Two Scholars Who Were in Our Town and Other Novellas

by S.Y. Agnon

New and Revised Translations from the Hebrew Including the Novellas Two Scholars Who Were in Our Town · In the Heart of the Seas · In the Prime of Her Life · Tehilla. The volume's title story Two Scholars Who Were in Our Town tells of the epic clash between two Torah scholars who according to the Talmudic phrase cannot abide each other in matters of halakhah . First published in Hebrew 1956, the story is set over a period of roughly thirty years during the mid-nineteenth century in an unnamed Our Town, clearly meant to be Agnon's native Buczacz (in today's western Ukraine). Narrating from a point three or four generations after the action, the narrator waxes nostalgic even elegiac for a time when Torah was beloved by Israel and the entire glory of a man was Torah, [when] our town was privileged to be counted among the most notable towns in the land on account of its scholars. And yet, as the plot unwinds and insults are traded in the Study House, the ancient Talmudic curse begins to work its dark power, leading to the tragic denouement. And here we see Agnon's power as a tragedian on an almost Greek scale. With his typical irony at work, the narrator pines for an earlier, more ideal time which turns out to have been rife with flaws and tragic personalities of its own. This draws the reader to question was it always ever thus? This is Agnon at his best distilling the classical texts of Jewish study into a modern midrashic matrix on which he composed his Nobel-winning literature. Includes new Foreword by Jeffery Saks and a bibliographic essay reviewing the literary criticism.

Genres: Fiction

274 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2014

About the author

also known as Shai Agnon

Dramatic novels in Hebrew of Polish-born Israeli writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon include A Guest for the Night (1939); he shared the Nobel Prize of 1966 for literature.

"For his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people," he shared this award with Nelly Sachs. He died in Jerusalem, Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmuel_...

Reviews

[Steven Stern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been reading A LOT of Agnon lately. I prefer the novels to these novellas, but of this fine batch, Tehilla was the best.

[Boris Feldman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first work by Agnon I've read. I wanted to love it. Israeli; Nobel laureate; etc. I found the novellas, to varying degrees, tedious. The experience left me reluctant to explore more deeply.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three of the four stories were enjoyable to read - quite poignant. One (by far the longest) was not; I found it plodding. Averages to four stars (barely).

[Jacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the Heart of the Seas : #3 Favorite First-Read of 2019

December 4th, 2020 : Splendid tales (or one novel and three tales, the word count running from about 17,000 words (Tehilla) to 34,000 (In the Heart of the Seas), each so different. Two Scholars and Heart are encircled by light, mild but enduring, like the intense gray light of the sky over a morning snowfall . Both have wondrous descriptions of the natural world, and nuanced, fathoms-deep explorations of the human world of faith; Two Scholars gets its momentum from little details of psychology, conversation, interaction, and the disagreements of Torah scholars while In the Heart of the Seas is built from folklore, old world-travelers' tales, the Exile's longing for the Holy Land, and the Psalms. Both have incredible endings (a common Agnon forte). Tehilla is one of Agnon's more tender pieces, infused with love for the Old City of Jerusalem and—like echoes from another world—for Galician Hasidism. It has a commanding central character and a charming, witty narrator. In the Prime of Her Life is the representative of the psychological realist strain in Agnon, but psychological realism as Agnon does it is not like any you're likely to have read before; it's full of complications, ellipses, and lacunae. In a first read, "nothing is revealed," as the old Bob Dylan song goes; in a second, a little more is, but even a revisit only feels like passing through a corner of a town, rather than ambling into its center and taking a seat in the library beside city hall.