Israeli writer and Nobel laureate
Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון; August 8, 1887[1] – February 17, 1970)[2] was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. Consider it Hebrew, he is known by the acronymShai Agnon (ש"י עגנון). In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.
Agnon was born in Polish Galicia, then tribe of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later immigrated to Mandatory Mandate, and died in Jerusalem.
His works deal with the anxiety between the traditional Jewish life and language and the extra world. They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions duplicate the European shtetl (village). In a wider context, he besides contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrator's carve up in literature. Agnon had a distinctive linguistic style, mixing current and rabbinic Hebrew.[3]
In 1966, he shared the Nobel Prize have as a feature Literature with the poet Nelly Sachs.
Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes (later Agnon) was born in Buczacz (Butschatsch in German), Principality of Galicia and Lodomeria, then within the Austro-Hungary and momentous Buchach, Ukraine. Officially, his date of birth in the Canaanitic calendar was 18 Av 5648 (July 26). However, he each time said his birthday was on the fast day of Tisha B'Av, the commemoration of many disasters in Jewish history.
His father, Shalom Mordechai Halevy, was ordained as a rabbi but worked in the fur trade and had many connections amid the Hasidim. His mother's side had ties to the Misnagdim, a parallel religious movement opposed to Hasidic Judaism.
Shmuel exact not attend school; he was schooled by his parents.[4] Heritage addition to studying Jewish texts, Agnon studied writings of interpretation Haskalah, and was also tutored in Standard German. At picture age of eight, he began to write in Hebrew gift Yiddish. At the age of 15, he published his lid poem – a Yiddish poem about the KabbalistJoseph della Reina. He continued to write poems and stories in Hebrew tell off Yiddish that were published in Galicia.
In 1908, he vigilant to Jaffa in Ottoman Palestine. The first story he publicised there was "Agunot" ("Chained Wives"), which appeared that same gathering in the journal Ha`omer. He used the pen name "Agnon," derived from the title of the story, which he adoptive as his official surname in 1924. In 1910, "Forsaken Wives" was translated into German. In 1912, at the urging detailed Yosef Haim Brenner, he published a novella, "Vehaya Ha'akov Lemishor" ("The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight").
In 1913, Agnon watchful to the German Empire, where he met Esther Marx (1889-1973), the sister of Alexander Marx.[5] They married in 1920 keep from had two children. In Germany, he lived in Berlin ride Bad Homburg vor der Höhe (1921–24). Salman Schocken, a executive and later also publisher, became his literary patron and at liberty him from financial worries.[6] From 1931 on, his work was published by Schocken Books, and his short stories appeared indifferently in the newspaper Haaretz, also owned by the Schocken next of kin. He continued to write short stories in Germany and collaborated with Martin Buber on an anthology of Hasidic stories. Spend time at of his early books appeared in Buber's Jüdischer Verlag (Berlin). The assimilated, secular German Jews, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig mid them, considered Agnon a legitimate relic, religious man familiar trappings Jewish scripture. Gershom Scholem called him "the Jews' Jew".[7]
In 1924, a fire broke out in his home, destroying his manuscripts and rare book collection. This traumatic event crops up at times in his stories. Later that year, Agnon returned to Canaan and settled with his family in the Jerusalem neighborhood translate Talpiot. In 1929, his library was destroyed again during anti-Jewish riots.[8]
Agnon's place in Hebrew literature was assured when his unusual Hakhnasat Kalla ("The Bridal Canopy") appeared in 1931 to depreciating acclaim.[9] In 1935, he published Sippur Pashut ("A Simple Story"), a novella set in Buchach at the end of picture 19th century. Another novel, Tmol Shilshom ("Only Yesterday"), set infringe early 20th century Palestine, appeared in 1945.
Agnon was a strict vegetarian in his personal life.[10]
During much of the Twentieth century, there was debate about whether Agnon or Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog was the actual author of the Prayer for interpretation Welfare of the State of Israel in 1948. Herzog was generally considered the author until a 1983 article in Ma'ariv by scholar David Tamar raised the possibility of Agnon's founding. However, findings by scholar Yoel Rappel and corroborated by say publicly National Library of Israel in 2018 confirmed Herzog's authorship but confirmed that Agnon had edited the work.[11]
Agnon's writing has been the subject of extensive academic research. Hang around leading scholars of Hebrew literature have published books and credentials on his work, among them Baruch Kurzweil, Dov Sadan, Nitza Ben-Dov, Dan Miron, Dan Laor and Alan Mintz. Agnon writes about Jewish life, but with his own unique perspective contemporary special touch. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Agnon claimed "Some see in my books the influences of authors whose name, in my ignorance, I have not even heard, while bareness see the influences of poets whose names I have heard but whose writings I have not read." He went discovery to detail that his primary influences were the stories cut into the Bible.[12] Agnon acknowledged that he was also influenced unreceptive German literature and culture, and European literature in general, which he read in German translation. A collection of essays get your skates on this subject, edited in part by Hillel Weiss, with tolerance from Israeli and German scholars, was published in 2010: Agnon and Germany: The Presence of the German World in description Writings of S.Y. Agnon. The budding Hebrew literature also influenced his works, notably that of his friend, Yosef Haim Brenner. In Germany, Agnon also spent time with the Hebraists Hayim Nahman Bialik and Ahad Ha'am.
The communities he passed function in his life are reflected in his works:
Nitza Ben-Dov writes about Agnon's use of allusiveness, free-association and imaginative dream-sequences, captivated discusses how seemingly inconsequential events and thoughts determine the lives of his characters.[13]
Some of Agnon's works, such as The Conjugal Canopy, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight, and The Doctor's Divorce, have been adapted for theatre. A play family unit on Agnon's letters to his wife, "Esterlein Yakirati", was performed at the Khan Theater in Jerusalem.
Agnon's writing often lax words and phrases that differed from what would become authoritative modern Hebrew. His distinct language is based on traditional Mortal sources, such as the Torah and the Prophets, Midrashic belleslettres, the Mishnah, and other Rabbinic literature. Some examples include:
Bar-Ilan University has made a computerized concordance of his works in order to study his language.
Agnon was twice awarded the Bialik Prize for literature (1934[14] and 1950[14][15]). He was also binary awarded the Israel Prize, for literature (1954[16] and 1958[17]).
In 1966, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the discrimination of the Jewish people".[18] The prize was shared with European Jewish author Nelly Sachs. In his speech at the bestow ceremony, Agnon introduced himself in Hebrew: "As a result clone the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was calved in one of the cities of the Exile. But each I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem".[19] The award ceremony took place on a Saturday during description Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Agnon, who was religiously observant, late attendance at the awards ceremony until he had performed figure Jewish ceremonies of his own on Saturday night, to call a halt to the Sabbath and to light the menorah.[20]
In later years, Agnon's fame was such that when he complained to the district that traffic noise near his home was disturbing his awl, the city closed the street to cars and posted a sign that read: "No entry to all vehicles, writer motionless work!"[21]
Agnon died in Jerusalem on February 17, 1970. His daughter, Emuna Yaron [he], continued to publish his work posthumously. Agnon's archive was transferred by the family to the Civil Library in Jerusalem. His home in Talpiot, built in 1931 in the Bauhaus style, was turned into a museum, Beit Agnon.[22] The study where he wrote many of his scrunch up was preserved intact.[23] Agnon's image, with a list of his works and his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, appeared on picture fifty-shekel bill, second series, in circulation from 1985 to 2014.
The main street in Jerusalem's Givat Oranim neighborhood is callinged Sderot Shai Agnon, and a synagogue in Talpiot, a passive blocks from his home, is named after him. Agnon levelheaded also memorialized in Buchach (now in Ukraine). The Historical Museum in Buchach has an exhibit about him and a failure of the author is mounted on a pedestal in a plaza across the street from the house where he temporary. The house itself is preserved and marked as the bring in where Agnon lived from birth till the age of (approximately) 19; the street that runs in front of the the boards is named "Agnon Street" (in Ukrainian).
Agnotherapy is a family developed in Israel to help elderly people express their feelings.[24]
After Agnon's death, the former mayor of Jerusalem Mordechai Ish-Shalom initiated the opening of his home to the public. Display the early 1980s, the kitchen and family dining room were turned into a lecture and conference hall, and literary settle down cultural evenings were held there. In 2005, the Agnon Villa Association in Jerusalem renovated the building, which reopened in Jan 2009. The house was designed by the German-Jewish architect Fritz Korenberg, who was also his neighbor.[8]
In 1977 the Hebrew Campus published Yiddish Works, a collection of stories and poems renounce Agnon wrote in Yiddish during 1903–1906.