Print
PDF FormatASSAF INBARI RESPONDS:
The letter by Mr. Goldman and Ms. Patton contains three arguments against my essay: (i) The contrast I made between biblical prose and ancient Indian literature is, in their opinion, a false one, for Indian literature was no less narrative than the Bible; (ii) they argue that I ignored the connection between the Bible and the Mesopotamian literature; and (iii) they dispute the distinction I made between the poetics of Agnon and that of Brenner, because Brenner and Agnon were good friends, because Brenner was a Zionist, and because Agnon, whom I defined as having a Hebrew poetics, attested that he had been influenced, inter alia, by Homer.
As for the first argument: The ancient Indian literature consisted in its entirety of poetry, from the Vedas and Upanishads to the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Structurally and phonetically, these works are poems in the full sense of the word. They are chanted with a fixed meter (which takes into account short and long vowels) and fixed stanzas (shlokas). The Brahmans sang them. The fact that a part of the literature consists of stories is not relevant to the point raised in my essay. I did not maintain that they were not narratives, but that they were not prose. Poetry can be narrative, just as it can be philosophical or ritual—and the Indian poetry was all of these. This does not make it prose. The Indian epic, like the Sumerian or the Homeric epic, was poetrywith a plot. Of all the narrative texts of antiquity, the Bible, in its narrative sections, was the only text that unfolded its story in prose, without any poetical rhythm or division into stanzas.
This is not the only essential contrast between the Bible and the Indian classics. Take, for example, the voice of the narrator, which I discussed at length in my essay. It is hard to imagine a more striking contrast than that between the impersonal biblical narrator, who represents an anonymous author, and the extreme self-personification of the Indian epic author. Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, was the biological father of all the characters to whom he relates (imagine for a moment that the Bible had been written as a first-person monologue by Abraham). In the same manner, Valmiki, one of the principals of the Ramayana, is the poet who puts his name on this work.
Regarding the second argument: Not only did I not ignore the connection between the Bible and the Mesopotamian literature, I expressly argued that the authors of the Bible took the central Mesopotamian myths and adapted them in order to transform their meaning radically. I did not present the Bible as having appeared in a cultural vacuum, but the opposite: As a text whose innovation lay primarily in its direct confrontation with the pagan literature of the region.
Their third argument, regarding Agnon and Brenner, is a claim about their personal lives, and is irrelevant to my claim, which was literary. Does the fact that Brenner and Agnon were friends imply anything about the narrative art of each? I wrote nothing about Brenner the person or Agnon the person; I wrote about their poetics. I showed that the prose of Agnon walked the poetical path that extends from the Bible to the Hasidic tale, and that the prose of Brenner did not follow this path. Typical of their arguments, Goldman and Patton even invoke Homer in a personal, not literary, context. Agnon’s testimony about his sources of inspiration cannot replace an analysis of his works. What is important is not what the author said, but what he wrote. If there is any similarity between the novels of Agnon and the epics of Homer, this pales in comparison with the poetical gulf that separates them: The disparity between prose and poetry, between a broader historical sequence (Agnon) and a focus upon a dramatic moment (Homer), and between national content (Agnon) and one focusing on the tribulations of individuals. (During the time of Homer, the Greeks did not possess a national consciousness, and did not perceive themselves as a “people.” See M.I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (London: Random House, 1999), p. 24.)
Ruth Landau’s letter also makes three arguments against my essay: (i) That “Hebrew literature” is commonly taken to mean literature written in Hebrew, which thereby refutes my argument that it is not the language, but rather the poetics that defines the identity of a national literature; (ii) that I disregarded the non-narrative portions of the Bible (mainly in the prophetical books), and thus presented a tendentious and false selection of the Book of Books; and (iii) that I overlooked the religious content of the Hebrew canon, and therefore my definition of Hebrew literature (“historical, national, deed-based narrative prose”) misses the most important element of our national identity, the belief in God.
As for Landau’s first charge, it is instructive to apply her linguistic standards to literature written in the German language. Some of the greatest authors of twentieth-century “German literature” (Thomas Mann, Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass) were indeed Germans; yet what is one to make of Austrians such as Robert Musil and Hermann Broch, Czechs such as Franz Kafka and Rainer Maria Rilke, Swiss such as Max Frisch and Friedrich Durrenmatt, the Bulgarian Elias Canetti or the Rumanian Paul Celan? They all wrote in German, and their works figure prominently in the modern canon of “German literature;” but they share no common national identity (Broch, Kafka, Canetti and Celan, who lived in four different countries, were, moreover, Jews—a fact that further underscores the irrelevance of language to national identity).
The same is true of twentieth-century “Spanish literature,” whose most important figures came from vastly different countries: Argentina (Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar), Colombia (Gabriel Garcia Marquez), Spain (Federico Garcia Lorca), Mexico (Carlos Fuentes) and Peru (Mario Vargas Llosa). This is also true, of course, for what Landau would have us call “English literature”—which must include authors from the United States (William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway), Ireland (James Joyce, William Butler Yeats), Great Britain (Virginia Woolfe, Graham Greene), Australia (Patrick White), Rhodesia (Doris Lessing) and South Africa (Andre Brink). One wonders what Landau would say about writers who abandoned their mother tongue for another language, such as the Irishman Samuel Beckett, who wrote in French, or the Pole Joseph Conrad and the Dane Isak Dinesen, who wrote in English? And what of authors who deserted one language for another in the middle of their literary career, such as Vladimir Nabokov (who rejected Russian for English) or Milan Kundera (who left Czech for French)? An author can choose his language of writing independent of his national identity. Kafka was no German, Marquez no Spaniard, Beckett no Frenchman and Nabokov no Englishman. The touchstone of national identity in literature is not language but poetics. If there is any real meaning to “French” (or “Russian,” or “Irish”) literature, it is rooted in a distinct national approach, possessing discernible qualities, both in terms of the contents with which it
is occupied, and in terms of the literary means it employs. If there is a ‘Hebrew literature,” then its essence is defined by its poetics. That is the subject of my essay.
is occupied, and in terms of the literary means it employs. If there is a ‘Hebrew literature,” then its essence is defined by its poetics. That is the subject of my essay.
As for her second argument, about my “disregard” for the non-narrative sections of the Bible: Landau mistakes my claim of a hierarchy of genres for one that would focus exclusively upon narrative prose at the expense of all else. When we approach any heterogeneous system, such as the Bible, in order to identify those aspects which distinguish it from other textual enterprises (such as the Homeric, Mesopotamian or Indian epics), we must ask: What does this literary enterprise have that the others do not? Regardless of its heterogeneity, what distinguishes it? What is its literary innovation? In the case of the Bible, the answer is prose. Narrative prose was invented in the Bible. About two-thirds of the Bible is written as narrative prose, including the most sacred biblical unit, the Books of Moses. In other words, that the Bible is mainly narrative prose is as much a qualitative as a quantitative assessment. As my essay shows, this fact is connected to the very essence of
the biblical revolution: The Bible’s historical-national monotheism can be expressed and imparted only as a historical-national narrative, not as philosophy or poetry.
the biblical revolution: The Bible’s historical-national monotheism can be expressed and imparted only as a historical-national narrative, not as philosophy or poetry.
This does not mean that there was no need for the Bible to include discursive writing (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs), poetical writing (Psalms, the Song of Songs) or visionary writing (Isaiah to Malachi). The question is, rather, what is the basic genre of the Bible, without which there may be no literary significance to all the other genres it includes. The God of the prophets is the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” who “brought us forth from Egypt”; to prophesy, in the Bible, means to speak on behalf of the narrative that is represented in the segments of prose. This is a one-way, subordinate relationship: Prophecy is completely secondary to the narrative story of the Patriarchs, the Exodus and the Revelation at Sinai, while the narrative exists either with or without prophecy.
