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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
A shared phenomenon in the prose fiction of Western literatures in the late nineteenth century is the exploration of individual consciousness dissociated from collective existence. Although individual consciousness had been at the center of the fictional enterprise from the beginning, forming a first condition for the rise of the novel as genre, in the novel of sentiment and in the realistic novel the inner life of individual characters was largely produced dialectically from within the medium of social relations and social ideas. The description of an interior space deserving of attention for its own sake, a space generated by rules of its own which evince no clear or necessary connection to the larger social system, constitutes one of the points at which literature can be said to have become “modernist.” Thereafter, one of the central thematic preoccupations of fiction remains the representation of consciousness itself: memory, reflection, and the manifold operations of the imagination, especially the act of writing.
1. See, Feierberg's letter to Ahad Ha'am (January 5, 1898), reprinted in Kitvei M.Z.Feierberg, ed. Eliezer, Steinman (Tel Aviv, 1941), pp.182–83.Google Scholar
2. See “An Open Letter to Mr. Berdichevsky” [Hebrew], Kitvei, pp. 156–61.Google Scholar
3. Werses, Samuel, in his chapter on Feierberg in Sippur ve-Shorsho (Ramat Gan, 1971), pp.88103, has provided a valuable morphology of the various aggadic and legendary ingredients of Whither?Google Scholar
4. First published in Ha-;Sefirah, 1897; Kitvei, pp. 147–55.Google Scholar
5. The first edition of Feierberg's work was published in Cracow in 1904 (“Ha-Sefer” Editions). Page references here throughout are given to the 1941 Steinman edition (see n. 1)these are placed second and in italics and to the English translation by Hillel Halkin (Whither? and Other Stories, Philadelphia, 1972) placed first. All passages are quoted from the Halkin translation whose skillfulness and beauty it is difficult to exaggerate. In addition to the obvious debt owed the translator by the critic, there is the hope that a translation of such quality will redeem Feierberg from his obscurity among English readers and make him a living author.Google Scholar
6. B. T. Sanhedrin 34a.Google Scholar
7. First appeared in Luah “Ahi'asaf, 1897–98; Halkin, pp. 51–64; Kitvei, 133–42.Google Scholar
8. See Halkin's note on Hofni's name, p. 19.Google Scholar
9. Feierberg had made clear his distaste for such social clubs in a journalistic account of his town published in Ha-Melif (in Kitvei, pp. 171–78).Google Scholar
10. First appeared in Lua(i ‘Ahi’asaf, 1897–98; Halkin, pp. 65–71; Kitvei, pp. 143–46.
11. First appeared in Ha-Shiloafi 2 (1897): 433–36; Halkin, pp. 73–80; Kitvei, pp. 128–32.
12. First appeared in Ha-Shiloab 4 (1898): 501–10; Halkin, pp. 81–104; Kitvei, pp. 39–56.Google Scholar
13. The phrase is Halkin's, p. 23.Google Scholar
14. Werses, Sippur ve-Shorsho, pp. 94ff.
15. First appeared in Ha-Shiloah 4 (1898): 336–41; Halkin, pp. 106–18; Kitvei, pp. 56–64.Google Scholar
16. First published in Ha-Shiloaht 5 (1899): 141–48, 217–32, 311–20, 406–18; Halkin, pp. 121–215; Kitvei, pp. 65–127.
17. Klausner, Joseph, Yogerim u-Vonim (Jerusalem, 1929), 3:165ff. andGoogle ScholarKurzweil, Baruch, Sifrutenu ha-fia^ashah: Hemshekh 'o Mahpekhah (Jerusalem, 1971), pp. 149ff.Google Scholar
18. Hayyim, Joseph Brenner, Kol Kitvei Brenner (Tel Aviv, 1960), 2:241.Google Scholar
19. Moznayim, 1st ser. 1, no. 4 (1929): 2.Google Scholar
20. Yefer vi-Yefirah (Jerusalem, 1951), p. 241.Google Scholar
21. Feierberg gives us his own catalogue in the form of Nahman's reminiscence about his life: ”It had been poor, this life, but it had been rich in fantasies, dreams, visions, ambitions and hopes instead” (p. 127, 69).
22. The term “reverie” was given currency in critical discourse by Bachelard, Gaston, throughout his career and most synthetically in his late work La poetique de la riverie (Paris, 1961).Google Scholar(On this see Caws, Mary Ann, Surrealism and the Literargy Imagination [The Hague, 1966].) Bachelard used the term phenomenologically to describe the pleasures of the artistic imagination as it contemplates natural objects. My use of “reverie” to describe a unified series of imaginative moments not within the mind of the artist but within the finished work of art retains only a few similarities with Bachelard's usage. For the non-literary study of the reverie,Google Scholar see Singer, Jerome, Daydreaming (New York, 1970).Google Scholar
23. Kurzweil, Sijrutenu ha-Hadashah, p.150.Google Scholar
24. It is not unlikely that as the prototype for this passage Feierberg had in mind the section of the Mishneh Torah in which Maimonides describes the enlightenment of the prophet and his subsequent separation from ordinary men: When one,.. sanctifying himself, withdrawing himself from the ways of ordinary men who walk in the obscurities of the times,... keeping his mind on higher things.. so as to comprehend the pure and holy forms,.. on such a man the Holy Spirit will promptly descend He will be changed into another man {ve-yehafekh le-‘adam ’aher) and will realize that he is not the same as he had been, and has been exalted over other wise men, even as it is said of Saul “And thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man” (1 Samuel 10:6)
25. Gershon Shaked, in a well-argued and useful article on Whither?, has dealt with the essayistic quality of the last sections of the novella. See “Bein Hazon le-Massah” in ‘Al ha- Mishmar, April 4, 1966.Google Scholar
