arts & entertainment lakinal On The Artist As Israel celebrates its 65th birthday, here is a conversation with one of the nation's most acclaimed writers, A.B. Yehoshua. I Sandee Brawarsky Special to the Jewish News Creating art is "not for the sake of breaking borders, but to reach new understandings of life." Givatayim, Israel T he Retrospective is a work of art inspired by another work of art, a novel with roots in a painting. A few years ago, A. B. Yehoshua and his wife were visiting Santiago de Compostelo, Spain, and he saw a graying reproduction of a disturbing painting, with a prisoner feeding at the breast of a young woman. He took a photo of the painting, some- thing he rarely does, and then showed it to an expert. The painting is Caritas Romana or Roman Charity, based on an ancient Roman legend of Cimon, imprisoned and sentenced to die by starvation, and his daughter Pero. That scene has been por- trayed in paintings, sculpture and draw- ings over the centuries, including works by Caravaggio, Rubens and Vermeer. "I took it as the driving element of the novel:' the distinguished Israeli novelist says in a recent interview near his home in Givatayim, just outside of Tel Aviv. In the novel, an aging Israeli film direc- tor who is visiting Santiago similarly asks an expert about the painting, but that's one of the few elements of this novel that Yehoshua will admit is drawn from his life. "My readers are eager to see some ele- ment of autobiography. If I take some- thing from my life, I cut it into very small pieces:' he says, chopping up an imaginary block with his hand. He adds, "I am trying to understand myself through the writing:' The Retrospective (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), beautifully translated into English by Stuart Schoffman, was pub- lished in Hebrew as Hesed Sefaradi. A translator's note explains that chesed "eludes precise translation" and connotes kindness, compassion and charity, and that Sefaradi refers both to Jews whose ancestors were expelled from Spain and to Jews from Arabic-speaking countries. Schoffman's aside that "the double meaning helps the reader get the picture" hints at the many levels of meaning the reader is about to encounter in the richly plotted story. Last year, Yehoshua, whose previous works include The Lover, A Late Divorce, Mr. Mani and A Journey to the End of the Millennium, was awarded the prestigious French "Prix Medicis" for the new novel. The Hebrew edition features the painting 42 May 16 • 2013 — A.B. Yehoshua on the cover, although the American ver- sion does not. A talk with the 76-year-old author about the novel becomes a wide-ranging conver- sation about art and Judaism, the nature of creativity, Israeli policies and politics, God, religion and peacemaking, all springing from the storyline. He's open and generous and articulate. Before meeting Yehoshua, I ask cab drivers, cousins, hotel clerks and other Hebrew speakers about him, and many have read him, some back in their school days. He's part of the Modern Hebrew canon and is recognized by the cafe wait- ers, who seem pleased by his presence, although they make no fuss. The Aleph (A) in his pen name is for Avraham, Bet (B) is for Buli, a nickname given to him by childhood friends. The winner of the Israel Prize, he grew up in Jerusalem, the son of a fifth-generation Jerusalem family originally from Salonika on his father's side and a Moroccan-born mother. His grandfather was a rabbi, and the family's lifestyle was traditional. He served in the Israeli army, studied literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University and, until recently, taught at the University of Haifa. His books have been An Excerpt (The observations of the character widely translated and published in more than 25 countries, with many adapted to film, theater and opera. When asked about the emotional com- plexity that marks the characters in his novels, he says, "In this I got good train- ing. I am married to a psychoanalyst — I have to understand that the world is not simple. You see the surface and have to dig again and again:' In Retrospective, film director Yair Moses travels to Santiago, a pilgrimage city with grand plazas and cathedrals, at the invitation of the city's Archive of Cinematic Arts, for a major retrospective of his early films. He later learns that the film institute is connected to the Catholic Church and that its director is an ordained priest. His companion is Ruth, his longtime leading actress, who is also aging, and they are fine-tuned to each other's needs. Moses is still full of ideas for new films; he sees images and tries to commit them to memory to re-create in the future. Watching his old and ambitious avant- garde films, he doesn't always remember the scenes. But they spark memories of earlier days and his late cinematographer Toledano and now-estranged screenwriter Trigano, and the surreal, absurdist visions they tried to express. The retrospective is full of surprises. 1111r. , THE RETROSPECTIVE Yair Moses, an aging Israeli film director) " In recent years I have witnessed a new phenomenon among filmgoers, especially those considered intelligent and perceptive. I have a name for this phenomenon: the Instant White-Out. People are closeted in cozy darkness; they turn off their mobile phones and willingly give themselves, for 90 minutes or two hours, to a new film that got a four-star rating in the newspaper. They follow the pictures and the plot, under- stand what is spoken either in the original tongue or via dubbing or subtitles, enjoy lush locations and clever scenes, and even if they find the story superficial or prepos- terous, it is not enough to pry them from their seats and make them leave the theater in the middle of the show. "But something strange happens. After a short while, a week or two, sometimes even less, the film is whitened out, erased, as if it never happened. They can't remem- ber its name, or who the actors were, or the plot. The movie fades into the darkness of the movie house, and what remains is at most a ticket stub left accidentally in one's pocket." ❑ — from The Retrospective (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by A. B. Yehoshua, translated from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman Yehoshua's richly plotted The Retrospective hinges on ideas about artistic integrity and moral commitment.