SOURCE: Mazor, Yair. “S. Y. Agnon's Art of Composition: The Befuddling Turn of the Compositional Screw.” Hebrew Annual Review 10 (1986): 197-208.

In the following essay, Mazor examines the paradoxical nature of the composition of two Agnon stories.

“Do forgive me. Perhaps I cast a shade upon Agnon … but I came here to speak about agony and about love and about pain in Agnon that Qohelet who put on various appealing disguises. And because of loving him so dearly, I spoke about him this way and not another.”

(Amos Oz, Under This Blazing Sun)¹

1. Preamble

A remarkably intriguing aspect in S. Y. Agnon's art of composition² is that in a considerable number of his works, the reader is confronted by a strikingly confusing organization. As the story's plot seems to reach its climax and move toward its denouement, and all the conflicts of the fictional world face resolution, an unexpected...