199 9 Cultural Poetics and the Politics of Literature Frederik Tygstrup and Isak Winkel Holm In his memoirs, A Tale of Love and Darkness, published in 2004, Amos Oz tells the story of his grandmother’s death. Arriving in Israel on a warm summer’s day in 1933 from one of Eastern Europe’s grey winter villages, she saw the hot marketplace in front of her, with its bloody carcasses, colourful fruit, sweating men and noisy vendors and passed her ver- dict: ‘The Levant is full of microbes.’ She immediately embarked on a comprehensive hygiene regime, which she zealously came to maintain over the next 50 years – a regime which included cleaning, scalding, airing and disinfecting everything, including her own body, on a daily basis. The cleaning frenzy comes to an end only when she collapses at 80-something with heart failure during one of the three hot baths, which were part of her daily routine. So what did the grandmother die of? The fact is that she died of heart failure. But the truth is that it was her monstrous hygienic programme that killed her. And, on a philo- sophical tone, Oz adds: ‘Facts tend to hide the truth from our eyes.’ 1 Truths and facts The world is full of facts, and we are presented with still more facts at a still faster pace. For the last couple of centuries, facts have been the undisputed starting point of any knowledge. We consider facts as ‘hard’ and see them as a solid foundation for our ideas and actions. But the encounter with the evidence of the fact is followed by the questions of how and why this fact comes about – questions to which the fact in itself does not necessarily provide us with an answer. Facts must be organ- ized into patterns for us to relate to them. In order to understand the grandmother’s heart failure we must know about the manic cleanliness which led to the hot baths and thus put a fatal strain on her circulatory 9780230365476_11_cha09.indd 199 9780230365476_11_cha09.indd 199 12/21/2011 5:24:44 PM 12/21/2011 5:24:44 PM This file is to be used only for a purpose specified by Palgrave Macmillan, such as checking proofs, preparing an index, reviewing, endorsing or planning coursework/other institutional needs. You may store and print the file and share it with others helping you with the specified purpose, but under no circumstances may the file be distributed or otherwise made accessible to any other third parties without the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan. Please contact rights@palgrave.com if you have any queries regarding use of the file. PROOF