The Sorrowful Eyes Of Hannah Karajich

by Ivan Olbracht, Iris Urwin Lewitová (Translator)

The Sorrowful Eyes of Hannah Karajich  is a lyrical, deeply moving story of love and the pain of emancipation, set in the now vanished world of rural East European Jewish village life. Hanna is the most beautiful girl in all Polona, a Hasidic community in the remote province of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. Involvement in the exciting new movement of Zionism takes her away to a commune in a nearby town. But there she meets and falls in love with the strangely named Ivo a Jew, yet not a Jew. The agonizing drama that follows, plants into her beautiful almond-shaped eyes the hard grain of sorrow that her children, too, will inherit. Olbracht's novella is both a great love story and a marvellous portrait of a world that modernity threatened and Hitler destroyed.

Genres: Czech Literature, Classics

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Ivan Olbracht, vlastním jménem Kamil Zeman, byl český spisovatel-prozaik, publicista, novinář a překladatel německé prózy, národní umělec.

Reviews

[Agata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Od knihy jsem nečekala nic přehnaného, jednoduše to byla kniha, o které jsme se učili ve škole a zaujal mě její námět. Překvapivě se mi knihu četla velice dobře, styl psaní nebyl nijak moc složitý a vyjma specifických židovských pojmů jsem všemu rozuměla. Bylo zajímavé podívat se do světa židovské společnosti a naučit se něco nového, jak mohli žíti přibližně před sto lety. Srdce mě bolí za Hanu, protože si myslím, že všem by nám mělo být umožněno vzít si koho chceme a nebýt souzeni za naše náboženství. Přestože si vybrala lásku, přišla o svou rodinu.

[Bettie]

First published in Czechoslovakia as part of Golet i údoli
First published in English in US in 1967 by Crown Publishers Inc in a collection of stories entitled The Bitter and the Sweet

From the Introduction:'There is an old story about a Hasidic Jew being asked how many countries he has seen. Well, he says, I was born in Austria-Hungary, I was married in Czechoslovakia, I was widowed in Hungary, and now I am trying to make ends meet in the Soviet Union. Been quite a traveller then, haven't you? Not at all. I never moved a step from Mukachevo.'



Opening: The eyes of Hannh Karajich, once the most beautiful eyes in all Polana, almond-shaped eyes incredibly wide and dark, so deep they made your head swim, their long lashes softening to sweetness, whose gleam no man's heart could bear unveiled - the most wonderful eyes in the whole countryside have grown sorrowful, and sorrowful they will remain until the moment when her dear Ivo (God grant that it be he!) gently weights them down with a silver coin.

Mukachevo, Nicolas de Fer , 1692

It was the above 1692 map I found when researching some other matter, that lead me to the town, and sequentially, this book.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sorrowful Eyes of Hannah Karajich (sic - the translation tends to reduce names to a phonetic approximation in English) portrays the conflict between modernizing and assimilating Jews and their much more conservative Orthodox families and neighbors and shows the emotional cost of leaving a community so bound in tradition. It's particularly poignant in that the worlds of both the traditional and assimilated Jews would be destroyed in less than two decades after the publication of the original work.

[Agnes Kelemen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Már nagyon régen nem érintett meg szépirodalom sem ennyire. És ritkán adok 5 csillagot valamire.... Itt hihetetlenül izgultam, hogy mi lesz a végén? És még a könyv befejezése után is ideges vagyok és hevesen dobog a szívem. Szóval majdnem úgy érzem magam, mint Hanna és Ivo Karajics, nagyon berántott a könyv a világába. Szerintem zseniális az írói stílus, teljesen természetesnek tűnően keveredik a misztikum (kabbalista mítoszok és lámedvovság), a történelmi és a szociológiai adalékok, a kulturális antropológiai megfigyelés, és a humor. És nagyon nem gondolná az ember, hogy ezt egy olyan ember alkotta, aki rettentő dogmatikus volt (baloldali elhajlásért zárta ki a csehszlovák kommunista párt!) és Magyarországon csak egy rossznak tartott regényéről ismert (A hódító).

[Witoldzio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sad and deeply moving, a wonderfully constructed story of a Jewish girl transition from traditional village/community to city. There is always something special about Czech literature, a level of awareness of shared humanity and compassion. I love this writing.

[Bára z We love books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Na to, že je to klasika a hůře se mi četla, je příběh moc krásný a užila jsem si ho :-)