Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Agnon in his home in Jerusalem in 1966
Agnon in 1966
BornShmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes
(1887-08-08)August 8, 1887
Buczacz, Polish Galicia, Austria-Hungary
(now Buchach, Ukraine)
DiedFebruary 17, 1970(1970-02-17) (aged 81)
Jerusalem, Israel
Resting placeMount of Olives Jewish Cemetery
OccupationNovelist, poet, short-story writer
LanguageHebrew
NationalityIsraeli
GenreNovels
Notable awardsNobel Prize in Literature
1966
SpouseEsther Marx

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Hebrew: שמואל יוסף עגנון; August 8, 1887[1] – February 17, 1970)[2] was an Austro-Hungarian-born Israeli novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew literature. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon (ש"י עגנון‎). In English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon.

Agnon was born in Polish Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, and died in Jerusalem.

His works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world. They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions of the European shtetl (village). In a wider context, he also contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrator's role in literature. Agnon had a distinctive linguistic style, mixing modern and rabbinic Hebrew.[3]

In 1966, he shared the Nobel Prize in Literature with the poet Nelly Sachs.

  1. ^ Laor, Dan (1998). S.Y. Agnon: A Biography (in Hebrew). Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: Shocken.
  2. ^ Laor, Dan, Agnon's Life, Tel Aviv, Schocken, 1998 [Hebrew]; Falk, Avner, "Agnon and Psychoanalysis," Iton 77, No. 156, pp. 28–39, 1993 [Hebrew]. Also see Arnold Band, "Shai Agnon by Dan Laor", AJS Review, Vol. 35 (2011), pp. 206—208. Band says that Agnon invented the commonly cited date July 17, 1888 in the 1920s.
  3. ^ Norwich, John Julius (1990). Oxford Illustrated Encyclopedia Of The Arts. USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 10. ISBN 978-0198691372.

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