Only in Translation: Cynthia Ozick and Vilém Flusser Read S.Y. Agnon

My paper focuses on two diasporic interpretations of S.Y Agnon’s literature. The first was written by the Brazilian Czech-born media theorist and philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) and appeared as the introduction to the first translation of Agnon’s stories into Portuguese, and the second is an essay written by the American author and thinker Cynthia Ozick (1926-) and published in 1988. Despite diverging in content and form, this paper shows that these essays are arenas in which Ozick and Flusser reformulate central concepts of their intellectual works and reflect on their specific living conditions as Jews in the diaspora. In this regard, I argue, the two essays expose the unique dynamics of contemporary Jewish existence outside of Israel, which revolve around issues of migration and Galuth from language, land, collective past, and Judaism as a lived experience.

The paper begins by emphasizing Ozick’s and Flusser’s shared awareness of their shortcomings as readers of translations of literature that is commonly considered to be untranslatable. As I argue, this inability to read the original Hebrew allows both authors to go beyond any conventional interpretation of Agnon’s literature. Neither of them conducts a structuralist exploration of his whole oeuvre or exposes hidden Jewish traditional meanings embedded in the use of language or symbols. Instead, both use Agnon’s work to reflect on their conditions as diasporic Jews. The paper further examines Ozick’s and Flusser’s explorations of the same story, Ido ve-Inam, which narrates an attempt of reviving and reterritorializing ancient languages in Jerusalem, and the failure of this effort. This story, I argue, represents for both authors their condition in the Galuth, which they understand to mean more than a mere separation from land and language. While seemingly emphasizing the authors’ inferiority in relation to Agnon, the Galuth condition soon appears as their advantage. Existing in this condition, I finally argue, makes Ozick less susceptible to what she defines as ‘literary idolatry,’ and it allows Flusser to preserve his notion of Judaism as a ‘gestural disruptive force.`