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at that time to have liberated women before women's lib , with
women drying the swamps and irrigating the desert and whatnot,
and even a certain lady for Prime Minister in the seventies . But the
assumption was that in order to become equal to men, woman had
to give up their femininity; there would be perfect equality between
two males sexes, the old one and the new.
It
couldn't work, and it
didn't work. As a result, I believe that in my own formative years,
there was a lot more sadness among women than among men. The
Zionist enterprise was far more demanding on women.
ASG:
Your collection of short stories known as
Where theJackals Howl,
which appeared here in 1981 , has a curious publication history. It
was your first book, published in Hebrew in 1965 and later revised
in 1976. Most novelists don't bother to revise their published
writings . How come you did?
AO:
I don't usually reread what I've published. In this particular
case, I did, and I didn't like what I saw. These were frightfully early
stories. Some of them I wrote at the age of nineteen or twenty, and
when I began to write , I had this urge to prove to the rest of the
world that I knew Hebrew better than anyone else. Consequently , I
put on more or less my entire linguistic wardrobe- summer frock,
winter coat, pair of shoes, boots, scarf, anything I had - because I
needed at that age to show off. When I rewrote the stories , I con–
siderably lowered the linguistic level, threw away tons of adjectives
and adverbs, turned it into a less poetic and more prosaic collection .
I didn't change the plots, though, or the characters. The translation
is based on the later version, of course . I wouldn't allow the early
version to be translated into any language . Ideally I would have de–
stroyed it altogether if I could.
ASG:
One of the themes in your fiction seems to be the opposition of
rational, right-minded types and those who tend to give in to the
dark forces, who aren't sensible, who are the voices of nightmare .
Much of fiction seems so pessimistic and bleak.
AU:
I don't buy that. You know, optimism/pessimism - it's not part
of my vocabulary, the way I think. I wish to think that, yes, I deal
with demons from time to time, and with death, despair, and loneli–
ness - but part of it is the result of the fact that I also deal with mag–
nanimous dreams, with messianic expectations, with great believers
who aspire to no less than change human nature in one blow, espe–
cially the kibbutz stories, but also in
The Hill of Evil Counsel
and
Unto
Death.
Now, the deeper, the greater, the more ecstatic the vision is,
the more painful the limits of human nature seem to be . This perpet-
