Rhetoric Contradictions in Modern Hebrew Literature: Shmuel Yosef Agnon‟s „Between Two Cities‟ and „From an Enemy to a Lover‟

Abstract

The present study is a contrastive analysis of two stories written by Shmuel Joseph Agnon in the early 1940s. Whereas the first story, “Between Two Cities”, dramatizes the living conditions of the Jews in Europe during World War I, the second, “From an Enemy to a Lover”, downplays the crisis during that same period in mandate Palestine. Given our analysis of both stories, we claim that both stories are full of grandiloquent language, which disseminates and propagates the idea of a national homeland for the Jews. In the first story, "Between Two Cities", the author presents factual events that serve at least two ‘sinuous’ goals: first, showing the injustice experienced by the Jews in the German homeland during some specific time; second, showing the Jew's dedication to serve the German homeland. However, when the author of the two stories moves from the position of the oppressed in Germany to the position of the oppressor in Mandate Palestine, as displayed in the second story, he uses pictorial and symbolic expressions that trivialize the crisis of “the other” (the Palestinians). Here, we never find the same rhetoric of the protagonist who has already been looking for shelter, experiencing psychological distress, and seeking comfort. Rather, he is displayed as someone easily challenging the wind
in a few rounds and trying effortlessly to achieve his goal of building ‘his home’. The author describes the invader as the legitimate owner of the home, thus moving from the position of being hostile to ‘the state’ to the position of an advocate of it. He even dares to call on the other to be a lover of ‘the state and its new rulers’, as if they have never been sworn enemies.