A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
"A Tale of Love and Darkness" by Amos Oz is an autobiographical work that delves into the author's family history and his formative years, exploring the profound impact of his mother’s suicide when he was twelve. The narrative intertwines themes of love and darkness, examining the complexities of familial affection and the shadows cast by tragedy. Oz's writing showcases a distinctive structure, oscillating between his early life experiences and the historical context that shaped them, ultimately centering on the event of his mother's death. The author also reflects on the rich intellectual heritage of his upbringing, caught between his father's scholarly pursuits and his mother's evocative tales from Europe.
The memoir highlights Oz's literary environment, positioning him among prominent Israeli writers, while emphasizing the political convictions deeply intertwined with personal narratives. The haunting legacy of the Holocaust and its implications on Jewish identity and statehood resonate throughout the text, alongside a critical perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With its lyrical prose and profound insights, the book invites readers to consider the delicate balance between personal history and broader societal issues, making it a poignant exploration of love, loss, and the quest for identity in a tumultuous world.
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A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Sipur‘ al ahavah ve-hoshekh, 2002 (English translation, 2004)
Type of work: Autobiography
The Work
In this autobiographical account of his family and his early life, Oz tries to penetrate the background that led to his mother’s suicide when he was twelve and to his subsequent desertion from family tradition and even from his name. The “love” of the title refers to the crosscurrents of affection through his family and perhaps to the glimmerings of romance that become visible toward the end of the book. While those unfamiliar with Oz’s life may not know in advance what the “darkness” will be, there are plenty of moments at which the approaching suicide is foreshadowed.
The structure of the book is an exercise in symmetry. As this autobiography proceeds, it oscillates between events that occurred before he was born and from his early years to those in later life. The oscillations become narrower as the book proceeds, and it becomes clear only at the end of the book that their center is his mother’s suicide.
While in his novels Oz was inclined to list the suburbs of Jerusalem, in this book he stretches the Hebrew language to its grammatical limits. Sentences run on at length to capture the actions of the characters and the responses of family members. The flavor of the Hebrew is well rendered into English by translator Nicholas de Lange, who has worked on Oz’s novels for more than thirty years.
Oz describes the wealth of the intellectual heritage in which he grew up, but even as a child he is torn between the scholarship of his father and the tales brought by his mother from Europe and reminiscent of a countryside that he had never seen. As a child he was a part of a literary culture that included many of the eminent writers in Israel, including his own great-uncle. The life of scholarship by itself was not enough to attract Oz, perhaps because he saw the difficulty of his father in achieving the position he deserved. On the other hand, the tales that his mother told did not bring her happiness or change the world, so he could not see himself solely as an artist outside of political considerations.
The autobiographical elements serve to underscore the political convictions for which Oz is best known. Oz’s uncle and cousin were killed by the Nazis, which serves as evidence for the inability of the Jews to trust European civilization, however much it may be appealing. In and around the Jews’ own country of Israel, there are Arabs who seem prepared to take Israeli lives for no purpose. As a result, Oz is not inclined to trust European civilization or his Arab neighbors. The Holocaust is evidence enough for why the Jews deserve a state of their own. While it may be hard on the Palestinians to have been displaced, the Israelis are not going to leave, but they need to accommodate the rights of their predecessors in that land. As a result, both Israelis and Palestinians must be prepared to give up something to attain peace; although neither side will be entirely happy or satisfied, the children of both nations will not be killed in the conflict and will be able to reach adulthood.