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WINEMAN / AGNON AND RABBI NAHMAN
99
ality,” and the need for disguise. Common to all th ree is the
recu rren t theme o f the barriers and psychological delay and
failure in carrying ou t an assigned mission, together with the
sense o f a dream like existence and the presence o f paradox
and irrational motifs.
Perhaps bearing in mind Yosef Hayyim B renne r’s words o f
praise for Agnon upon the publication o f
Agunot
,8 the la tter’s
very first story to appea r in Eretz Yisrael, Rifka Horowitz
stressed tha t the commonality among them lies in content, not
in style. Almost sixty years earlier, B renne r9 had written that
while the poetic vision o f Agnon in that early work brings to
mind the poetical quality o f Rabbi N ahm an’s tales, in its lan
guage and form it goes much beyond them. Horowitz points
to o the r differences between the two who share so many qual
ities. Rabbi N ahman’s tales have ultimately an autobiographical
focus and he writes about kings and princes and the like; Agnon
lacks tha t kind o f autobiographical accent, and his characters
are average people often with all their limitations and indeci
siveness.
Like Hillel Barzel10 Horowitz accepts Agnon’s claim that he
was unfam iliar with Kafka’s writings, but she adds the obvious
corollary tha t Agnon was certainly familiar with the stories o f
Rabbi Nahman and with the o the r Bratzlav writings as well.
In his comprehensive study o f Agnon, Arnold J. Band indicated
that the young Agnon in his early teens “was particularly im
pressed with the tales about the famous Rabbi Nahman o f
Bratzlav in
Shivhe ha-RaN,
and the imprin t o f those tales is no
ticeable th roughou t his literary life.”11
As a case in point, one o f Agnon’s earlier Hebrew stories,
ha-Nidah
(The Banished O ne ),12 which appeared in 1919, sug
gests a num ber o f startling similarities and points o f connection
with one o f the tales o f Rabbi Nahman,
M a’aseh be-Ven ha-Rav
(The Tale o f the Rabbi’s Son). Like that earlier tale, also
ha-
Nidah,
which exemplifies definite neo-Romantic characteristics,
is set du ring the time o f intense and fierce conflict between
8 .
Elu ve’Elu, Kol Sippurav
II, pp. 405-416.
9.
Hapoel Hatzair
II (May 1909), p. 7. Quoted in Shaked,
Shmuel Yosef Agnon,
p. 163.
10.
Bein Agnon le-Kafka, Mehkar Mashveh
(Ramat-Gan: 1972).
11. Band,
Nostalgia and Nightmare,
p. 9.
12. Appeared initially in
Hatekufah
IV (1919); included in
Elu ve’Elu,
pp. 5-56.