We Are All Magnetic Fields: An Interview with Amalia Kahana-Carmon*
AMALIA KAHANA-CARMON: Amalia
Kahana-Carmon was born in kibbutz Ein Harod. She studied at Herzeliah High
School in Tel Aviv and later majored in the Hebrew language, Hebrew literature,
and Biblical studies at Hebrew University. Kahana-Carmon worked as the secretary
of the educational department of the Zionist Federation in Britain and as
secretary of the Israeli consulate in London. An academic librarian by
profession, she worked at the central library of Tel Aviv University in 1963-1965.
She has been writer-in-residence at Tel Aviv University. In addition to her
literary writing, she has published several critical essays. Her first book, Bi-Khefifah
Ahat (Under One Roof) is a collection of short stories published in 1966. This
was followed by VeYareah-be-emek ayalon (Moon in the Valley of A Ajalon)
published in 1971, and Sadot Magnetiim: triptikhon (Magnetic Fields: A
Triptych), 1977.
Amalia
Kahana-Carmon is often described as the Israeli Virginia Woolf. Though she
belongs to the age group of the Palmach generation of the fifties, she is
normally classified as one of the “New Wave” writers on a par with A. B.
Yehoshua and Amos Oz.
A.
K. -C. What do these names contribute? Each author has a unique style, all his
own. However, if it makes it easier for those who don’t read me in the
original to understand me better, all right, let it be. Still, I believe every
author is unique and every work is too, due to its unique style.
A.
K.-C. Style is a part and parcel of the expression. I never “think out”
devices. The device is a reflection of my psychic structure. It’s like my own
voice. Part of it is the sound, the other part—my intonation. (She stops. She
is not one to wander off into audible musings, which are the interviewer’s
delight. I can detect the familiar excruciatingly meticulous care in her speech
as well. She will not add a single word if it is unnecessary.)
·
Tel Aviv,
August, 1977.
A.
K. -C. A writer is a person who at a certain point in his life has found out
that he is bothered by something which those around him seem to take in their
stride. He finds out that here the usual modes of talk will not do, and he turns
to investigate it the lonely way—on paper. It is doubtful if he is to find a
solution to those pestering questions, but giving shape to his probings is
itself a kind of solace. And then, something strange happens. The paper gets
hold of him. It stimulates him, it becomes a meaning to itself. This person has
passed a thin line into a new, a different world, to stay there forever.
Forever, because not to obey this call now is tantamount to desertion, or still
worse, to exile.
A.
K. -C. I must give you a short answer at the risk of making a silly reduction,
but I can’t help it, I cannot do justice to your question, but I have no
choice. (Pause) I think I am mostly concerned with two issues: death-in-life
versus life, and chaos versus order. These two are clearly intertwined, of
course. I am talking about the individual revolt against the established order
of things, the attempt to break through the visible. This attempt brings about
an epiphany of a wider order of things which underlies our existence.
E.
F. I am not sure I understand.
A.
K. -C. Every story is a breakthrough. Every story is catching a glimpse of some
vast, infinite pattern which gives meaning to our lives. Every story is an
acceptance, a realization that the all-encompassing pattern is there for a
purpose. But the unconscious attempt to disguise the pattern is infinite, so
every story comes as a surprise.
A.
K. -C. Religious in the universal sense, yes, maybe. If you mean religious in
the Jewish sense—there may be some such element in my writing. My work is an
expression of myself, and I happen to be Jewish, I guess my point of view is
affected by a hierarchy of values which is bound up with this point in history,
and this place in the world. And I guess there is no escape from my own point of
view. In other words, consciously I am trying to tell of what I perceive to be a
universal truth.
A.
K.-C. Being too close to things, I wouldn’t know. Just as one couldn’t
answer whether the knowledge that we are prone to the common cold, or to cancer,
affects our daily lives. I have two sons in the military service, one in the Air
Force and one in the Army. So nobody can be against war more than myself. But to
tell the truth, during the day to day routine, doing the normal things, small or
great, war hardly enters our thoughts. It becomes a fact of life. Almost like
air pollution. I have come to realize that the daily routine, the way we live
the simple moments in our lives, is by far more important, more decisive, more
meaningful to me, and I think to many others as well.
E.
F. You have recently published a novel, a triptych to be precise, entitled Ma
gnetic Fields. Could you tell me what are these magnetic fields?
A.
K. -C. Every human encounter is the external embodiment of an attraction between
two magnetic fields. The encounter comes suddenly, unexpectedly. It is a moment
of truth. It is a moment of revelation, as when the right ray of sun penetrates
through the right window pane, and falls with the right slant on one picture in
the museum. This is the painfully short moment which shows us just what the
artist had in mind. It happened to me once. I walked into a bookstore in
Jerusalem. I opened one book after another, when suddenly I found myself reading
something breathlessly. It was a book of poems by Pinhas Sadeh. There was a
flash, I was touched by something powerful. For some reason, I could not
purchase the book right away. A while later, back in Tel Aviv, I went to buy the
book. When I opened it this time it was—difficult. The angle had changed. The
ray of light passed me by. There was no illumination. The same happens with
human encounters. We meet someone, and suddenly we are capable of being
ourselves, just like we were supposed to be—ourselves without hiding, without
pretending, with no pretexts. We are each a magnetic field. And each attraction,
limited as it may appear to be, is a cosmic happening—it occurs within the
broader pattern of things, within the endlessly complex structure which
underlies our lives.
E.
F. In “There, The Newsroom” you use a man as your first person protagonist-narrator.
Is there a difference between the way men and women in your stories perceive or
react to relationships?
A.
K. -C. First, I hope Zevulun Leipzig is authentic. I had my intuition alone to
rely on, no personal experience. But, to answer your question, I don’t think
there is a significant difference or rather essential difference between men and
women in this regard. What I am depicting is a human condition which is not
contingent on gender. Of course men attract or are attracted in a different way,
but that is not of the essence.
A.
K. -C. The essential news, the news which matters, is not in the newsroom but in
the opposite direction. The things which shape our lives are not projected on
the television screen.
E.
F. It seems to me that the dynamics of human encounters is a predominant theme
in your earlier writings as well. Your first collection of short stories, Under
One Roof, and your novel, And Moon in the Valley of Ajallon, portray encounters
which are doomed to failure.
A.
K.-C. This is my understanding of human encounters in general. Living in a world
of flux, subjugated to the indecipherable laws of constant vicissitudes, our
encounters cannot but be momentary flashes. The glamor cannot last because we
change, the others change, circumstances change. So I wouldn’t call the end of
a relationship a failure. (Smiling)
You mention my earlier writings. I, as a writer, _ have changed too. In my novel
I think I was trying to depict the unyielding attempt to remain at the top. I
don’t mean “top” in the social sense. I’m referring to the emotional
climax. I wrote about the hard way in which one learns the pain of the break
between dream and reality. And you know, in the beginning I tended to write, for
lack of a better term, in the “romantic” vein. I was trying to search for
human nature through the external order of things. I wanted to touch human
misery without getting my hands dirty, out of a peculiar fastidiousness. I think
I changed tremendously in this sense. I am not as much of an outsider anymore. I
am more capable now of observing the pain, and being part of it at the same
time. I have learned to come to terms with the “concrete” and naked reality
and not flinch from expressing it in a more direct fashion.
A.
K. -C. I have no control over the reader. The reader changes just as much as I
do. You may not respond to a certain passage which does not appeal to you any
longer. Now you might relate better to another passage, incident or character.
After all, what are we trying to find in a book ?---Ourselves. A good book
offers you yourself in a more articulate way. Reading is actually plunging into
one’s own identity and, one hopes, emerging stronger than before. You see,
unconsciously, we are seeking to find an affirmation to our own world -perception
and set of values. Since these change as we grow up and develop, our response to
books changes as well. I don’t believe there is an objective yardstick by
which a book may be evaluated. The “science” of literary criticism is an
illusion—it is based on subjective impressions, and no one feels the sting
more strongly than I, being a critic myself. The only thing I hope to do in my
books, is to open up the reader to a new awareness. There is no logical or
speculative message I intend to transmit. The “message” belongs to the realm
of intuition, imagination and emotional perception. If I manage to make a reader
sensitive to that special awareness which has inspired me to write, I consider
myself a lucky writer.
E.
F. I guess the following question is unavoidable. Could you divulge any secrets
about the technical aspects of your writing? Do you write daily, for instance?
A. K. -C. (Interrupting me with a bitter laugh) I wish daily---No, unfortunately, I can’ t afford to devote that much time to my writing. As a wife, a housewife, and mother of three children, I could not possibly turn my passion into a daily routine, or discipline. I write when I cannot hold back any longer. Call it an attack, an irresistible impulse. In a way, my writing has almost been clandestine. There was a constant feeling of guilt, and a continuous tension between my duties at home and my literary aspirations. But it seems to me that now, with two children in the army, I need not feel as guilty as before. (As if stung by a familiar duty-bound impulse, she glances at her watch. Another magnetic field must be neutralized for a while, before it is defined on paper.)
Encounters with Israel Authors, Esther Fuchs, 1982, Micah Publications, Marblehead, MA