BEGGARS OF LOVE

The Nobel laureate for Hebrew literature S. Y. Agnon (1888–1970) acknowledged Gustav Flaubert (1821–1880) as an inspiration for his fiction, a master perfectionist and totally dedicated to his art. The extent of Flaubert’s influence on Agnon is greater than previously realized by scholars. This article considers numerous parallels that have not been brought together before: in Agnon’s psychological realism and the pattern of relations between the sexes, notably in Sippur pashut (A Simple Story); the portrayal of small town life, its maddening pettiness and boredom; the clash of romance and reality; triangles and the passive subservience of the hero to dominant women; idealization and disillusionment; sickness and sadomasochism, latent homosexuality and incest; imagery of clay and wax, children and flowers, dogs and cannibals, to depict the hero’s inner world. Both writers repeatedly use the figure of the blind beggar to incarnate the hero’s sense of inferiority, his emotionally impoverished life, given meaning in art.