Auerbach’s Abraham(s): Biblical Narrative and the Genesis of Critical Reading

Abstract: This article argues that “Odysseus’ Scar,” the famous opening chapter of German Jewish philologist Erich Auerbach’s 1946 book Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature , stages a sustained political critique of fascist propaganda by contrasting a passage from Homer’s Odyssey with the Akedah story from Genesis 22. Although this contrast has attracted much critical attention over the years, this attention has missed how the political force of Auerbach’s argument attaches less to the structure of Homeric versus biblical mimesis per se than to the respective power of these modes of mimesis to ideologically shape the consciousness of the reading subject, which leads to a contrast between an amnesic, fascist reader and a historically conscious, critical reader that mirrors the contrast of Homeric and biblical mimesis. Going further, Auerbach uses this contrast to make a strong claim for critique itself as a Judaic cultural inheritance of the West: critique—as a reading practice, a subjective capacity, and a political orientation—is the literary-historical legacy of biblical narrative in Europe. The article reconstructs Auerbach’s argument through readings of selected passages from Mimesis : first his account of Genesis 22; then his discussion of Homer, Voltaire, and Gottfried Keller; and then returning to Genesis 22. The article concludes by extending the argument to Auerbach’s 1952 essay, “The Philology of World Literature.”