Two Tales: Betrothed & Edo and Enam (16 page)

Yemenite Jew, late 19th c.

29. Thou hast set a boundary… / Psalms 104:9 and cf. Rashi.

30. Rishon LeZion / Coastal farm settlement established to the south of Jaffa in 1882; under Baron Rothschild’s patronage the Carmel-Mizrahi winery was founded there.

30. Old Baron / Apparently this character is a conflation of two historical figures: Moritz Hall (1838–1914) and his son-in-law Baron Plato von Ustinov (1840– 1918), a Russian-born German citizen, and grandfather of the actor Peter Ustinov. Ustinov was the owner of the Hôtel du Parc in Jaffa, renowned for its gardens and talking parrots; presumably the setting for “Betrothed”. Hall, a Jew from Cracow, was a cannon-caster of King Negus Tewodros II of E thiopia, where he was converted to Protestantism. He married an Ethiopian court-lady Katharina
née
Zander (1850–1932), who was of mixed Ethiopian-German origin. The character of the Old Baron in Jaffa also appears in Agnon’s epic novel of the Second
Aliyah
,
Temol Shilshom
(translated by Barbara Harshav as
Only Yesterday
[Princeton University Press, 2000]). For more on the historical background of these characters see the monograph by Avraham Holtz and Toby Berger Holtz,
Moritz Hall: The Old Man of Jaffa
(University of Haifa, 2003).

Hôtel du Parc

Moritz Hall (courtesy T. Holtz)

31. Settlement Bank / Jewish Colonial Trust, which provided loans to Jewish farmers and helped promote construction and settlement, was established in London by the second Zionist Congress in 1899 as the financial instrument of the Zionist Organization. Later incorporated as the present-day Bank Leumi.

34.
Allah kareem
/ Arabic: God is the most generous.

34. Japheth / Son of the Biblical Noah (Genesis 5:32); according to folkloric tradition he was the founder and eponym of the ancient city of Jaffa.

35. Nebuchadnezzar / Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 634–562
BCE
), king of the Babylonian Empire, responsible for the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and forced exile of the Jewish tribes (also renowned for the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon).

37. Asclepius / Greek god of medicine and healing; son of Apollo.

40. Ilyushin the taxidermist / Walter Lever, this story’s translator, changed this character’s name in order to preserve in English an element of the word-play Ilyushin-Illusion (in chapter 22, p. 57) which is generated from Shoshanah’s misunderstanding or mispronouncing of his name. In Hebrew the character is named Arzef, and appears in a significant, if minor, role in Agnon’s
Temol Shilshom
– see especially Book II Chapter 7.3 (pp. 241–244 in
Only Yesterday
) and Book IV Chapter 15.2 (pp. 604–608) – where he is portrayed as a craftsman and scientist fully devoted to his work and research by being fully unencumbered by family life:

Arzef lives alone like the First Adam in the Garden of Eden, with no wife and no sons and no cares and no troubles, among all kinds of livestock and animals and birds and insects and reptiles and snakes and scorpions. He dwells with them in peace, and even when he takes their soul, they don’t demand his blood in exchange, since they enter the great museums of Europe because of him, and professors and scholars flock to his door and give him honorary degrees and money. Arzef doesn’t run after money and doesn’t brag about the honorary degrees. Let those who get all their honor from others brag about them. It’s enough for Arzef to look at his handiwork and know that never in his life has he ruined any creature in the world, on the contrary, he gave a name and remainder to some birds of the Land of Israel who were said to have vanished from the earth” (
Only Yesterday
, p. 242).

Compare this to the personality of our Dr. Rechnitz and his seaweeds!

It was rumored that Agnon modeled Arzef on Yisrael Aharoni (1882–1946), a Russian-born naturalist, known as the “first Hebrew zoologist”, having discovered and coined Hebrew names for dozens of previously unknown animals, birds, and insects. He emigrated to Jerusalem in 1901, ultimately obtaining an academic post at the Hebrew University. Typically, Agnon neither denied nor confirmed this, see
MeAtzmi el Atzmi
(Schocken, 2000), p. 468.

Yisrael Aharoni

41.
Sanin
/ 1907 Russian novel by Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev (1878–1927); censored for its scandalous erotic and revolutionary content, making it particularly popular with young readers.

43. Otto Weininger and his book
Sex and Character
/ Weininger (1880–1903) was a Jewish-born Viennese philosopher. His book
Sex and Character
, published the same year as his suicide, attempts a scientific argument that all people are composed of both male and the female characteristics. Having converted to Protestantism the year before publication, Weininger analyzes the archetypal Jew as “feminine” – Christianity is described as “the highest expression of the highest faith”, while Judaism is called “the extreme of cowardliness”. Weininger decries the decay of modern times, and attributes much of it to feminine, or “Jewish”, influences.

45. Kirov / City and the administrative center of Kirov Oblast, Russia, located on the Vyatka River, about 950 km. northeast of Moscow.

45. Ibsen / Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), Norwegian playwright and predominate force in European realism and modernism on the stage and in literature.

46. Sharon settlements / The Sharon region is the northern half of Israel’s coastal plain.

48.
Herrchen
/ German for “My Lord”, but can also mean a pet-owner.

51. Western Wall / Alt. Wailing Wall; remnant of the ancient retaining wall surrounding the Jerusalem Temple, destroyed in 70 CE.

51. Sha’arei Zedek Hospital / Founded on Jaffa Road in 1902, the first major medical facility in Jerusalem outside the walls of the Old City.

51. A certain doctor / Presumably the founder and long-time director of Sha’arei Zedek, Dr. Moshe (Moritz) Wallach (1866–1957).

Dr. Moshe Wallach (in 1956)

56. Ein Rogel / Natural spring and ancient water source on the southeastern outskirts of the Old City of Jerusalem (see Samuel II 17:17, e.g.).

57. Our days on earth are like a shadow / Cf. Chronicles II 29:15.

60. Opened a book… nobody dreams of himself as dead / Presumably Freud’s 1899
The Interpretation of Dreams
, which actually states the opposite of what Shoshanah claims (likely a deliberate “mistake” by Agnon).

63. Nietzsche / Friedrich Nietzsche (1844– 1900) was appointed professor of classical philology at the University of Basel at the age of 24, even prior to completing his Ph.D.

65. Kaiser Wilhem / Wilhem II (1859–1941), last German Emperor and King of Prussia (reigned 1888–1918).

66. Sworn to be faithful / It is from this Hebrew phrase,
shevu’at emunim
, that the story takes its title.