DANILOKIS
111
hood - and determined to reveal the boundary between essence and
illusion to him. He took him home and , in the course of the night ,
did his best to explain, with simple yet instructive examples , how an
idea, the shadow of an idea, a single image could lead - by the magic
of the word and the spell of what cannot be put into words - to the
grace of appropriate form .
It
was dawn when Yeshua Krochal left the Master's room (in
which the strong odor of leather-bound books was leavened by
the intoxicating fragrance of sandalwood blasphemously burning
in brass menorahs: souvenirs from the Master's pilgrimages) . He
stopped in at the Korona and ordered goulash and a stein of beer,
then set to copying out the manuscript. By noon the complete text of
the biblical parable entitled
The Road to Canaan
lay on the table
before him, a clean copy in his own oversize penmanship. He took
the manuscript containing the Master's emendations and tossed it
into the large, tile, cathedral-like stove with its doors to heaven and
hell . When the flame had destroyed all trace of the Master's hand
and consequently of his own soul , Yeshua Krochal folded the manu–
script, slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat, and, burning with
a fever till then unnoticed, ordered another stein of beer. Karolina
had just set the beer down on the edge of the table when Yeshua
leaped up and managed to grab one of her large round breasts .
Karolina stood stock-still for a moment,
like Lot's wife transfoTTTU!d into a
pillar of salt,
then started and raised her arm abruptly, her heavy red
hand grazing his nose.
"This is the Appearance of Substance," said Yeshua senten–
tiously, "while that" - he cupped his hand , his fingers spread wide–
"w~s
Substance ."
The Road to Canaan
appeared at the end of 1894, first in the jour–
nal
Ha- Yom
in Hebrew, then, early the next year, translated into
German, in book form . The book earned the universal acclaim of
the exegetes , all of whom found that it had , as Frankel says,
"Substance." Only young Bialik (later known as Chaim Nachman),
who subjected the work to a serious analysis, discovered traces of the
Master's hand , which "tries to save the parable from the void of
which it reeks." Bialik's criticism had the following consequences : in
the afterword to the new edition of
The Road to Canaan,
Krochal
refers to Bialik as a syphilitic and publicly renounces Ben Haas's
teachings, calling him a charlatan and a "poisoner of souls ." True to
his position , he allied himself with the Master's adversaries and , in a
