The Agnonian Anchor

Why did Agnon choose this name? The matter is related to a Kabbalistic concept no less daring than Sabbateanism - concerning the relations of the coupling of the Shekhinah [divine presence] with God. This concept is also the source of Agnon's modernism - and the reason he gained acceptance outside the religious world. A one-sided attachment, which has an overt component of necessity and a covert component of desire and some inherent impossibility and hopeless hope and expectation, namely 'agunah' [a woman "anchored" or chained to a marriage] in traditional language - is what connects Agnon to the sources of modern absurdism

Maintains a relationship of 'agunah' with the dead myth - and does not break free (Source)

Agnon, true to his name, deals with 'agunah', that is, the inability to break free from something that is no longer there, no longer present. As in "Shira", or in general in his naive-cynical relationship to tradition, or to the shtetl that is no longer there, or to break free from Balak, or from Blumah, or from some injustice in the past. For him, this is a comprehensive, central worldview of the inability to break free from something that is no longer really alive, hence the proximity to Kafka, and the inability to finish, or to divorce, even on a personal level, to break free from the pose.

This also connects to a national perception of the inability to break free from exile, but the main boldness is in the perception of God's relationship with the Assembly of Israel, not as marriage, betrothal or divorce - but as 'agunah'. The absent God and the inability to break free from Him - which is also an unwillingness, despite the fact that He has not been there for a long time. In fact, He is constantly seeking to disappear and be absent, since Eden when He left them there and disappeared, and then they sinned, and then He returns. Each time He leaves the world, like Moses who went to Mount Sinai and did not return, and then returns when they sinned.

Agnon managed to reach mythicism only through academic research, not directly, to touch it through the handkerchief of research, for example in "Ido and Enam" and "Ad Olam" [Forever]. Scholem managed to touch it also through research, and not directly, and Agnon followed his path - but direct attempts were not successful. Not in "The Book of Deeds", not in surrealistic passages. Modern Hebrew literature no longer has access to myth. Not even with Agnon, and not even with Shabtai in "Sof Davar" [Finally]. It has been expelled from the lost myth.