See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

read the encyclopedia entries in any sequence he chooses, skipping forward and backward at will, though we wish to thank the disciplined reader in advance for taking the king’s highway of the Hebrew alphabetical order.

7. The editor’s deep sense of commitment to the facts has prompted him to include certain encyclopedia entries shedding light on the attitudes of Anshel Wasserman, some of which bear traces of a powerful struggle between Wasserman and the editorial staff before one side prevailed. Needless to say, the inclusion of these passages in no way signifies an endorsement of opinion on the part of the editorial staff. The wise reader will judge for himself.

And in dosing, some personal remarks:

The editorial staff is aware that certain readers are going to be put off. The editorial staff is quite familiar with those malcontents, those unruly heretics for whom nothing is sacred!

For instance, I’ve got to tell you this, I mean it nearly drove me insane! The first time I revealed my idea to Ayala, you know what she did? She laughed. No joke! She laughed in my face. Okay, at first I was pretty upset, but then I realized what was going on: She kept laughing and laughing, not with pleasure but with a look of total absorption and—possibly—fear. She stood there laughing at me, perversely, complacently.Her laugh sounded eerie as it rollicked and rolled and then fluttered away like a flock of colorful birds, like the waves of the sea, like—ah! Now I knew I had to put an end to it, because there’s no end to illusion, so I said, coldly and harshly:

EN-CY-CLO-PE-DI-A! And then it happened: Ayala was silent. The old anger flickered in her eyes, and turned to amazement. She recoiled and faded, then shriveled as though struck by lightning; in short, exactly like Bruno’s poor Aunt Retitia, by the mailbox in Trinity Square, she disappeared without a trace. The victory of the editorial staff was complete.

AHAVA1

LOVE

See under: SEX

ONNENUT

MASTURBATION

An activity for the purpose of achieving autoerotic gratification.

1. Kazik took to this practice after the unfortunate episode with HANNAH ZEITRIN [q.v.], which occurred at 0630 hours when Kazik—according to his chronological frame of reference—was about twenty-eight and a half years old. Kazik had “touched himself down there,” to use Fried’s awkward description, before the episode with Mrs. Zeitrin but now he added a dimension of overt enthusiasm and despair. He masturbated relentlessly. The Children of the Heart tried their best to ignore him but to no avail: the tip of his little sex organ discharged fine jets that exploded like firecrackers when they hit the black dome of the sky, and congealed into brilliant animal and human shapes, invariably flawed and sketchy; spermatozoa—full of life and brightness—shot through gloomy space, wiggling their little tails in an infinite stream of birds and fish, toddlers and graybeards, who shone fleetingly, and were swallowed up by the darkness, leaving only a vague sense of anguish in their wake. The members of the band had briefly cherished the hope that Kazik’s visions would show them a world morebeautiful, more colorful and vivid than the one they were forced to inhabit, but they soon realized how tainted the visions were with the woes of reality as they knew it. Those visions offered no new departure, no love, but only their generative frenzy, which cooled from moment to moment till nothing remained except the compulsive rubbing, the sense of waste and emptiness, and the enigmatic anguish that instantly vanished. Kazik sensed this, too, of course. Only he couldn’t stop. He was humiliated.

2. The masturbatory feats of Yedidya Munin, which became his art: see under: MUNIN, YEDIDYA; also: HEART, REVIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF THE

ACHRAYUT

RESPONSIBILITY

The sense of duty.

In the heat of an argument between Wasserman and Neigel about whether Neigel’s murders in the camp could be considered “crimes,” Neigel declared that he was not personally responsible for what happened, that he was only following orders from the “Big Machine,” and reinforced this by saying that “the extermination of Jews here will continue even if one person, like myself, should decide to drop out.” Wasserman: “But that is precisely the heart of the matter! And what can the matter be likened to, begging your honor’s pardon? It can be likened to the sentimental concerns of men and women. For if another man loved your wife, begging your pardon, nu, how shall I put it

… the human race would continue its course … What matters it to me, says Mother Nature, who carries the chain, so long as the big machine of existence keeps running, you see?” Neigel: “Humph. Yes. Of course. Because we have no control over the big things, right?” Wasserman: “Yes, you are right. All is foreseen, and scant indeed is the freedom of action given us!” Neigel: “Then why go on about responsibility all the time, if there’s no point to it?” Wasserman: “Perhaps because that is freedom, Herr Neigel. It is the one protest a coward such as I am is free to make.” Neigel: “Ach! It’s an illusion of protest.” Wasserman: “And what choice do we have?”

Also see under: CHOICE

OMANUT

ART

The expression of human creativity in the pursuit of aesthetic and functional objectives, in accordance with rules and techniques requiring skill and practice.

Throughout his lifetime, Kazik lived in a creative environment. In fact, the only people he ever knew were the artists collected by OTTO BRIG [q.v.]. Little wonder, then, that he sought in art a creative outlet for his depressions, impulses, and anxieties. First as a PAINTER [q.v.], and later, unwillingly, as a CARICATURIST [q.v.]. He came to see that not even art can promise salvation; that, at best, it augments human aspirations and intensifies longings while never actually fulfilling them, and that, in fact, it is his very freedom that deprives an artist of comforting illusions and