S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

Ruth R. Wisse, The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture (New York: The Free Press, 2000), chapter 5, pp. 163–189 [slightly adapted version as: Ruth R. Wisse, “The Yiddish and the Hebrew Writers Head for Home” in Ideology and Jewish Identity in Israeli and American Literature , ed. E. Budick (New York: SUNY Press, 2001), pp. 147–175] — Comparative study of Agnon’s A Guest for the Night with Jacob Glatstein’s two Yiddish “Yash” novels. The two most prominent Jewish writers (Agnon in Hebrew in Jerusalem, Glatstein in Yiddish in New York), almost simultaneously wrote autobiographical novels spun from homecoming visits between the wars.

S.Y. Agnon(1888–1970) was the central figure of modern Hebrew literature, and the 1966 Nobel Prize laureate for his body of writing. Born in the Galician town of Buczacz (in today’s western Ukraine), as Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes, he arrived in 1908 in Jaffa, Ottoman Palestine, where he adopted the penname Agnon and began a meteoric rise as a young writer. Between the years 1912 and 1924 he spent an extended sojourn in Germany, where he married and had two children, and came under the patronage of Shlomo Zalman Schocken and his publishing house, allowing Agnon to dedicate himself completely to his craft. After a house fire in 1924 destroyed his library and the manuscripts of unpublished writings, he returned to Jerusalem where he lived for the remainder of his life. His works deal with the conflict between traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world, and constitute a distillation of millennia of Jewish writing — from the Bible through the Rabbinic codes to Hasidic storytelling — recast into the mold of modern literature.

Misha Louvish(1909–2001) was born in Kimpolung, Austria (modern day north-eastern Romania), son of Nathan, a letterpress printer. In his youth the family emigrated to Scotland (where they were also known by the surname Lewis). Louvish graduated M.A. from the University of Glasgow in 1931. After serving with the British Army in Europe he arrived in Israel in 1949, where he worked as a journalist and editor of several publications, including at the Jerusalem Post , and used his English skills as a translator of novels, articles, and political speeches. He was employed as editor of English publications in the Israel Government Press Office during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and as a Deputy Editor of the Encyclopedia Judaica .

Louvish also translated a number of Agnon’s short stories. For his work on A Guest for the Night , he had the cooperation of Professors Naftali C. Brandwein, Allen Mandelbaum, and Oscar Shaftel.

Jeffrey Saks, founding director of ATID — the Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions in Jerusalem, is the Series Editor of The Toby Press S.Y. Agnon Library. His frequent lectures at the Agnon House are broadcast on WebYeshiva.org/Agnon.