The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Bernhard by Yoel Hoffmann
Allen Hibbard

Yoel Hoffmann. Bernhard. Trans. Alan Treister with Eddie Levenston. New Directions, 1998. 172 pp. $22.95.

The most immediately striking feature of this novel, the second available to us in English from the wonderful Romanian-born Israeli writer Yoel Hoffmann, is its unique structure. Covering an eight-year period from 1938 to 1946, the book is divided into 172 short sections, the majority of which are contained within a single page. Each section ends with a phrase that, repeated, opens the following section. The story, set primarily in Jerusalem, revolves around Bernhard Stein, who has become a widower just prior to the beginning of the novel. Even at the novel’s close, as he writes about his wife’s death to her sister, Bernhard is grieving.
During the years of the war (while Hitler invades Poland, Rommel is defeated in Egypt, and the U.S. drops bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Bernhard grieves, conjures up his past life in Berlin, talks with his friend Gustav, and constructs fictional characters who roughly parallel the central players in his own life. The minutiae of daily personal life are juxtaposed with historical events: “In January, the Red Army captures Auschwitz. Water freezes in the pipes [in Jerusalem]. Gustav boils water in a kettle and pours it on the pipes, and a white mist rises and spreads in the air of the room.”
In some odd way this novel might be considered a myth of national origins, a story of modern Israel in its fetal state. The connection between the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel is implied. The mood here is hardly jubilant; rather, Bernhard seems to trudge about in a state of numbness and sorrow. An uncanny calm belies, masks, or denies underlying conflicts and tensions associated with the legitimacy of territorial claims. The very (postmodern) form of the novel allows the silences to have a powerful presence. The words are as sparse as stones in a desert: a stark dialogue between the said and the unsaid. [Allen Hibbard]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Bernhard by Yoel Hoffmann Allen Hibbard Yoel Hoffmann. Bernhard. Trans. Alan Treister with Eddie Levenston. New Directions, 1998. 172 pp. $22.95. The most immediately striking feature of this novel, the second available to us in English from the wonderful Romanian-born Israeli writer Yoel Hoffmann, is its unique structure. Covering an eight-year period from 1938 to 1946, the book is divided into 172 short sections, the majority of which are contained within a single page. Each section ends with a phrase that, repeated, opens the following section. The story, set primarily in Jerusalem, revolves around Bernhard Stein, who has become a widower just prior to the beginning of the novel. Even at the novel’s close, as he writes about his wife’s death to her sister, Bernhard is grieving. During the years of the war (while Hitler invades Poland, Rommel is defeated in Egypt, and the U.S. drops bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Bernhard grieves, conjures up his past life in Berlin, talks with his friend Gustav, and constructs fictional characters who roughly parallel the central players in his own life. The minutiae of daily personal life are juxtaposed with historical events: “In January, the Red Army captures Auschwitz. Water freezes in the pipes [in Jerusalem]. Gustav boils water in a kettle and pours it on the pipes, and a white mist rises and spreads in the air of the room.” In some odd way this novel might be considered a myth of national origins, a story of modern Israel in its fetal state. The connection between the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel is implied. The mood here is hardly jubilant; rather, Bernhard seems to trudge about in a state of numbness and sorrow. An uncanny calm belies, masks, or denies underlying conflicts and tensions associated with the legitimacy of territorial claims. The very (postmodern) form of the novel allows the silences to have a powerful presence. The words are as sparse as stones in a desert: a stark dialogue between the said and the unsaid. [Allen Hibbard]

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