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Translated from the German for the first time by H. Copyright by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America. So direct, indeed, so frank, that it sounds like a lewd proposal coming from a woman who made it quite naturally and at small cost to herself, instead of being the final outcry of her utter agony of spirit and flesh.
Seldom have I felt more acutely than in this connection the harm done to truth by abbreviation and compression. Yet let no one think that I am deaf to the reproach—whether expressed or, out of politeness, not expressed—which hangs over my account, my entire exposition: to the effect that the laconic terseness of the original text cannot be surpassed, and that my whole enterprise, which is already of such long continuance, is so much labour lost.
But since when, may I ask, does a commentator set himself up in competition with his text? Let us remind ourselves once again that before the story was first told, it had to tell itself—with an exactitude of which life alone is master, and to attain which a narrator has no hope or prospect at all. This deceptive picture of unbridled lust and shameless allurement does not, at least, agree with what we overheard, when we were with Joseph in the garden-house, from the lips of dignified old Tuia about her daughter-in-law.
