Word: guests
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Listlessness of Limbo. Agnon's nameless Wandering Jew in this 1939 novel is a fortyish exile returned from Palestine after World War I to the East European town of his youth. Moving into a small hotel, the wanderer becomes "that man who was a guest for the night and stayed for many nights." Agnon himself was born in the Galicia region of Austro-Hungarian Poland, went to Palestine as a very young man, then back to Europe during World War I before returning to his adopted homeland. Obvious elements of disenchanted autobiography are present in the words that another...
Only in the Beit Midrash, the holy "house of study," does the guest find the home he was looking for: it seems to be the "one place in the town where you find no suffering." Yet the house of study is, in fact, abstracted from life in the village, perhaps from all life. Its aura is otherworldly-a "light that has been severed from the light of the universe and shines by itself...
...GUEST FOR THE NIGHT by S. Y. Agnon, translated from the Hebrew by Misha Louvish. 485 pages. Schocken Books...
Ultimate Quest. Here is the recurring dilemma that Agnon never quite resolves in his stories. His scholar-heroes dream of locking themselves up with some sanctified absolute discipline that will freeze change and make even time stand still. Yet, like the guest, they feel disturbing tugs toward the world outside-toward the everyday pleasures of walking in the forest or smiling once more at Rachel, the hotel-keeper's daughter. It is as if what keeps security in also keeps the very flavor of life out. And so, at the moment they discover their sanctuary, Agnon's characters...
...Agnon half-concludes, "is defined as a being that moves." In the end, the guest returns to Palestine, but with a kind of sad hesitancy. For in Agnon there is no confident resolution between the perfect closed circle of ancient ritual and the improvised present tense of life...