The great Israeli writer Abraham Yehoshua died this morning in Tel Aviv at the age of eighty-five. For a long time he had been plagued by a tumor that made the usual trips abroad impossible. His latest novel, “The only daughter” (translation by Alessandra Shomroni, Einaudi, pages 168, euro 18), was set in Italy and told the story of Rachel, divided between Jewish origins and Catholic identity. He was writing the sequel to the “short story” – as he liked to call it – with the girl’s definitive trip to Israel.
Born in Jerusalem in ’36, Yehoshua was together with Amos Oz (who passed away in 2018) and David Grossman the greatest interpreter of contemporary Hebrew literature. Professor of theater and comparative literature at Harvard, Princeton and finally in Haifa, he made his debut in ’77 with a novel that soon became a cult: “The lover”, probably the work of note by Yehoshua, built as a profound Old Testament allegory. Against the backdrop of the Yom Kippur war, behind the polyphonic events of a family from Haifa lies the investigation into the truth of oneself, the discovery of otherness (portrayed by the Palestinian world) and the tormented encounter of God with his people. .
The fragility of relationships
From “A late divorce” (1982) to “Mr. Mani” (1990), from “The Human Resources Manager” (2004) to “Friendly Fire” (2007), the Jerusalemite author puts at the center of his writing, always exact and participatory, the fragility of relationships, the pitfalls of spousal love, parental entanglements but also the irruption of history into ordinary life, the complex balance between peoples who live together in a single torn land. Coming from a Sephardi family, convinced Zionist and promoter of the so-called two-state solution, “Bulli” (as his friends called him) was married to his beloved Rivka, a psychoanalyst, who died in 2016, with whom he had three children.
Many consider “Mr. Mani” to be Yehoshua’s true masterpiece: it is the saga of the various “Mr. Mani” – from the patriarch Abraham who lived in Athens in the nineteenth century to the young soldier Ephraim stationed in Lebanon – pitted in five dialogues that recount the obsession with peace, the mystery of diversity and the unfathomable links between past and future. Animated by different narrative strategies, Yehoshua’s style is sinuous and vibrating, crossed by a psychological density that has made his analysis of the Jewish soul and the ability to come into contact with distant worlds proverbial. There are two memorable aspects of Bulli’s writing: the complete exit from oneself to understand the point of view of the other (the Bakhtinian exotopia, in short) and the biblical method of placing multiple meanings in a single story, both literal and symbolic at the same time. . Impossible not to mention the writer’s profound humanity: curious, passionate, helpful, attentive to the requests of his readers and deeply in love with Italy. He will be missed by the Italian readers, who loved him particularly, and what they believe and have always believed in peace with the Palestinians. Now the olive branch remains the other witness of all time, the 68-year-old writer David Grossman, who has also always been active for a peaceful solution to the age-old conflict.
The funeral will take place in the afternoon in a secular cemetery south of Haifa. Yehoshua leaves behind three children and seven grandchildren.