The Poetics of Unravelling: Agnon`s Hidden Tsadik

Many of Agnon`s narratives are "Tsadik Stories", a chassidic genre of literature devoted to the figure of the righteous one, who, unlike a rabbi, also possesses spiritual abilities and conduct. Often the Tsadik is construed as an outcast of society while his virtues are hidden. The Tsadik is usually a handyman who is devoted to craftsmanship and whose process of exposure leads to his death. This dialectical form, of someone whose virtue is part of his anonymity, enables Agnon to express the heights of his dialogue mastery, since it is by way of a very intense dialogue that the real and hidden identity is revealed. In my paper I intend to outline Agnon`s Tsadik stories and focus on two major examples: "The Hidden Tsadik" from Agnon`s voluminous work A City in Its Fullness (1973) and the famous novella And the Crook Shall Be Made Straight (1911), which was provocatively interpreted by Gershom Scholem, who saw its protagonist, Menashe Haim the beggar as a hidden tsadik. This interpretation is also concealed in Scholem`s dairies, which were not translated into Hebrew and therefore remained hidden from scholars` attention. Scholem, like Agnon, was fascinated by the figures of the Lamed Vav Tsadikim, who are supposedly hidden while their modest conduct keeps the world existing. I will offer a comparative study of the two main dialogues of revealing in these stories, with the German-Jewish Dialogical philosophy, and the dialogical liturgy of Kaddish.