Page:The Theme of the Joseph Novels.djvu/18

 well-known action takes its course, which is nothing but a precious childhood memory, and for which the curiosity of the reader can be captivated only by the most detailed presentation and visualization of every How and Why. The arrival of the brothers, the meeting with the prescient Benjamin, the play with the silver cup, the great scene of recognition, the scene in which a musical child sings to the aged Jaacob, that his son Joseph is alive and lord over the land of Egypt;—in minute detail we learn—and some day my Munich copyist, too, will probably learn,—how all that has really happened. The novel extends to the solemn passing away of Jaacob, the father, in the land of Goshen; and with the tremendous procession which brings home the body of the patriarch, so that he may rest in the twofold cave with his fathers, ends the whole work which through one and a half decades of outer stress was my steady companion.

Ladies and Gendemen, some people were inclined to regard "Joseph and His Brothers" as a Jewish novel, even as merely a novel for Jews. Well, the selection of the old testamental subject was certainly not mere accident; most certainly there were hidden, defiandy polemic connections between it and certain tendencies of our time which I always found repulsive from the bottom of my soul; the growing vulgar anti-semitism which is an essential part of the Fascist mob-myth, and which commits the brutish denial of the fact that Judaism and Hellenism are the two principal pillars upon which our occidental civilization rests. To write a novel of the Jewish spirit was timely, just because it seemed untimely. And, it is true: my story always follows the dates of the Genesis with semi-jocular faithfulness, and often reads like an exegesis and amplification of the Tora, like a [14]