7 min listen
Shai Agnon's "Book of the State"
ratings:
Length:
8 minutes
Released:
Aug 3, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Shai Agnon is the only Hebrew-language writer to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Agnon being awarded the prize, Toby Press has been releasing Agnon's work in English translation. Today, host Marcela Sulak reads from Agnon's introduction to the "Book of the State," one of his little-known political satires. "... The State is a metaphysical concept rendered into something physical which feigns meta-physicality. When you attempt to approach it as a meta-physical entity it slips back into physicality; if one considers it in physical terms it suddenly reverts into meta-physicality." In this introduction, we see the role Agnon envisioned for himself as someone standing at the crossroads - a traditional figure between eastern European traditional Orthodoxy and modern Israeli life. Text: "Introduction," translated by Sara Daniel, in The Orange Peel and Other Satires. S. Y. Agnon. With annotations and a foreword by Jeffrey Saks. Toby Press, 2015. Music: Avishai Cohen Trio - Dreaming; Beyond; Variations in G Minor
Released:
Aug 3, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
I have been planted with the pines: Lea Goldberg is the best-selling poet in the history of Israel. Many of her poems express both a love of the land of Israel, as well as nostalgia for her abandoned home in the diaspora. Do you know which university department she founded and chaired?... by Israel in Translation