The originality of “Life as a parable”, an autobiographical novel by Jewish writer Pinhas Sadeh, is the secret of this key work of contemporary Hebrew literature according to a study titled “Pinhas Sadeh, a disonant voice in Israeli literature” and published by professor María Encarnación Varela Moreno, of the department of Semitic Studies of the Universidad de Granada, in the Hebrew section of the 54th number of the journal “Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos”.
Recently released in Spanish, “Life as a parable” by Pinhas Sadeh is, according to the author of the study, a hymn to extreme individualism. The UGR professor points out that this work was written in a period marked in Israel by the so called State Culture, based on collective values. For that reason, the publication of the novel was very polemical at that moment. “However –says professor Varela– maybe it was the key that opened the door to the personal expression followed by the so called State Generation”.
Still, in the case of Pinhas Sadeh, we can not talk about existential alienation. “He was not different to his Israeli contemporaries; his intentional alienation was due to the fact that he was aware of being carrying out a mission, first as a searcher, then as a prophet”.
According to María Encarnación Valera, “Life as a parable” and the other works by Pinhas Sadeh are “a confession of his intimate experiences, his sorrows, loves, sins, desires and expectations”.
In the opinion of the author of the study, the production of this Jewish writer is unique and unrepeatable: “Some people intend to imitate Pinhas Sadeh, but it is impossible, he did not have a great following, his very person summarizes human condition”.
Reference
Professor María Encarnación Varela Moreno. Dpt. of Semitic Studies
Phone number. 958 243 580 / 958 243 572. E-mail. mvarela@ugr.es
