The Organon of Humiliation in Hanoch Levin's Narrative Fiction-The Case of 'A Man Standing Behind a Seated Woman'

While Hanoch Levin's dramatic works have received, and rightly so, cosiderable critical attention, his prose works have earned (relatively) scant critical analyis. This paper attempts to analyse Hanoch Levin's second and last collection of prose pieces— איש עומד מאחורי אשר יושב (A man standing behind a seated woman)—in which some of the traits characteristic of his prose have reached their consummate realization. In particular, it attempts to crack the code of Levin's chilling art of humiliation, which, in the words of Emily Dickinson, can never be met, whether one is "Attended or alone/Without a tighter breathing/And zero at the bone." While focusing on the elaborate, ever so viciously subtle artifice of humiliation, the article also deals with the effect of the text on the reader, and towards the end hints at the possible cathartic effect that this weave of darkness, this locus of utter negativity, devoid of any shred of grace, might hold for the reader engulfed by its black power.