Only Yesterday (novel)

Shmuel Yosef Agnon is one of the central figures in modern Hebrew literature; he wrote in Hebrew at a time when it was not a "daily language". He had immigrated to Palestine from Galicia in 1908 at age 20, part of the Second Aliyah wave of Jewish immigration motivated by socialist Zionism movement.^[1] Much of the material in the novel is semi-autobiographical, drawing on Agnon's experiences of aliyah, and his life in Jaffa and Jerusalem.^[2] Agnon was writing the novel for almost 15 years, during the World War II and the Holocaust,^[1][3] from 1931 to 1945.^[4] It was published in Palestine,^[1] and the book became "a sensation".^[5]

Only Yesterday is often called a masterpiece,^[6] and even "the Great Israeli Novel".^[1] The novel is sometimes categorized as "documentary fiction",^[5] and was called an "authoritative account of the Second Aliyah".^[7]

The main protagonist is Isaac Kumer (or Yitzhak Kumer), a Galician Jew who immigrates to Palestine around 1907 filled with idealism about building a new life working the land as part of the Zionist project. However, Isaac's initial dreams and illusions are gradually undermined by the harsh realities and cultural divides he encounters. In Jaffa, Isaac finds himself unable to get work on the agricultural settlements due to his lack of experience and labor scarcity, instead making a living as a house painter. He is exposed to the secular, cosmopolitan environment of Jaffa and the polemics between Labor Zionists and the religious old yishuv population in Jerusalem. Isaac develops a complex relationship with the stray dog Balak; he writes the words "mad dog" (kelev meshugga) on the dog's back, so everyone who sees him thought that the dog has rabies. Isaac eventually marries the daughter of a religious family, suggesting an embrace of tradition over his earlier secular leanings. The book ends when Balak bites Isaac and he dies of rabies.

Isaac Kumer is sometimes compared with Don Quixote,^[3][2][8][9] and his name is read by some commenters as Yiddish/Hebrew "hybrid" that connects him to the binding of Isaac from Genesis 22. Yiddish and German word "kumer" means '“grief,” “woe,” “misery,” or “sorrow”'.^[5] Balak is called one of the most recognizable animals in Jewish literature.^[10]

One of the most famous and analyzed elements of the novel is the stray dog named Balak who becomes an allegorical figure. Early in the story, the protagonist Isaac paints the words "mad dog" (kelev meshugga) in Hebrew on Balak's back. This act sets in motion a tragic chain of events where the dog is reviled, persecuted, beaten, and driven from place to place by people who believe he is rabid based on the writing on his back. The name, Balak, sounds like the Hebrew word for 'dog', kelev, spelled backwards.^[1] In the Bible, Book of Numbers 22:2–24:25, Balak was the King of Moab who urged Balaam to curse the Jews.^[11]

Balak's suffering mirrors the persecution of the Jewish people, but his role develops into a complex symbol over the course of the narrative, as his tale becomes increasingly intertwined with the experiences of Isaac and other human characters. Balak seems to represent the plight of the diaspora Jew, but also the alienation inherent in the condition of secular Jewish immigrants to Palestine. Interpretations have differed on whether Balak is solely a symbol of the Jewish outsider condition, or also represents aspects of Isaac's psyche. The role of Balak has been extensively analyzed through psychoanalytic lense.^[5]

Adam Kirsch called Balak's story "one of the great retellings of the Job story";^[2][1] Hillel Halkin called Balak "a dog trapped by a Jewish fate."^[10] The Balak's appearance in the novel puzzled many critics, and one of the interpretations is that he is "representing a combination of Yitshak's sexual development, naivete, self-delusion, and larger psyche".^[4] Many more interpretations exist:

Reading Balak intertextually, Dan Miron counters by examining the dog as “a canine blend of Faust and Mephistopheles.” Looking not to Goethe but toward the book of Numbers, Ilana Pardes has recently reread the Balak narrative as an ironic commentary on the excesses of Zionist biblical exegesis. From a postcolonial perspective, Uri Cohen [he] suggests that Balak is the inscription of imperialist violence evidenced in the text. Anne Golomb-Hoffman has also analyzed the story of Balak as an allegory of a “text cut loose”; in Todd Hasak-Lowy’s parallel estimation, it is an allegory of the eruptive potential of vernacular Hebrew.^[5]

Rabies is the novel can be both historical (in the 1930s there were hundreds cases of rabies in Tel Aviv) and symbolic, as argued by Sunny S. Yudkoff.^[5]

Agnon is often called "a notoriously difficult writer",^[8] his language is very different from modern Hebrew, and is described by Israelis now as "archaic":^[12]

Agnon was a linguistic pioneer who pitched his modern Hebrew prose on an ancient foundation. His language stretches back to biblical times and weaves in almost everything that came after, from Mishnaic and Talmudic and liturgical elements to modern Hebrew poems and Zionist slogans.^[8]

The first English translation of Only Yesterday was made in 2000 by Barbara Harshav [he], and published by Princeton University Press. The translation efforts were described as "the impossible task of wrestling Agnon into English"^[8] and "heroic efforts".^[9] The book also contains a glossary and "an excellent introduction" by Israeli poet and translator Benjamin Harshav, who is also Barbara Harshav's husband.^[8]

Agnon collaborated with the artist Avigdor Arikha, who illustrated parts of the book published as "Stray Dog" (Kelev Hutzot).^[13] Amos Oz has "an episode-by-episode discussion of Only Yesterday" in his book The Silence of Heaven.^[9]

• Fleck, Jeffrey (1983). "Fiction, Fable, and the Face of a Generation: S. Y. Agnon's Only Yesterday". Hebrew Annual Review (7): 69–88. ISSN 0193-7162. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
• Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven (2004). "Sentient Dogs, Liberated Rams, and Talking Asses: Agnon's Biblical Zoo: or Rereading Tmol shilshom". AJS Review. 28 (1): 105–136. doi:10.1017/S0364009404000078.
• Holtz, Avraham (2004). "Encomia and Corrigenda: On Barbara Harshav's Translation of Temol Shilshom". Prooftexts. 24 (3): 320. doi:10.2979/pft.2004.24.3.320.
• Ariel, Yaakov (2012). Good Germans, Confused Jews, and the Tragedy of Modernity: S. Y. Agnon Remembers Leipzig (PDF). De Gruyter Saur. pp. 275–292. ISBN 978-3-11-094232-3. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
• Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven (2012). "S.Y. Agnon's Jerusalem: before and after 1948" (PDF). Jewish Social Studies. 18 (3): 136–153. doi:10.2979/jewisocistud.18.3.136. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
• Moore, Michael (2013). "The dog Balak and the role of language in Agnon's Only Yesterday". Notes on Contemporary Literature. 43 (4). Retrieved 9 June 2024.
• Shait, Heddy (2015). "Horizontal or Vertical: Rereading the Space Scheme in Only Yesterday by S. Y. Agnon". AJS Review. 39 (2): 393–406. doi:10.1017/S0364009415000100.
• Hillel, Halkin (2018). "The Matchless Master of Modern Hebrew Literature". Mosaic Magazine. Archived from the original on 28 November 2023. Retrieved 10 June 2024.

• Introduction to the English translation by Benjamin Harshav
• "Only Yesterday". archive.nytimes.com., first chapter of English translation