Only Yesterday

Agnon's Only Yesterday requires a close and careful reader. But the benefits of reading this novel and finishing it far out weigh the effort. First there is the problem of translation. Agnon's Hebrew was deeply layered and rich, mining much of the long tradition of Hebrew literature in every age. Of course, a translation does not covey this. But this translation gives a sense of the faux simplicity of Agnon's Hebrew prose. Beneath the deadpan delivery is a multi-layered work that taps into a three-thousand year history of Hebrew prose writing. Second, Agnon has produced a work that is an invaluable document about the early days of the New Yishuv in Palestine. Rich in local color and detail, Agnon is not afraid to take the reader on carefully crafted detours into the lives of the odd characters of the early Zionist movement, men and women who would resurrect a language and create a state. Finally, Only Yesterday belongs in the pantheon of large social novels that while exemplifying a certain time and place, capture human universals. The problems of human life, the pains, joys, loves, losses, are the ultimate subject of this book. Taken together, all these elements make for a masterful read.

I had only read one other SY Agnon book before embarking on Only Yesterday. I had read Two Tales, which as the name suggests consists of two short stories. Therefore, it was with some trepidation that I embarked on reading Only Yesterday at over 600 pages. However despite its length, I enjoyed this book for a number of reasons. First, as some other reviewers have said, the language in the book is often like poetry. I found myself reading passages aloud to get the full effect of the poetic language. Second, I found it to be a quite humerous book. There are many passages and stories in the book which are quite funny, particularly the narrative by Balak. Finally, I enjoyed the multitude of characters which Agnon describes in the book. The only criticism I have of the book is that I think it is a bit overlong. I think that the story got a bit bogged down in the middle before picking up again and ending in a strange and unpredictable way. I think the book's length will be too intimidating for most readers and as a result they will not experience the rich and rewarding experience which reading Only Yesterday provides.

Agnon is one of those writers who to be truly read needs to be read in the language he writes. The Hebrew of Agnon is a multi-layered language in which he employs many different kinds of traditional language and text. Part of his great ironic power is playing his own texts off against the tradition he is continually evoking and moving in out and away from. In this work he tells the story of a Second Aliyah pioneer to the Yishuv and in doing so makes a rich and complex commentary not only on the Zionist enterprise but on the role and place of the Jew in the modern world. This is work also fits the well- known theme of ' The Dreamer and his disappointments in meeting reality'. But Agnon is a writer who often tries to appear more simple than he is, and often the disappointments too give a kind of insight and meaning which makes having them valuable. The wanderings of Kumer, his search for dignity in building the land, his search for love, his wandering between the new world and the traditional world, between Tel Aviv of the secular pioneers and the Jerusalem of the Old Yishuv are all parts of the richness of this work. It is however precisely Agnon's intellectual playfulness and irony which would seem to stand as barriers before the reader's direct identification and sympathy with the characters. I in any case prefer some of Agnon's stories to this larger and more ambitious work.

"Only Yesterday" is, perhaps, Agnon's greatest work. In it, he displays the skill of a consummate novelist with the sensibilities of a poet. For those who are familiar with Hebrew poetry, particularly Biblical poetry, "Only Yesterday" conveys in English the rhythms and structure of classic Hebrew poetry while transmitting a sensual and, ultimately, tragic story. It is really not comparable to Singer; it is something far above and beyond Singer's work.

Agnon deserved his Nobel Prize. His most important work, Only Yesterday, casts an array of lights into the inner world of Judaism. Anyone who enjoys Bashevis Singer or Sholom Aleichem will kick themselves for the years they wasted without Agnon, who surpasses them. The translation itself is a wonder. It reproduces the Biblical style of narrative which Agnon brought to modern Hebrew literature. Agnon melds the traditional elements of Rabbinic parable and folkloric animal stories into the modern narrative of the turn-the-century Jewish settlers of Palestine. All in all, the appearance of the English translation is a great event, a must read for lovers of Jewish literature.