The Shunra and the Schmetterling [Paperback]

Yoel Hoffmann (Author), Peter Cole (Translator)

Book Description

Series: New Directions Paperbook | Publication Date: May 2004

Yoel Hoffmann, "Israel's celebrated avant-garde genius" (Forward), undertakes a story strictly from the child's-eye view and creates one of his most beautiful books to date.

Shunra is Aramaic for "cat." Schmetterling is German for "butterfly." In Yoel Hoffmann's new book, these and numerous other creatures, cultures, and languages meet in a magical shimmering hymn to childhood. Hoffmann traces his hero's developing consciousness of the ways-and-wonders of the world as though he were peering through a tremendous kaleidoscope: all that was perceived, all that is remembered, is rendered in fluid fragments of color and light. With remarkable delicacy and sweep, Hoffmann captures childhood from the amazed inside out, and without the backward-looking wash of grown-up sentiment. Instead, the boy's deadpan registration of the human comedy around him is offered up as strangely magical fact. Beautifully translated by Peter Cole, The Shunra & the Schmetterling is fiction for lovers of poetry and poetry for lovers of fiction—a small marvel of a book, and one of the author's finest to date.

Editorial Reviews

Review

All of [Hoffmann's] works...are about the beauty of the ordinary, about the soaring flights language and thought can take. -- Robert Leiter, Jewish Exponent, 15 July 2004

Ethereal and beautiful, this is a collection to ponder and savor. -- Jewish Book World, Winter 2004

Hoffmann is not just a good writer but a great one...What Hoffmann has achieved here is a kind of magic. -- Chicago Tribune

Readers who welcome lyrical prose...will delight in Hoffmann's novella, and in a philosophy of writing that inspires contemplation. -- World Literature Today, Leslie Cohen, May-August 2005

Readers...will delight in Hoffmann's novella and in a philosophy of writing that inspires contemplation. -- Leslie Cohen, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 2004

Unforgettable, a powerful communication between author and reader, transcending time and place. -- Mary Whipple, Mostlyfiction.com, 29 May 2004

[Hoffmann's] canvas is a world tantalizing in splendor of mystery and fleeting imprisonment of meaning.. -- Confrontation, January 2005

About the Author

Yoel Hoffmann has been acclaimed as "miraculous" (A. B. Yehoshua), "a reason to celebrate" (Hadassah Magazine), "spectacular" (The New Yorker), "radiant" (World Literature Today), and "stunning" (The New Leader). He is a Professor of Eastern Philosophy at the University of Haifa, and has had a lifelong engagement with Hebrew literature, Western philosophy, and Japanese Buddhism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation (May 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811215679
• ISBN-13: 978-0811215671
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,171,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Butterflies stood at the edge of the eye.", May 29, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Shunra and the Schmetterling (Paperback)

Lively images of the cat (shunra) and the butterfly (schmetterling) chase and play through the memories of a poetic child as Yoel Hoffmann, one of Israel's most celebrated writers, recreates childhood and the coming of age. More than sixty years have passed since the speaker first lived in Rabat Gan, and the passage of time has intensified some memories, eliminated the irrelevancies from others, and connected the fantasies of childhood with the perennial mysteries of adulthood. As he begins to recall images from his life, the veranda on which his grandfather sat rises from memory, "like that legendary bird rising from its ashes" and becomes "the veranda of the world itself," a symbol of the experiences of the family and, ultimately, the history of the Jewish people, a veranda with "A broken railing. Grillwork like Auschwitz. A floor laid with tiles of pogroms...Nuremberg laws in the plaster..."

Not a manifesto or catalogue of wrongs, this "memoir" is the vivid and poetic evocation of one boy's life, the people he remembers from a seemingly ordinary Israeli village, and his discoveries about dreams and the passage of time. Impressions from past and present flow through the speaker's consciousness, unfiltered, with one idea reminding him of another from another place and time. Gradually, the reader meets the speaker's grandfather, father, and deceased mother, the neighbors, his teachers, and his friends, all of whom have sought sanctuary in Israel from other places. Words in Aramaic, Hebrew, German, Yiddish, and even Icelandic, are sprinkled casually throughout the story, a natural part of the speaker's memory and the collective memory of his village and country.

Though "A butterfly big as a volume of Talmud stood above our heads" throughout the speaker's childhood, the adults in the village have had more difficult lives, all of them having escaped from various wars. Soon it is time for the speaker to serve in his own army and fight in his own war, an experience which marks him forever. Nature imagery--of birds, animals, clouds, and the sky--permeate this impressionistic painting of a poet's life, giving depth and color to instants in time and to moments in history. Through intense, compressed and sometimes elusive pictures, the story--and our understanding of the speaker--do gradually emerge, insinuating themselves into our own consciousness and speaking directly to us, a powerful communication between author and reader which transcends time and place. Mary Whipple

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful poetry of a childhood, April 7, 2010

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Shunra and the Schmetterling (Paperback)

I am an unabashed fan on Yoel Hoffman's books. This volume, however, is different - for the first time I felt on the outside looking in without comprehension. Why? I suspect it is because I am not Jewish and have never been to Israel. Hoffman has written a beautiful, poetic narrative of childhood. It is, perhaps, closer to prose poems than poetic prose. The images are multifaceted gems that are pleasurable to read. But the connotations that should have arisen from the references to Jewish writers, to children's songs, to Jewish festival prayers and hymns -- footnotes gave me minimal denotations. The rest was lost on me.

I still recommend everything by Hoffman but suggest that you learn to love him from one of his earlier books before tackling The Shunra and the Schmetterling.

Earlier works: The Christ of Fish or Bernhard