Agnon and the Mediterranean: a new life by the sea

Abstract

The prominence of the Mediterranean in S. Y. Agnon’s Aḥot (Sister, 1910), Šĕḇu‘at ‘ĕmunim (Betrothed, 1943) and Tĕmol šilšom (Only Yesterday, 1945) distinguishes these three works from most modern and contemporary Hebrew literature, which does not usually present the sea as an element of interest. Through an analysis of the characters and their  world,  we  stress  the  role  of  the  new  locus  amoenus that  Jaffa  and  Tel  Aviv represented at the start of the twentieth century for the new life that practical Zionism was seeking to create in the Land of Israel-Palestine.