Shira (1971) by Shmuel Yosef Agnon: Migrations of the Self and a Rediscovery of Selfhood in the Promised Land
The beautiful and moving Israeli novel about homelessness; uprooted-ness; exile and transformation, Shira (1971) by the late Nobel laureate Shmuel [Samuel] Yosef Agnon (who is to this day the only Nobel Prize winner in Literature to ever emerge from Israel) is an enormously rich, complex, seamlessly written story about the lives and circumstances of various immigrants to Israel. The book is set in Jerusalem [then Palestine] before World War II. It has as its dominant, most vibrant concern (there are many concerns in the story but one is, I believe, still the central nerve of the novel) an extramarital affair with the title character Shira - this being the illicit fruit of what we today would call (banally) a 'midlife crisis'). Agnon makes infinitely, ingeniously more of it than that. Herbst the German-born immigrant to Israel is the proverbial stranger in a strange land; and he must first wander in the darkness at its outermost borders in order to know how and why he truly fits, after all, within it (albeit uneasily). It is this affair of Herbst's with the title character Shira, in fact, that seems to ultimately point the alienated, self-estranged Herbst circuitously, toward real depth and authenticity. Shira, who
Shira (1971) was written (and actually was never completed by Agnon) up to the time of Shmuel Yosef Agnon's death in 19701. Fantasies are then all such a character has until then, and Emma and Herbst alike lead the richest of fantasy lives. That is the immigrant's perpetual fate in an adopted homeland. This then parallels another birth whose own pangs are felt continually in the various external, historically significant events of the novel: the birth of Israel itself. Earlier, the affair has simply been the source of excitement he now wound the remaining stray tendrils of his life (and others' lives) around. As a disaffected and alienated character, Manfred Herbst is also perhaps a sort of male Emma Bovary [although here he finds no provincial Chambery!]-that is, he comes alive in full only, and ever, in the presence of illicit danger or excitement. Soon Herbst prowls in search of her there at night - suddenly a restless, rapacious tomcat. That too, while not pretty, is part of who he is Shmuel Yosef Agnon was an Austrian immigrant to Israel during these same years, and the author creates sympathy for the "betwixt and between" feelings probably typical of most if not all immigrants everywhere. Shira leaves in a poor neighborhood of Jerusalem. The boredom and weariness with life masks his beginning struggle toward core identity, i. helps Herbst's wife Henrietta give birth to their daughter Sarah in Jerusalem also helps give birth symbolically Sarah's father's long-cocooned personhood. From there, then, Herbst may now also, finally, begin seeking his uneasy peace with the Promised Land beneath his feet. The birth pangs of Israel are in fact in a larger sense much like Herbst's as he himself becomes slowly transformed. Ironically, through Herbst's engaging in passionate, illicit love rather than engaging in anything more sublime, spiritual, patriotic, or academic (or just socially acceptable) he finds himself led circuitously; erratically closer and closer to who he is - replete with sadomasochistic fantasies and chronic nighttime wanderlust. Added to that Shira develops leprosy, this most unlikely catalyst of all for Herbst's profound emotional transformation.
Common topics in this essay:
War II,
Nobel Prize,
Hebrew University,
Agnon's Nobel,
Herbst German-born,
Added Shira,
Sarah Jerusalem,
Shira Shira,
Ironically Herbst's,
Emma Bovary,
title character,
manfred herbst,
sadomasochistic fantasies,
world war ii,
world war,
yosef agnon,
war ii,
nobel prize,
jewish history,
daughter sarah,
shmuel yosef,
title character shira,
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Acceptance Essays
