Простая история

Avtor PROSTOĬ ISTORII neredko zastavli͡aet nas smei͡atʹsi͡a (roman bogat zamechatelʹnymi smeshnymi mestami), poslednim zhe smeetsi͡a on sam, smeetsi͡a nad tem, kak lovko on nas provel. . . Ochevidno, chto Agnon, laureat Nobelevskoĭ premii, pisatelʹ, perevedennyĭ na desi͡atki i͡azykov, sam byl "galit͡sianerom" so sklonnostʹi͡u durachitʹ li͡udeĭ. V svoeĭ PROSTOĬ ISTORII on zachastui͡u kak by posmeivaetsi͡a vmeste s nami nad izobrazhaemymi v neĭ personazhami, posmeivai͡asʹ odnovremenno i nad na-mi. Vy, moi chitateli, kazhetsi͡a, govorit on, schitaete li͡udeĭ, o kotorykh i͡a pishu, komichnymi, i, vozmozhno, oni deĭstvitelʹno komichny. No uvereny li vy, chto, nakhodi͡a ikh komichnymi, vy sami ne popali vprosak? Vy podkhodite k nim s merkami svoeĭ ėpokhi, s kriterii͡ami XX veka, a oni, vozmozhno, stolʹ zhe nelepy i smeshny, mozhet bytʹ, eshche bolee nelepy. Nesomnenno, Agnon - velikiĭ master durachitʹ, no v ego proizvedenii͡akh ne vsegda i͡asno, kto ostaetsi͡a v durakakh.

The author of A SIMPLE STORY often makes us laugh (the novel is rich in wonderful funny places), but he laughs last, laughing at how cleverly he tricked us. . . It is obvious that Agnon, a Nobel Prize-winning writer who has been translated into dozens of languages, was himself a "Galician" with a penchant for fooling people. In his SIMPLE STORY, he often seems to laugh with us at the characters depicted in it, laughing at the same time at ourselves. You, my readers, seem, he says, to find the people I write about comical, and perhaps they really are. But are you sure that by finding them comical, you didn't get into a mess yourself? You approach them with the standards of your era, with the criteria of the 20th century, and they are probably just as ridiculous and ridiculous, maybe even more ridiculous. Undoubtedly, Agnon is a great master of fooling, but in his works it is not always clear who is being fooled.