Resumo de A Simple Story - Shmuel Yosef Agnon

A Simple story is a novella by the famous Nobel Laureate. A Simple Story is a story of a marriage. It takes place in Szybusz, a fictional town in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Blume Nacht, after her mother's death, becomes a servant in the house of cousins, whose son Hirshl falls in love with her. Blume, beautiful and almost superhumanly capable, repudiates Hirshl, a bit of a simpleton. He, when pressed by his substantial parents, slips bewilderedly into marriage with Mina, a heavily cologned boarding-school graduate. Blume meanwhile moves to another household and is rarely seen again, leaving the reader's expectations unfulfilled. Hirshl's too, for she is ever-present in his heart, stunting his sexual relationship with Mina and driving him from melancholy to madness. That he recovers, returns to his wife, and begins to find in what had been an empty-headed, passive girl robust sensuality and social understanding, seems to reflect his emerging maturity and acceptance of the bourgeois solidity represented by his parents and the town itself.

Agnon's achievement is to have combined gentle mockery of the myriad characters he brings so engagingly to life with staunch championing of values and customs that were soon to be doomed. His scholarship and literary astuteness inform a story that is at once rich in biblical allusion and redolent of the society in which he was raised.

Nobel Laureate Agnon died in 1970 with several works not translated into English; it is good to have now this readable and entertaining Simple Story published originally in 1935. Blume Nacht, newly orphaned, goes to the town of Szybusz to live with her Aunt Tsirl and Uncle Boruch Hurvitz, shop owners there, and their son Hirshl. Blume and Hirshl fall in love, but Tsirl has other plans for her Hirshl. She meets with the matchmaker, and soon Hirshl finds himself beneath the wed ding canopy with Mina Ziemlich, the daughter of a wealthy farmer, though he stills pines away for sweet Blume. Before very long, Hirshl and Mina have a child, and with a twist of Old World simplicity, they live happily ever after. What becomes of Blume? That, the au thor teasingly tells us, would fill another book (one he never got to write, alas)

S.Y Agnon's "A Simple Story" tells us of a bygone era, and of rich Jewish tradition. Set in early 1900's Austria-Hungary, this is the story of an oprhan who is taken in by her cousins, one of whom eventually falls in love with her. But it is not to be, as the boy's mother sets him up with a superficial, but pretty Jewish girl. The forground of this book is very simple: a young man hopelessly falls in love for a woman he can't marry. But in the background a deep psychological plot slowly evolves and carries the reader to the complex world of the Jewish towns in Eastern Europe before WW 2. Agnon as usual is very perceptive, very smart and writes with his wonderful combination of humor, cynicism and compassion.

Agnon as usual is very perceptive, very smart and writes with his wonderful combination of humor, cynicism and compassion. You can guess how he reacts, but you'll never guess how it ends. A decided anti-romance, it stresses duty and fidelity over our romantic notions of love. Interesting sequence where the young man goes nuts and is put into a mental hospital. It's interesting how he recovers.

Ancient religious longing, modern political aspirations and personal dreams of liberation all intersect each other in the story. Unlike many of the pioneers who went to make a new life in the Land of Israel, Agnon tried to take everything with him, which is why his writing is so packed, so intensely allusive. This is one of the glories of Agnon's prose. He is haunted by a mixture of pride and shame at being an intellectual in a society that worshiped farmers, a writer in a culture founded on a dream of physical labor. Of course all these paradoxes help make Agnon the great modernist that he is. The novella simply has created a new sts robust and energizing; yet mythical.

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