Page:The Theme of the Joseph Novels.djvu/16

 my life, secret connections must lead from it to earliest childhood dreams, if I am to consider myself entitled to it, if I am to believe in the legitimacy of what I am doing. The arbitrary reaching for a subject to which one does not have traditional claims of sympathy and knowledge, seems senseless and amateurish to me.

Due to its erotic content, the third Joseph volume is the most novel-like part of this work which, as a whole, had to make of the novel something different from what is generally understood by this term. The variability of this literary genre has always been considerable. Today, however, it almost looks as though nothing counts anymore in the domain of the novel except what is no longer a novel. Perhaps it was always that way. As far as "Joseph in Egypt" is concerned, you will find, that its novel-like erotic content, too, has been turned into the mythical by stylization, despite all psychology. That holds true particularly for the sexual satire which is centered around the figures of the two dwarfs: the asexual one in his kindly nothingness, and of Dudu, the malicious and procreative midget. In a humorous spirit, a connection is shown here between the sexual and arch-evil, a connection which must help to reconcile us to Joseph's "chastity," his resistance to the desires of his unfortunate mistress, as given by the biblical model.

This third of the Joseph novels grew under the constellation of my parting from Germany—the fourth grew under that of my parting from Europe. "Joseph the Provider," the final part of the work which brings its length to over two thousand pages, came into being entirely under America's sky, in fact, largely under the serene, Egyptian-like sky of California. Now Potiphar's demoted favorite slaves as a prisoner in a Nile fortress whose commander is a good [12]