Shmuel Yosef Agnon

thumb|Agnon in 1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon (July 17, 1888 – February 17, 1970) was a Nobel Prize laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. Quotes The old man … received the Sabbath with sweet song and chanted the hallowing tunefully over raisin wine; while it was still day he hallowed and the sun came to gaze at his glass. … The table was well spread with all manner of fruit, beans, greenstuffs and good pies, plum water tasting like wine, but of flesh and of fish there was never a sign. … in truth it is in no way obligatory to eat flesh and fish … He and she, meaning the old man and the old woman, had never tasted flesh since growing to maturity. The Bridal Canopy, translated by I. M. Lask, New York: Literary Guild of America, 1937, p. 222. Lest I slight any creature, I must also mention the domestic animals, the beasts and birds from whom I have learned. Job said long ago (35:11): «Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, And maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?» Some of what I have learned from them I have written in my books, but I fear that I have not learned as much as I should have, for when I hear a dog bark, or a bird twitter, or a cock crow, I do not know whether they are thanking me for all I have told of them, or calling me to account. Speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm (10 December 1966), in Nobelprize.org. Quotes about Shmuel Yosef Agnon The Hebrew writers who I feel should be more widely appreciated my own mentors, I suppose-are Micha Berdyczewski, Yosef Haim Brenner, and, of course, Shmuel Yosef Agnon. Amos Oz 1986 interview in We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers by Haim Chertok (1989) Once Jews no longer obeyed the imperatives of their religion, they were virtually obliged to create new forms of identity, turning accommodation from means to end. Literature was a proving ground for the reinvention of the self. One-tenth of the Nobel Prize winners for literature in the twentieth century were born Jews, but only two of them-Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1966) and Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)-wrote in a Jewish language and only about half thought of themselves as Jews. Ruth Wisse The Modern Jewish Canon (2000) External links Category:1888 births Category:1970 deaths Category:Jews from Israel Category:Novelists from Israel Category:Poets Category:Short story writers Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:Jews from Ukraine Category:Vegetarians Category:Nobel laureates from Israel