Cultural Poetics and the Politics of Literature

Abstract

In his memoirs, A Tale of Love and Darkness, published in 2004, Amos Oz tells the story of his grandmother’s death. Arriving in Israel on a warm summer’s day in 1933 from one of Eastern Europe’s grey winter villages, she saw the hot marketplace in front of her, with its bloody carcasses, colourful fruit, sweating men and noisy vendors and passed her verdict: ‘The Levant is full of microbes.’ She immediately embarked on a comprehensive hygiene regime, which she zealously came to maintain over the next 50 years — a regime which included cleaning, scalding, airing and disinfecting everything, including her own body, on a daily basis. The cleaning frenzy comes to an end only when she collapses at 80-something with heart failure during one of the three hot baths, which were part of her daily routine. So what did the grandmother die of? The fact is that she died of heart failure. But the truth is that it was her monstrous hygienic programme that killed her. And, on a philosophical tone, Oz adds: ‘Facts tend to hide the truth from our eyes.’¹