Appelfeld and His Times: Transformations of Ahashveros, The Eternal Wandering Jew

Abstract

APPELFELD AND HIS TIMES: TRANSFORMATIONS OF AHASHVEROS, THE ETERNAL WANDERING JEW Gershon Shaked Hebrew University ofJerusalem People do not live in one time only. We live simultaneously in several times, within several pasts, as well as within different circles of the present. We also project different views of the future. This multi-temporality of existence is a human experience which only literature is capable of communicating . Individuals usually believe that they live strictly in the here and now.1 The work of a literary artist, however, is multi-temporal from a number of perspectives. The work's external times include the time of the author's life, which will always have a certain influence upon the text. The time in which the work is created and the times of its reception are also important factors, in that the same work will have a different meaning and significance in different times and in different places. The work's internal times are those that are submerged within it; they do not exist independently but emerge from a complex reciprocity among themselves. Appelfeld's external times begin with his birth in 1932. The principal formative years of his life seem to be the period between 1940 and 1945. He began to publish poems and stories during the Fifties, and his first book, Ashan [Smoke), was published in 1962. The year of his first and perhaps determinative reception is, therefore, 1962. The fact that this was one year after the Eichmann trial is of considerable significance with regard to this particular writer. Readers of Appelfeld's work are inevitably influenced by the figure of the writer himself, who is closely linked to the myth of the Shoah-a historical time which has become mythic time. Whether he writes about the nineteenth century, the nineteen-fifties, or was to write about the year two-thousand, Appelfeld's work would always stand under the sign of this myth. I The influence of Bergson. who describes time as duration (duriej and not simply a continuum. on modem literature was considerable: "Duration means that we are experienCing time as an extended duration. The experience of time is not conceived of as moments which occur one after the other and composed of numerous changes but as something which remains permanent and fixed. beyond continuum and the processes of change." Hans Meyerhoff. Time in Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles:University of California Press. 19(0) pp. 14·15. Hebrew Studies 36 (1995) 88 Shaked: Appelfeld The internal historical times that figure in Appelfeld's work either precede the five most formative years of his life or succeed them. They extend from the close of the nineteenth century, until the Fifties and Sixties in Israel. This historical time acquires its own character within Appelfeld's work, and it may be divided into three periods: the period just before the Shoah-the years prior to 1939; the period that I call "the time of refuge," which mainly includes the years 1940-1945; and finally, "the time of survival ," the period of transition from the condition of being a refugee from external circumstances to the time in which being a refugee becomes an internal condition. Inherent in all of these times is the eternal time (in tempus aeternitatis) of the Jewish people as a whole, whose history is, for Appelfeld, a recurring cycle of the same mythic pattern. This mythic time impresses its mark upon all other times, and they are merely its transformations. There may be no direct link between the publication of Appelfeld's first collection of stories and the the events of the year that preceded its publication . However, a connection was inevitably created. This connection was apparent to many of the book's readers and even more so to the literary historian wishing to do justice to the author's times. 1961 was the year of the Eichmann trial, an event which left many marks on Israeli society, including on the way in which literature has been received since then. It was the Eichmann trial (and, to a limited degree, the Kastner trial in 1953) that made the Jewish youth of Israel conscious of the fact that the Shoah...