, above the narrator's head, whereby the recipient is supposed to suspect any information as it is given and to interpret it anew. In this respect the work operates a complex system of irony, resting on the many hints of signs and clues seemingly absorbed by the heroes (the Count and Claude, who serves as his dark shadow), but which they are unable to interpret and comprehend. For example, the Chronicler-narrator remarks, in a tone very similar to that of Claude, “How unaware we are, mere creatures of flesh and blood and humors, of the unseen, powerful web of God's actions around us!” Guillaume de Touron for his part says to Claude, “The appearance of a thing or its effect is not its essence.” The narrator delivers the following observations: “Even the rustling of fallen leaves hinted perpetually at the certainty of another, a hostile camp whispering round about us and hedging us in. The forces of grace were being besieged.” The Count, as the narrator states, picked up the packet of money held out to him by the Jew “with a weary gesture, closed his hand around it and concentrated his gaze as if trying hard to discover what thing the shabby cloth held for him.” At the final stage of the crusade Claude records in his notes: “Earth, men, snow, suffering, death, all of these are but an allegory of the Kingdom of Heaven, toward which I am making my way, in a straight line, turning aside neither to the right hand nor to the left, and with a joyful spirit.”

It appears, then, that the heroes of Oz's novella are at least cognizant with the existence of the signs and intimations assailing their awareness, perhaps in contrast to the protagonists of many other novellas, in whom the signs of fate are not sensed at all. But this is actually a misleading, and by inference an ironic step by the author, who through the development of the plot of crusade and its termination determines that the heroes do not, in fact, in any way sense the real dreadful and fatal signs that crop up along the way, and naturally are not alerted by them. These signs, overlooked by the heroes of the story, are three encounters with Jews, set forth in the work in a gradual and cumulative manner.

These three encounters are constructed out of inherently Christian imagery, but most paradoxically (and the novella as a genre tends greatly towards paradox) the ones through whom the images are presented are actually Jews.

At the first encounter, when the Jewish peddler says with a sudden flash of clarity “You are going to kill me,” Claude replies, “Thou sayest,” the words of Jesus to those in the Temple courtyard who dubbed him “King of the Jews.” This context reverberates in the background, but he who is crucified by an arrow that splits another arrow transfixed in his body is the Jew, who dies a Christian death here, on the cross, as it were. The submissiveness of the Jewish peddler throughout the encounter also clearly stands for the model Christian behaviour, so to speak, of turning the other cheek.

The second encounter evokes an obvious Christian icon: the Madonna and Child. Claude's barbaric treatment of the Jewish woman and her baby and his demonic viewpoint, which lowers the mother to the level of an animal, evince iniquity to one of the most hallowed symbols of Christianity. The irony lies in the fact that neither Claude nor the others are able to identify behind the terrified figure of the Jewess the essence of the Christian symbol, which expresses the acme of human compassion.

The third encounter unfolds as a sort of medieval Passion play, whose hero in this instance is a Jew. The core of the play is the tale of breaking of a promise and betrayal by the count and Claude jointly, the taking of money and the killing of the Jew in drawn-out agony. In fact, the Jew suffers a cruel and terrible Via Dolorosa as he is slowly and gradually tortured to death. The analogy between him and Christ is starkly evident (interestingly enough, he is described as lean and lanky, with a fair beard, like the portrait of Jesus in old paintings), as is the analogy made between the count and Claude, who betray him and take his money, and Judas Iscariot. Not for nothing does Claude utter his thoughts in this setting on Christ's death and the treachery of his betrayer. The execution of the proud Jew—and by inference also the slaying of the Jewish peddler and the mother with her baby—are paradoxically interpretable on the deepest level of the story actually as the slaughter of the Christian essence of those who pretend to saving and being saved in the name of the Cross.

These signs, played out before the eyes of the Crusader travellers, are not decipherable to them, and as stated they do not serve them as warning signals of the destructive events lying in wait for them. Human blindness and the great power of destiny, in the guise of chance, are here clearly characteristic of the novella-like quality of the work. One may add to these the author's awareness of an highly characteristic element in the novella structure, the turning point.¹⁰ Here too the transforming hand of the writer is recognizable, converting the traditional literary convention into a means of irony in this novella. Indeed, the hero-recorder is he who believes he has discerned the turning point, but he thinks it is a turning point for good (“And so it seemed that our fortunes had taken a turn for the better”); this he concludes from a passing improvement in the circumstances of the expedition, from the holding off of the winter rains, and from the column's approach to the communities of the Jews. In retrospect it transpires that precisely the encounter with the communities of the Jews and the awful events there were what led to that point of no return, expressed in the rapid sinking of Count Gaillaume de Touron into madness. Just as the winter rains, whose delay has permitted the continuation of the journey and contact with the communities of the Jews, so is it these that cause the halt and the lodgement in the abandoned monastery when they are battered by the tempest—and so only a few paces from catastrophe and annihilation.¹¹

In Crusade, then, Oz applies the main coordinates characterizing the traditional novella, but he does so in a special way, apparently making them transparent and known not only to the addresser and the addressee, but also to the protagonists themselves. As we have seen, this fact is used to intensify the irony, which in turn more sharply demarcates the author's subjective stance behind the objective scheme of the narrative.¹²

III.

While the structure of Crusade is concentrated, as required by the genre, and aimed like an arrow at its target, the structure of The Hill of Evil Counsel is free, loosely constructed, and replete with flashbacks. Yet the multiplicity of characters and divergences from the main theme cannot erase the sense that pervades this work, that of the force of destiny, which dictates the framework of the piece. However, this work presents the writer with a fairly difficult problem. A Crusade in the Middle Ages that sets out from a castle and ends in the ruins of an ancient serpentine and gloomy monastery is a suitable setting for a novella, which depends on the strange, the wondrous and, if it is romantic (or even neo-romantic), on the exotic too. But a bright Jerusalem neighbourhood in May 1946, where the sun beats down on the blinds all day long, the women beat quilts and mattresses, and the children have soft-boiled eggs, Quaker oats and skimmed cocoa for breakfast cannot, naturally, be made easily to function as the background for a novella.

The blazing light that Oz mentions in his book of essays occupies a prominent place in the work before us too: “And how the geraniums blazed in the garden in the blue summer light. How the pure light was caught by the fingers of the fig tree in the yard and shattered into nervous fragments. How the sun burst up early in the morning behind Mount Scopus to torment the whole city and suddenly turn the gold and silver domes into dazzling flames” (p. 14). As a story-teller who knows that “this pedantic light does not favour magic,” Oz creates in the story, as against the bright world of everyday Eretz Israel of the forties, the world of night, which he fills with alleyways alive with shadows and rustlings, bells tolling, dark valleys, hyenas and wailing jackals, in the best romantic tradition. Daytime Jerusalem is that island of “clear sober sanity” (p. 14), full of hopes and unsteady beginnings, like Hans Kipnis's garden. Night-time Jerusalem, by contrast, is the place of hallucinators like the lodger Mitya, of those who cry out in their sleep like Engineer Brezezinski, and of women who repress erotic desires and give them perverted expressions, like Madame Yabrova and Binyamina Even-Hen. Not surprisingly, then, the fateful events that mark the unfolding of this work occur in the late evening hours and at night, when even Mandatory Jerusalem of the forties might seem quite like another place and a suitable background for a novella.

The play between chance and fate, that important characteristic which largely classifies a literary work as a novella, is evident in The Hill of Evil Counsel, despite its manifold digressions and its quasi-fragmentary nature. Lady Bromley's chance fainting at the first May celebration in 1946 in Jerusalem and the assistance given her by Dr Kipnis, a veterinarian, lead directly to the invitation he gets to the second celebration, where his wife will meet the Hero of Malta, and run away with him, thus bringing destruction upon her family. What seemed to be a minor incident at the first celebration in retrospect turns out to be a fateful stage in the lives of the characters involved. Signs in the form of warning lights concerning events are not absent from the work either, but because of its diffuse structure they are less obvious, and tend to fade into the background. They include, for example, what the nameless woman said in Yiddish: “Z’is a poshute zach, z’is a schlechte zach” (“It's perfectly simple: it'll end badly”), which in hindsight may be understood as an intimation, delivered with almost oracular terseness, of coming melodramatic developments, whose onset is apparently banal and whose end is awful. An implicit hint, which is not perceived as such by him who uttered it, is contained in the joke Dr Kipnis makes to his wife about the party at the High-Commissioner's palace: “And don't forget to lose a glass slipper,” an obvious allusion to the story of Cinderella, who finds her heart's desire at the ball, which in fact is to happen to his wife. The political remarks by the Governor of Jerusalem on the possibility of inter-religious peace in Jerusalem, which would make the British superfluous, a speech ending with the statement that “it was well known … that in a love affair there was no place for a third party,” precede only slightly the private scenario of the Kipnis family, consisting of precisely those components and about to take place that very evening. Likewise the coincidence between the date of Ruth and Hans Kipnis's wedding and Hitler's declaration at Nuremberg that “he was bent on peace and understanding […]” acts on the deep level of the work as an analogical hint at the subject of betrayal, by which the marriage contract between them is marked. Together with the intimations that accompany the story there are premonitions, seemingly based on nothing, and these contribute their share to creating the feeling of tense expectation in the reader. For example, when Dr and Mrs Kipnis depart for the celebration, Mitya's lips “were mouthing something in the darkness, a curse or a premonition of disaster,” or old Professor Wertheimer, who behaves as if they were setting out for another continent, and sadly says, “Don't forget us.” And Mrs Vishniak, who has tears hanging from her eyelashes because the announcer of “The Voice of Jerusalem” has said that “times were changing and that things would never be the same again.”

The contradiction between banal Israeli reality, exposed and well-known, and the world of the novella, which seeks to relate an unusual event, therefore obliged the author to produce a fitting narrative solution. As stated, this is present in the dichotomous division between the events of the day and the events of the night in Jerusalem. There remains the problem of the ending of the novella, one supposed to illumine it in such a way that the course of the fate characterizing it will appear decisive and clear. But just as the dichotomy between the diurnal and the nocturnal dominates the story, so does it dominate the ending, which is in fact dual: the story of Ruth Kipnis, who runs away at night, in the middle of the celebration at the High Commissioner's palace, with the Hero of Malta, is a melodramatic ending, as implicitly required by the novella genre; the other ending, which is not melodramatic, takes place the following day, in Jerusalem hit by a heat wave and a haze of dust and under grey skies. Hans Kipnis, sane, rational, and clear-thinking, is given this sentence by the author: “Mommy will come back and it'll all be like before” (p. 52). The statement is seemingly meant of itself to erase the tragic outcome of the celebration, as if it was nothing more than a bad dream. But the epilogue lets it be known that the celebration did indeed cause a far-reaching change in the lives of the main heroes, who will never be the same as they were before.

If Gershon Shaked's argument is correct, that Oz is primarily concerned with the collective subconscious,¹³ then the disappearance of Ruth Kipnis from the lives of Hans and his son Hillel in fact signifies the submission of Zionism to rationality, making progress, and abandonment of the “Polish romance of the cavalry” (in the words of the hero of Longing), which is an inhibiting element in the new reality.

IV.

A further interesting step in Amos Oz's contention with the novella is the work Longing, which represents the iconoclastic stage of the author's approach to the genre. The form of the work is a set of letters from Dr Emanuel Nussbaum, who is terminally ill, to his beloved Dr Hermine Oswald, whose whereabouts he does not know. This form, a sort of “letter novel” along the lines of The Sorrows of Werther, from the first and by definition dismembers the traditional structure of the novella. However, this is only one of the attempts made in this piece to undermine the conventions of this genre. The story contains a series of features undoubtedly linked with the novella, but it transpires that in some way they in fact consistently represent the reverse of novella-type properties. The internal narrator, Emanuel, from the start declares himself not to be a story-teller spinning a yarn but an observer (p. 135), and he defines the nature of the writing as “certain observations about Jerusalem, and, in particular, my district, Kerem Avraham: things seen and heard.” He assumes that “no doubt here and there cautious comparisons will emerge, and certain memories may find their way in,” namely he signals the existence of unplanned digressions in the course of the account. Among the other literary declarations by the narrator-protagonist one is found that rejects elaboration and adornment of the matter of the story (pp. 139-140).

The meta-poetic references indicate not only the shattering of the compact form, but also that the flow of the work is spontaneous, not pre-planned, and it seemingly has no subject—“what the subject is, what, as they say, is on the agenda, what I am writing to you about” (p. 140). The speaker repeats this point in different variations throughout the piece, for example, “writing you an account that is incapable of yielding results or conclusions” (p. 155); “But what does have to do with the matter at hand? What is the matter at hand?” (ibid.). Or “a man of thirty-nine, already retired for reasons of serious ill health, sitting on his balcony writing to a girl friend, or a former girl friend. He is telling her what he can see, and also what he is thinking. What the purpose is, what can be called the ‘subject’, I have already said I do not know” (p. 173). And near the end of the work the protagonist poses his addressee the question explicitly: “What is the business at hand, Mina, my dear?” (p. 207). All this is contrary to the relentless advance of the classical novella from point A to point B, with subordination of the details of the main theme and with a minimum of diversions on the way to the climax at the end.

The writer's concentration on “simple, instant, trivial things” (p. 141) similarly contravenes aspects of the novella, namely the strange and the unusual that are at the basis of the classical form of the genre. In the same spirit may be understood the intentional unwillingness of the writer, Emanuel, to approach the exotic, which is also a prevalent feature especially in the romantic novella, and his express intention of concentrating precisely on recording details of the place and the moment (ibid.). The writer also dismisses the important quality of the novella concerning the force of destiny, stressing, for example, the protagonists' foreknowledge of the course of their relationship: “Surely we both knew in advance it would be a mistake. Yet even so, you saw fit to be linked to me for a while. As for me—is it proper for a man like me, a man in my condition, to say so?—I loved you. I still do” (p. 142); similarly regarding the development of Emanuel's illness, which he learns about at his visit to the doctor (“Just as I had expected,” p. 146).¹⁴ As for his relationship with Mina, in retrospect Emanuel says “I could never prevent anything.”¹⁵ Usually knowledge of this sort is not available to the hero of the novella, who does not identify the fateful moves that mark the plot of his life. As recalled, one of the structural elements characterizing the novella and associated with its underlying fatalistic outlook is this tissue of intimations, which seemingly ought to have signalled the hero what lay in store for him, but the hero is incapable of discerning them. We saw in the first two novellas discussed above that Oz treats this element in an intentional manipulative way. He does so here too. The hero, who is also the reporter- narrator, is indeed aware of the existence of the hints and signs, but as in Crusade he does not correctly decipher the information they evince. However, unlike Crusade the secular and rational hero of Longing knows that precisely the manifestations of humdrum and ordinary life are what carry this vital information: “The simple, searing, trivial things, what urgent information are they straining to convey to me” (p. 188); and “Are the wind and the rain meant for me this time?” (p. 209).

As noted, the novella is characterized, among other things, by the play of the objective and the subjective. Objective and supposedly detached reporting usually conceals subjective postures, which may be indirectly apprised largely by the stylization of the work. Since the narrator in Longing is also the hero, he is prima-facie suspected of holding subjective views of himself. But in fact this is not so. The narrator Emanuel reports his life-history in a quasi-objective manner, as if looking at it from a point outside himself, as though through scientific observation, while his observations (defined expressly as such), which are meant to report his surroundings and the people in them with an external observer's objectivity, become subjective, sensitive, and even somewhat emotional expressions (especially observations of Uri, his neighbour's son, or Nachtshe, the youth leader).

At times in this work the points of reference to the novella are camouflaged by being absorbed into the context, which defaces their identity almost beyond recognition. For example, the phrase “turning point,” which may allude to the moment of change characteristic of the novella, appears here in a context that apparently marks the absence of a change for the worse. The doctor says to Emanuel, “and if there's been no change for the worse by then, we'll be entitled to take it as an encouraging sign. No, more than a sign, a turning point!” (p. 146). But since Emanuel does in fact note a gradual change for the worse, the possibility of seeing a turning point here in the way the doctor means is in any case eliminated, and on the contrary this is indeed a situation of no return, as highlighted by the turning point in the novella.

Catastrophe, which characterizes many novella-like works, is likewise hinted at here, again in a context that blurs its definition and the magnitude of the disaster it involves. Emanuel utters the sentence “But all this will end badly” (p. 152), an explicit avowal of the sense of approaching catastrophe, but in their immediate and local context his words refer to nothing other than the growing attachment between the boy Uri, who admires him, and himself. The hero's ability to sense the approach of catastrophe is in itself a contradiction in respect of the assumptions inherent in the novella genre.

The ending of the story with the words “Good night. Everything will be all right” is in clear opposition to the classical endings of tragic novellas, which conclude in the very worst circumstances. This is the point from where it is possible to look back and try to understand the logic behind the form in this work.

Emanuel defines himself, in fact, as a sort of “watcher over the House of Israel,” a modern substitute for the prophet, yet he submerges this fact into self-ironic statements such as: “As if here in Jerusalem even a man like me could momentarily be chosen for the role of messenger” (p. 155); or “If I were not afraid of making you lose your temper I would use the word ‘absurd.’ You and Jerusalem. Jerusalem and I. We as the heirs of the prophets […]” (pp. 149-150). A secular prophet, who cannot work wonders (p. 210), is thus the role assumed—willingly or not—by the hero of the story. Therefore, the ending prophesying good refers not to his personal account but to the account of all Israel, as Emanuel describes it in a sort of parodic passage preceding the end and containing fragments of biblical prophecy with future visions of Jerusalem becoming transformed into the new Vienna. Emanuel is thus fashioned as a kind of prophet of consolation, and in certain senses he is also the “atoner,” through his suffering body for the sins of his people, who in his phrase “turn a new leaf only to smudge it with ancient neuroses.”

Emanuel is a disciple of and a refugee from the Central European culture, which at once attains its peak and its defilement in the thirties of this century. His life in the present runs along two parallel lines: Jerusalem, where he lives, and Vienna, which he remembers for good and for bad. This dichotomy acquires symbolic charges in the work, which influence its various layers, including that which is the focus of our interest. Through the narration of the personal decline of Dr Emanuel Nussbaum another story looks out, that of the endurance and renewal of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, as seen at a specific point in time on the eve of the War of Independence. Decline and renewal, past and future, old and new—these are therefore the parameters that shape the story. Against this background the means applied by its author in respect of genre also become clear.

In essence it may be said that here Oz exposes the novella's devices one by one, so as to propose substitutes for them in the spirit of the “time and place,” as the hero puts it. For time and place fulfil a central role here, which dictates not only the specific content of the work but also its special form. The hero-speaker in the tale is versed, as we are told, in Central European culture, and he feels his way to the heart of the Israeli culture, which is revolutionary and taking shape. The author gives expression to this by taking the traditional literary form fixed in the Central European novella and transforming it into a frame of reference that is present in the background but subject to changes and variations, which clearly attest to the forging of a new path for the old framework.

The light of the Land of Israel, the blazing light, is not just a hindrance to writing, as Oz presented it in the early seventies. Paradoxically, it serves as a spur in the quest for new and independent ways of contending with writing, which will accord with this bright reality. In Longing this light serves as an interesting trope for the new experience of the place: “The whole morning was flooded by a deep sky-blue. Much more than a tone or a color: it was such a pure concentrated blue that it felt like a potion. The buildings and the plants responded with a general awakening, as though redoubling their hold on their own colors, or giving concrete expression to a national slogan that is current at the moment in the Hebrew newspapers and Underground broadcasts: To any provocation we shall react twofold; we are determined to stand by what is ours to the last” (p. 175). In this connection it should be stated that “to stand by what is ours to the last” may also be interpreted, with due caution, as a disguised statement concerning poetics, applied in Oz's novellas in respect of both content and form, as we have tried to demonstrate above.

V.

Oz's novella changes from being a condensed and closed structure to an open form, with independent identifying marks, which becomes increasingly aware of itself as a work of art: a sort of contradiction to the traditional European novella.

It seems possible to state that the transformation that occurs between Crusade, and The Hill of Evil Counsel and Longing to no small extent also involves changes that took place following the Yom Kippur War and its influence on the writer.

In 1972, when Amos Oz set forth his views in a lecture, some of which was cited at the opening of this paper, he shared with his audience, among other things, considerations of an alternative route that the writer in Israel of that time might choose: “There is another way that I have been thinking about quite a lot recently. It may be possible to try to catch the time and place, the displaced refugees, as they are, with all their elusiveness and emaciation, with the midday light itself. To write like a camera that takes in too much light, so that the outlines are blurred, the eyes are screwed up, the film is scorched, like photographing straight into the summer sun.” ([1979] 1995: 34).

The novellas in The Hill of Evil Counsel, which were written after the Yom Kippur War, reflect, I believe, the intermediary stage between seclusion in the cellar, as Oz puts it, which largely characterizes Crusade, and emerging fully into the light, to that writing with the “eyes screwed up, the film […] scorched,” which Oz speaks of and which he would later attempt to handle in novels such as A Perfect Peace, Black Box, To Know a Woman, Fima, and more. The fracture of the Yom Kippur War, when many questions surfaced that until then had been pushed aside or had not won attention, caused a change in Oz's writing too. Gershon Shaked, seeking to characterize Oz's writing as a whole, termed this “an attempt to work down from the heights to the roots” (1985: 82-83). In Crusade, which takes place in a medieval setting, quasi-mythical infrastructures were probed which in various complex ways brought into confrontation an irrational world and a rational world, and Judaism and Christianity as contrasting essences; but in the novellas after 1973 the author concentrates on the roots of local existence in the Land of Israel, bathed in light. Yet even at this stage, in keeping with his literary perception, he has to move away, if not regarding place then at least regarding time. Therefore, he returns to the pre-state years and to the artistic solutions indicated above, which allow him to match up to the blazing light.

It should be emphasized that the novellas in The Hill of Evil Counsel are an intermediary stage in Oz's writing not only in the sense indicated above.

They represent the phase in his writing where centre-stage is still occupied by extraordinary events of a melodramatic nature. This explains at least partially the need for the novella genre. But already at this stage the centre of gravity is at the same time beginning to shift towards the trivial day-to-day events that make the fabric of life in Eretz Israel, and as this fabric becomes increasingly thicker the need to hold on to the traditional somewhat limiting structure of the novella diminishes. In this manner the author makes his way to the Israeli novel of the here and now, which rests more and more on the trivial and the banal, which in his work he transforms into metonyms and metaphors for the Israeli condition.

Notes

1. The novella Crusade was published in a book (Unto Death) two years later, in 1971, together with Late Love.

2. An example of the first kind of study is the book by Bennet and Waidson, A History of the German Novelle (1970); an example of the second kind is the book by Ellis, Narration in the German Novelle, particularly the chapter entitled “Theory and Interpretation,” which has reservations regarding the traditional definitions of the features of the German novella (1974: 1-45).

3. In this connection Goethe's definition of the novella in his discussion with Ackerman (on 29 January 1827) is renowned: “What is a novella but an unprecedented happening that has actually occurred” (my emphasis—CS).

4. E.g., the scholar Arno Mulot, cited by Polheim (1965: 70-71).

5. According to this statement, the work Mr. Levi (which is also published in The Hill of Evil Counsel), which ends with the sentence “What has been has been, and a new day is beginning,” expressly declares itself a story based on an incident, at the conclusion of which it is possible to resume normal life, and not as a novella dealing with settled fates. Mr. Levi is the story of growing up and adolescence in the setting prior to the War of Independence. The boy Uri Kolodny passes through various stations on his way to maturity and disillusionment from childhood fantasies. The strange event of the arrival of the man called Mr. Levi, his concealment by the Kolodny family and his mysterious disappearance, which are denied by the boy's parents, are not perceived seemingly as the climax of the story but as an episode concluding a process which allows the hero to move on to his next life stage without trauma. Nevertheless, this ending can be read ironically.

6. On the subject of chance and destiny in the German novella see Bennet & Waidson, pp. 5-6; Swales, pp. 26-34.

7. Benno von Wiese comments that chance in the novella may serve various purposes: on the one hand it may be an example of the non-transparency and unexpectedness of a person's world of experiences, and on the other as highlighting the ironic way in which the narrator plays with the story (1963: 9).

8. On this Nurit Gertz comments (1980) that the narrator's shift from third person to first person indicates “the collapse of his external, authoritative identity” (p. 150). It may, of course, be interpreted differently, as an analogous exemplification of the process experienced by the Count, who adopts an additional identity, which seems to gradually gain control of his soul.

9. It is interesting in this connection to recall Amos Oz's words regarding the action of the two narrators in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: “Thus wildness and melancholy flow from landscape to plot and from heroes to objects. But the entire story is conveyed to us not directly but through the refined and censored formulations of Mr. Lockwood, having previously been smoothed out and ‘purified’ by Mrs. Dean, the self-righteous housekeeper. Thus are created perspectives that deepen the fear and diminish the emotional melodrama. Because the plot is, as it were, veiled and rectified by these two inner narrators. This possible multiplicity of viewpoints, the game of virtuous cleansing of horrifying events, this masterpiece of literary cunning which obliges you to doubt every word of Mr. Lockwood and to turn Mrs. Dean's descriptions upside-down […]” (1979: 60).

   It seems that the narrators' action described here served as Oz's model, albeit hidden, when he created his two narrators in Crusade, thereby “forcing” the reader to constantly suspect the information they supplied.

10. The turning point as a structural element of the novella was first noted by Ludwig Tieck in 1829. He speaks of “the turning point in the plot—at which the story so unexpectedly changes direction, while yet developing the consequences with a certain naturalness […].” Like other perceptions of the novella, Tieck's outlook came up against reservations in the course of time. See e.g. Manfred Schunicht's article “Der ‘Falke’ am ‘Wendepunkt’” in Kuntz (1968: 433-462); see also Ellis, pp. 4-6, 18.

11. The irony on the part of the author is evident in this context in another matter: the narrator remarks that “clearly there was no hope of escape [from the abandoned monastery] until some change took place” (69). And soon afterwards he notes that a change had indeed happened: “The Count was changing. Compassion took hold of him day by day. Something strange, a kind of hesitancy almost amounting to tenderness, suddenly came over him.” This is therefore a change not of the expected kind, and the departure from the abandoned monastery is not that which Claude means by his plain statement, as the Count does not leave there, while the emergence of the handful of survivors is a departure of an entirely different kind—that of the defeated.

12. One of the observed aspects of the novella is the play between the objective and the subjective, as already pointed out by Friedrich Schlegel; von Wiese argues that the subjective in the novella is primarily expressed in the stylization. The author, he says, “plays” with the material in such a way as to indirectly express by its means his “I” (1963: 8).

13. Gershon Shaked (1985: 82-83) maintains that Oz's concern in his work generally, as in his individual writings is the collective subconscious rather than the fate of individuals: “In his eyes individuals are no more than components of a collective structure. A re-appraisal of all these stories is likely to expose here too an attempt at an archetypal interpretation of the Israeli experience.”

14. In the Hebrew original the issue of prior knowledge is stressed, and is connected by way of contrast with the observed aspect of unknowing, which characterizes the heroes of the novella.

15. The lover and illness penetrate the hero's life simultaneously, and they are perceived by the protagonist almost as interchangeable. In any event, in this work love is conceived–not by accident–as analogous to illness. The hero's disintegration begins to take place at the same time in his body and in his soul because of the two.

Works Cited

Bennet, E. K. / Waidson, H. M., A History of the German Novelle, Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Ellis, John M., Narration in the German Novelle, Cambridge University Press, 1974.

Gertz, Nurit, Amos Oz-monograph, Sitriyat Poalim, [Tel-Aviv] 1980.

Klausner, Yehudah Aryeh, The Novella in Hebrew Literature, Yehoshua Tchethik, Tel-Aviv, 1949.

Kunz, Josef, Novelle, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1968.

Oz, Amos, Unto Death, (translated by Nicholas de Lange in collaboration with the author), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London, 1971, 1975.

Oz, Amos, The Hill of Evil Counsel, (translated by Nicholas de Lange in collaboration with the author), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London, 1978.

Oz, Amos, Under this Blazing Light, (translated by Nicholas de Lange in collaboration with the author), Cambridge, 1995.

Polheim, Karl Konrad, Novellentheorie und Novellenforschung, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1965.

Shaked, Gershon, Wave after Wave in Hebrew Narrative, Ketter, Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1985, pp. 77-83.

Swales, Martin, The German Novelle, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1977.

Von Wiese, Benno, Novelle, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung Stuttgart, 1963.