When it comes down to it, determining the critical discourse is dependent on formalism. Which story did you like the most. That's the only way I can explain the lasting import of Yentl, while Bashevis's other queer stories have fallen by the wayside (it's possible that even he forgot about them, as he has two stories with the same name: one about gay dudes in Poland, another set in New York). I remember my old advisor, a Faulkner scholar, clarifying that she didn't put The Unvanquished on the syllabus because the book was "pretty boring".
And you know what? Determining the critical discourse this way works: these other stories of Bashevis's are terrible. Certainly there are interesting structural or post- routes to take when asking "what does it mean when someone has a 'woman's soul'?"; but, please believe me, the subject is not treated with much grace in Singer's "Two."
A quick clarification regarding discourse selection (which isn't entirely relevant): there's a big difference between choosing which works by an author are most "worthy" of analysis, and which author is "worthy" of analysis. I guess this is relevant in the context that there was a lot of controversy surrounding Bashevis's Nobel Prize win (isn't this always the case?) and his career as a whole. I guess my point is that the status of a writer shouldn't necessarily determine the shape and contours of the discourse (notice I didn't say "canon").
Goddammit. Forgot my main point with that. I'll be back.
6/6/11
Di Keyt
Writing these words is a performative action: it preserves the past, and simultaneously makes the author (and hopefully the reader) aware of the past; writing these words is writing the past; the past exists alongside the present.
But to return to flat, sequential time for a moment. Relating back to words of the past creates a chain, a sequence of chronological words. This present work does not function in the same way as previous works to which it connects, but it is similar. Shai Agnon and Stefan Zweig, the subjects of this thesis, both experienced and theorized Modernity. While I am theorizing on their works-- and I am even experiencing their works and performing actions similar to theirs via said theorizing-- writing from an apartment in Queens is not the same as Zweig's writing in Brazil after fleeing the Nazis, or Agnon's reconstruction of his two lost libraries. I am further away from their initial acts of preservation, and, baruch Hashem, from the events which necessitated the acts of preservation. Zweig and Agnon wrote to compensate for the tragedy of lost words and lost worlds. Twice.
The title of this blog post, which means chain in Yiddish, is a reference to the Yiddish paper started by the poet Avram Sutzkever in Israel. He was one of the few Yiddish writers to survive WWII, and luckily he got out of the USSR before Stalin liquidated even more Yiddish writers in the 1950s. When Sutzkever was in the Vilna ghetto, during its siege by the Nazis, he wrote a poem that meditates on another function of words different from Zweig and Agnon's usage, but the goal of conservation remains the same: Sutzkever witnessed the melting of a printing press in order to make bullets. Words become means of destruction while preventing their own destruction. The meta-themes shared by all three writers brings the focus onto words themselves, and how they function as words. Language, in the hands of Jews, is one of our most valuable assets. My language right now, in looking to the past, also creates the past, molding it to relevancy once again.
But to return to flat, sequential time for a moment. Relating back to words of the past creates a chain, a sequence of chronological words. This present work does not function in the same way as previous works to which it connects, but it is similar. Shai Agnon and Stefan Zweig, the subjects of this thesis, both experienced and theorized Modernity. While I am theorizing on their works-- and I am even experiencing their works and performing actions similar to theirs via said theorizing-- writing from an apartment in Queens is not the same as Zweig's writing in Brazil after fleeing the Nazis, or Agnon's reconstruction of his two lost libraries. I am further away from their initial acts of preservation, and, baruch Hashem, from the events which necessitated the acts of preservation. Zweig and Agnon wrote to compensate for the tragedy of lost words and lost worlds. Twice.
The title of this blog post, which means chain in Yiddish, is a reference to the Yiddish paper started by the poet Avram Sutzkever in Israel. He was one of the few Yiddish writers to survive WWII, and luckily he got out of the USSR before Stalin liquidated even more Yiddish writers in the 1950s. When Sutzkever was in the Vilna ghetto, during its siege by the Nazis, he wrote a poem that meditates on another function of words different from Zweig and Agnon's usage, but the goal of conservation remains the same: Sutzkever witnessed the melting of a printing press in order to make bullets. Words become means of destruction while preventing their own destruction. The meta-themes shared by all three writers brings the focus onto words themselves, and how they function as words. Language, in the hands of Jews, is one of our most valuable assets. My language right now, in looking to the past, also creates the past, molding it to relevancy once again.
5/22/11
Humor and Social commentary in Jewish Literature
"I've always thought baseball bats send a much stronger message than satire."
- Woody Allen's character in Manhattan
Using this binaristic lens to analyze Jewish--mostly Yiddish-- literature, we can see how the angles play out. As annoying, I think, as comparison studies are between Bashevis and I.J., the two brothers encapsulate this split: the older was a Naturalist, rather devoid of humor, who took the baseball bat approach; the younger, though he focused more on individuals and their interiors, traced his influences from Thomas Mann's satire.
With the mention of the German Nobel laureate, whom Bashevis translated, it's important to note his split from what had been classic European novel writing. Namely, satire and a move from Naturalism to Modernism. I.J., though born ten years before his brother, belongs in the Zola, Flaubert, and perhaps Dostoevsky, camp; Mann and Bashevis belong in a "later" one.
Dates are almost unimportant in Jewish literature, as the tradition experienced rapid growth through successive literary forms and eras. Thomas Mann was born in 1875; I.J. in '83; Bashevis in 1902. What Bashevis's Modernist era represents is a return to the comedy and social commentary of the first modern Yiddish writers, Mendele and Sholem Aleichem, with the added bonuses of a German master, sexual deviancy, catastrophe, and kabbalistic mystery.
In 1934, Benjamin writes that the technique of a work can be either progressive or regressive; that is, whether or not--this is the Marxist part-- the work contributes to the furthering of political/historical goals. The advent of Modernism, as a progression from realism and naturalism, gave Bashevis an edge on his brother, and enabled him to capture ideas or feelings the way his brother could not due to the latter's position in literary history.
If there is a Marxist base for Bashevis's literary output--i.e. economic production determining his consciousness--it is, in fact, the destruction of industry, rather than its progression, which spurred the Yiddish Nobel laureate.
- Woody Allen's character in Manhattan
Using this binaristic lens to analyze Jewish--mostly Yiddish-- literature, we can see how the angles play out. As annoying, I think, as comparison studies are between Bashevis and I.J., the two brothers encapsulate this split: the older was a Naturalist, rather devoid of humor, who took the baseball bat approach; the younger, though he focused more on individuals and their interiors, traced his influences from Thomas Mann's satire.
With the mention of the German Nobel laureate, whom Bashevis translated, it's important to note his split from what had been classic European novel writing. Namely, satire and a move from Naturalism to Modernism. I.J., though born ten years before his brother, belongs in the Zola, Flaubert, and perhaps Dostoevsky, camp; Mann and Bashevis belong in a "later" one.
Dates are almost unimportant in Jewish literature, as the tradition experienced rapid growth through successive literary forms and eras. Thomas Mann was born in 1875; I.J. in '83; Bashevis in 1902. What Bashevis's Modernist era represents is a return to the comedy and social commentary of the first modern Yiddish writers, Mendele and Sholem Aleichem, with the added bonuses of a German master, sexual deviancy, catastrophe, and kabbalistic mystery.
In 1934, Benjamin writes that the technique of a work can be either progressive or regressive; that is, whether or not--this is the Marxist part-- the work contributes to the furthering of political/historical goals. The advent of Modernism, as a progression from realism and naturalism, gave Bashevis an edge on his brother, and enabled him to capture ideas or feelings the way his brother could not due to the latter's position in literary history.
If there is a Marxist base for Bashevis's literary output--i.e. economic production determining his consciousness--it is, in fact, the destruction of industry, rather than its progression, which spurred the Yiddish Nobel laureate.
5/14/11
Mashiachzeit and Europe Between the Wars
"For every second of time is the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter."
-Walter Benjamin
Looking more and more like my thesis will be about this moment, as meditated upon by Stefan Zweig and (in retrospect, perhaps) Shai Agnon--and with a little help from our messianic Marxist pal, Walter Benjamin.
Does yearning for Die Welt fun Gestern, a lost paradiscal place, coincide with the yearning for an equally peaceful future? Imagine growing up as an incredibly literate (in three or more languages) and privileged European Jew (whether assimilated in Zweig's case, or orthodox in Agnon's), with the ability to travel all over, and schmoozing with famous folk. Imagine the pre-WWI wealth. Imagine its utter destruction-- then both its cultural and economic rebuilding. Now imagine the repeat of that.
Imagine the contrast between choosing to live anywhere on the planet and being forced to live anywhere but your home.
-Walter Benjamin
Looking more and more like my thesis will be about this moment, as meditated upon by Stefan Zweig and (in retrospect, perhaps) Shai Agnon--and with a little help from our messianic Marxist pal, Walter Benjamin.
Does yearning for Die Welt fun Gestern, a lost paradiscal place, coincide with the yearning for an equally peaceful future? Imagine growing up as an incredibly literate (in three or more languages) and privileged European Jew (whether assimilated in Zweig's case, or orthodox in Agnon's), with the ability to travel all over, and schmoozing with famous folk. Imagine the pre-WWI wealth. Imagine its utter destruction-- then both its cultural and economic rebuilding. Now imagine the repeat of that.
Imagine the contrast between choosing to live anywhere on the planet and being forced to live anywhere but your home.
5/11/11
The Subaltern Within Speech
Leonard Michaels wrote this long, moving essay about his relationship with Yiddish, which was his only language from birth to the age of five. I don't know enough about Wittgenstein to fully comprehend some of his points, but I had ideas of my own.
In her work on Preil, Feldman also hints at an approach she explores in her other work: the linguistic undercurrent, which can be exposed with psychoanalysis (she likes Jung). This also shows why multiple approaches to literature will always be a good thing, and why Kristeva is so brilliant when she combines them. Straight or "pure" post- and structuralism will never account for every factor. When poststructural psychoanalysis, via Kristeva, attempts to explore the points at which one language system breaks through into another-- e.g. not just unique turns of phrase and the like, but a thought pattern (semiotic layer) inherent in a language-- can we understand the uniqueness of an individual's writing. The individual writer or work is a result of the complex interactions of these larger systems, with the addition, obviously, of the unique input of their being.
Modern Hebrew, then, carries this undercurrent of Yiddish.
Yiddish is probably at work in my written English. This moment, writing in English, I wonder about the Yiddish undercurrent. If I listen, I can almost hear it: “This moment”—a stress followed by two neutral syllables—introduces a thought which hangs like a herring in the weary droop of “writing in English,” and then comes the announcement, “I wonder about the Yiddish undercurrent.” The sentence ends in a shrug. Maybe I hear the Yiddish undercurrent, maybe I don’t. The sentence could have been written by anyone who knows English, but it probably would not have been written by a well-bred Gentile. It has too much drama, and might even be disturbing, like music in a restaurant or an elevator. The sentence obliges you to abide in its staggered flow, as if what I mean were inextricable from my feelings and required a lyrical note. There is a kind of enforced intimacy with the reader. A Jewish kind, I suppose. In Sean O’Casey’s lovelier prose you hear an Irish kind.This is the kind of unverifiable stuff that makes literary analysis so damn fun. When Hebrew literature was first coming on the scene in the ~1860s, its main practitioners' first tongue was the mother tongue, Yiddish: they read Yiddish novels and poetry, they listened to their bubbes tell stories in Yiddish, they heard the rabbis give a drash in Yiddish (so the womenfolk could understand). This was only the historical pattern. Jews spoke, as primary languages, Aramaic, Arabic, Italian and Spanish, and these influenced their Hebrew writing (which was mostly poetry). I took a structural approach to this in my paper on the American Hebraist Gabriel Preil; that is, how language as a total system functions (Yael Feldman, who follows Bakhtin, does it really well, because there are some dense-ass linguistic concepts).
In her work on Preil, Feldman also hints at an approach she explores in her other work: the linguistic undercurrent, which can be exposed with psychoanalysis (she likes Jung). This also shows why multiple approaches to literature will always be a good thing, and why Kristeva is so brilliant when she combines them. Straight or "pure" post- and structuralism will never account for every factor. When poststructural psychoanalysis, via Kristeva, attempts to explore the points at which one language system breaks through into another-- e.g. not just unique turns of phrase and the like, but a thought pattern (semiotic layer) inherent in a language-- can we understand the uniqueness of an individual's writing. The individual writer or work is a result of the complex interactions of these larger systems, with the addition, obviously, of the unique input of their being.
Modern Hebrew, then, carries this undercurrent of Yiddish.
5/9/11
"Sinai Is Not Just a Symbol"; Neither Are Your Words
When I marched in Selma, my legs were praying. --Heschel (found in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Exploring His Life & Thought by John C. Merkle)
It's no coincidence that Heschel's first major scholarly work was on the biblical prophets: these men-- who called Israel to repent for their sins so as not to suffer God's wrath--would influence the rabbi throughout his life. Unsurprisingly, they influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. as well. The two modern day prophets were good friends, engaged in social justice together, and, as this quote indicates, performed the words of the prophets by beseeching America to mend its ways. Not only were his legs praying, but they were enacting what Heschel saw as God's will.
Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in Poland in 1907. He studied in Berlin, where he started his project on the prophets, but in 1938 the Gestapo expelled him back to Poland. Though he made it safely to America two years later, his three sisters and mother were killed in WWII. There's no doubt Heschel had his family in mind when he witnessed further state brutality perpetuated against African Americans in his new home.
The first attempted march from Selma to Montgomery was met with police brutality, and 17 protesters were hospitalized; March 7 would be dubbed "Blood Sunday." The second attempt was stopped with a court order. On March 25, 1965, when the protesters successfully made it the 51 miles, Martin Luther King said to a crowd of 25,000, "The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. I know you are asking today, How long will it take? I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long." The Voting Rights Act would be passed on August 6, with the help of Heschel and the ancient prophets. Heschel died in 1970, but his words, which can't be separated from his actions, live on; however, they have not yet come to full fruition. Injustice still exists. As it was not sufficient for Heschel to merely write, it is not sufficient for us to merely read.
4/17/11
Haderet v'haemunah l'chai olamim. Habinah v'habracha l'chai olamim. Hagavah v'hag'dulah l'chai olamim. Hadeah v'hadibur l'chai olamim. Hahod v'hehadar l'chai olamim. Haviud v'havatikut l'chai olamim. Hazach v'hazohar l'chai olamim. Hachayil v'hachosen l'chai olamim. Hateches v'hatohar l'chai olamim. Hayichud v'hayir'ah l'chai olamim. Haketer v'hakavod l'chai olamim. Ham'lucha v'hamemshalah l'chai olamim. Hanoi v'hanetzach l'chai olamim. Haoz v'ha'anavah l'chai olamim. Hap'dut v'hap'er l'chai olamim. Hatz'vi v'hatzedek l'chai olamim. Hak'riah v'hak'dushah l'chai olamim. Haron v'harom'mut l'chai olamim. Hashir v'hashevach l'chai olamim. Hat'hilah v'hatif'eret l'chai olamim. | הָאַּדֶֽרֶת וְהָאֱמונָה לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּבִינָה וְהַּבְרָכָה לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּגַאֲוָה וְהַּגְדֻלָה לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּדֵעָה וְהַּדִּבור לְחַי עולָמִים. הַהוד וְהֶהָדָר לְחַי עולָמִים. הַוַֽעַד וְהַוָתִיקות לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּזָךְ וְהַּזֹֽהַר לְחַי עולָמִים. הַחַֽיִל וְהַחֹֽסֶן לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּטֶֽכֶס וְהַּטֹֽהַר לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּיִחוד וְהַּיִרְאָה לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּכֶֽתֶר וְהַּכָבוד לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּלֶֽקַח וְהַּלִּבוב לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּמְלוכָה וְהַּמֶמְׁשָלָה לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּנוי וְהַּנֵֽצַח לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּסִּגוי וְהַׂשֶֽגֶב לְחַי עולָמִים. הָעֹז וְהָעֲנָוָה לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּפְדות וְהַּפְאֵר לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּצְבִי וְהַּצֶֽדֶק לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּקְרִיאָה וְהַּקְדֻׁשָה לְחַי עולָמִים. הָרֹן וְהָרומֵמות לְחַי עולָמִים. הַׁשִיר וְהַׁשֶֽבַח לְחַי עולָמִים. הַּתְהִּלָה וְהַּתִפְאֶֽרֶת לְחַי עולָמִים. |
And here's Chabad in Moscow rocking out, Yngwie Malmsteen style. | |
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