Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.11
O. Bartov
Abstract:This article discusses the years between the revolutions of 1848 and World War I, experienced by many Europeans as a time of unprecedented new opportunities for self-realization and collective liberation, and as one in which individual and collective identities became progressively constrained within national boundaries. In such towns as Buczacz and similar sites in the Austrian province of Galicia, people had more choices than ever before or after. Yet groups and individuals also began to be distinguished from others not only by religion and ethnicity, but also by whether their history gave them the right to continue living where they were. The author traces this process by discussing some better and lesser known individuals of this period: the Ukrainian author Ivan Franko, his Jewish counterpart Karl Emil Franzos, the scholar David (Zvi) Heinrich Müller, the writer S. Y. Agnon, Sigmund Freud, the doctor Fabius Nacht, his socialist-anarchist sons Max (Nomad) and Siegfried (Naft), and their idol Anselm Mosler, as well as the communist leader Adolf Langer, later known as Ostap Dłuski. Through these individual portraits, the author shows that the realization of the Enlightenment's lofty aspiration of liberating the individual from collective feudal constraints ended up unleashing forces that undermined the very core of humanism.
{"title":"Tales from Half-Asia: Small-Town Galicians Encounter the World","authors":"O. Bartov","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.11","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article discusses the years between the revolutions of 1848 and World War I, experienced by many Europeans as a time of unprecedented new opportunities for self-realization and collective liberation, and as one in which individual and collective identities became progressively constrained within national boundaries. In such towns as Buczacz and similar sites in the Austrian province of Galicia, people had more choices than ever before or after. Yet groups and individuals also began to be distinguished from others not only by religion and ethnicity, but also by whether their history gave them the right to continue living where they were. The author traces this process by discussing some better and lesser known individuals of this period: the Ukrainian author Ivan Franko, his Jewish counterpart Karl Emil Franzos, the scholar David (Zvi) Heinrich Müller, the writer S. Y. Agnon, Sigmund Freud, the doctor Fabius Nacht, his socialist-anarchist sons Max (Nomad) and Siegfried (Naft), and their idol Anselm Mosler, as well as the communist leader Adolf Langer, later known as Ostap Dłuski. Through these individual portraits, the author shows that the realization of the Enlightenment's lofty aspiration of liberating the individual from collective feudal constraints ended up unleashing forces that undermined the very core of humanism.","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"22 1","pages":"469 - 496"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81838648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.13
Glenda Abramson
Abstract:In 1912, Agnon left Jaffa for Germany. He first lived in Berlin and then moved to Leipzig in 1917, where he remained for various short periods in 1917 and 1918. Throughout the years he lived in Germany, he did not write about his life in Germany or World War I. His literary preoccupation was, rather, the life and culture of Eastern European Jewry. Only in the 1950s did he turn his attention to Germany, to write what is considered to be his valediction to prewar German Jewish life. Two major novels, ʿAd henah (To This Day) and Beḥanuto shel Mar Lublin (In Mr. Lublin's Store), first published in 1952 and 1975, respectively, resulted from his stay in Germany from 1912 to 1924. This article will examine the section of In Mr. Lublin's Store Agnon called "The Last Chapter," which was first published in 1964. It recalls the World War I with its corollary, the destruction and displacement of Jewish communities throughout Eastern Europe which, in the novel, results in a visit to the narrator in Leipzig from his old friend Mr. Stern. The author discusses the figure of Mr. Stern and their shared home town, unnamed but clearly Buczacz, which are central to this chapter, as well as the narrator's dilemma within his confrontation with modernity.
{"title":"\"Our Town\": Mr. Stern and Buczacz in In Mr. Lublin's Store","authors":"Glenda Abramson","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.13","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1912, Agnon left Jaffa for Germany. He first lived in Berlin and then moved to Leipzig in 1917, where he remained for various short periods in 1917 and 1918. Throughout the years he lived in Germany, he did not write about his life in Germany or World War I. His literary preoccupation was, rather, the life and culture of Eastern European Jewry. Only in the 1950s did he turn his attention to Germany, to write what is considered to be his valediction to prewar German Jewish life. Two major novels, ʿAd henah (To This Day) and Beḥanuto shel Mar Lublin (In Mr. Lublin's Store), first published in 1952 and 1975, respectively, resulted from his stay in Germany from 1912 to 1924. This article will examine the section of In Mr. Lublin's Store Agnon called \"The Last Chapter,\" which was first published in 1964. It recalls the World War I with its corollary, the destruction and displacement of Jewish communities throughout Eastern Europe which, in the novel, results in a visit to the narrator in Leipzig from his old friend Mr. Stern. The author discusses the figure of Mr. Stern and their shared home town, unnamed but clearly Buczacz, which are central to this chapter, as well as the narrator's dilemma within his confrontation with modernity.","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"14 1","pages":"528 - 552"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76229007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.02
D. Roskies
{"title":"Alan Mintz: A Prophet in His City","authors":"D. Roskies","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"1 1","pages":"397 - 419"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85261199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.18
M. Gluzman
Abstract:This essay offers an economic reading of Y. H. Brenner's In Winter, which marks the emergence of Hebrew modernism. By describing Brenner's shifting articulations of the social/psychological divide, I suggest that his perception of poverty is a hermeneutical key for understanding his literary work in the early twentieth century. Material poverty permeates Brenner's early collection of short stories, Out of a Gloomy Valley (1900), which seems to underscore the social and material underpinnings of Jewish suffering. But, with In Winter (1903), it becomes clear that poverty has changed its significance for Brenner. Poverty becomes not only a material reality but a tenet of the textual fabric itself, signifying the disheveled style of the narrator-protagonist's writing. Moreover, as In Winter draws nearer to its conclusion, poverty gains yet another meaning as impoverishment turns into a key psychological concept that transcends its social foundation, elucidating the empty, inexplicable void the protagonist experiences. The figuration of poverty sheds light on Brenner's gradual modification of the social/psychological binary within In Winter itself. The novel's ending, which is the focal point of my reading, constitutes a powerful departure from the social, marking the unsaid as the text's secret nucleus.
{"title":"The Poetics of Secrecy: What Remains Unsaid in Y. H. Brenner's In Winter?","authors":"M. Gluzman","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.18","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.18","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay offers an economic reading of Y. H. Brenner's In Winter, which marks the emergence of Hebrew modernism. By describing Brenner's shifting articulations of the social/psychological divide, I suggest that his perception of poverty is a hermeneutical key for understanding his literary work in the early twentieth century. Material poverty permeates Brenner's early collection of short stories, Out of a Gloomy Valley (1900), which seems to underscore the social and material underpinnings of Jewish suffering. But, with In Winter (1903), it becomes clear that poverty has changed its significance for Brenner. Poverty becomes not only a material reality but a tenet of the textual fabric itself, signifying the disheveled style of the narrator-protagonist's writing. Moreover, as In Winter draws nearer to its conclusion, poverty gains yet another meaning as impoverishment turns into a key psychological concept that transcends its social foundation, elucidating the empty, inexplicable void the protagonist experiences. The figuration of poverty sheds light on Brenner's gradual modification of the social/psychological binary within In Winter itself. The novel's ending, which is the focal point of my reading, constitutes a powerful departure from the social, marking the unsaid as the text's secret nucleus.","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"63 1","pages":"666 - 687"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82661001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.10
S. Zaritt
{"title":"An Invitation to Polemical Enthusiasm and Near-Native Close Reading: In Memory of Alan Mintz","authors":"S. Zaritt","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"25 1","pages":"463 - 468"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81148796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.09
Beverly Bailis
Abstract:Archives reveal the passions of the collector. The remains heaped up in them are reserve funds or something like iron reserves, crucial to life, and which for that reason must be conserved.
{"title":"Packing Up an Office: The Work of Mourning and the Creation of an Archive","authors":"Beverly Bailis","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.09","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Archives reveal the passions of the collector. The remains heaped up in them are reserve funds or something like iron reserves, crucial to life, and which for that reason must be conserved.","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"31 1","pages":"451 - 462"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81792426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.12
J. Saks
Abstract:This essay offers careful examination of the often overlooked early works of S. Y. Agnon and offers insight into the original raw material from which he crafted a literary universe over his long career. Elements of Agnon's adolescent writing in Yiddish and Hebrew prior to his departure for Erets Yisrael in 1908, aged nineteen, would be rearranged in stories, novellas, and novels from the moment his career is conventionally considered to have begun, with his arrival in Jaffa, up to and including material he was working on shortly before his death in 1970. Through an analysis of an almost completely overlooked 1907 story, "The City of the Dead" (translated and annotated in the article's appendix), we see how Agnon already saw himself as the chronicler of his native Buczacz in ways that occupied the author for over six decades in a long artistic arc that led to the culminating project in the posthumously published A City in Its Fullness.
{"title":"From \"A City of the Dead\" to A City in Its Fullness: Evolving Depictions of Buczacz in the Long Agnonian Arc","authors":"J. Saks","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.12","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay offers careful examination of the often overlooked early works of S. Y. Agnon and offers insight into the original raw material from which he crafted a literary universe over his long career. Elements of Agnon's adolescent writing in Yiddish and Hebrew prior to his departure for Erets Yisrael in 1908, aged nineteen, would be rearranged in stories, novellas, and novels from the moment his career is conventionally considered to have begun, with his arrival in Jaffa, up to and including material he was working on shortly before his death in 1970. Through an analysis of an almost completely overlooked 1907 story, \"The City of the Dead\" (translated and annotated in the article's appendix), we see how Agnon already saw himself as the chronicler of his native Buczacz in ways that occupied the author for over six decades in a long artistic arc that led to the culminating project in the posthumously published A City in Its Fullness.","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"14 1","pages":"497 - 527"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73409177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-16DOI: 10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.16
Wendy Zierler
Abstract:It has been a commonplace in the criticism and interpretation of the fiction of Devorah Baron (1887–1956) to refer to her fiction as a form of poetry in prose, or as an "idyll" that poetically represents a static shtetl past. This article breaks the idyll, so to speak, showing how Baron's ambitious fiction reshapes the narrative perspective, plot, and motifs of several layers of (male) canonical tradition, specifically. Part of a larger comparative study of the fiction of S. Y. Agnon and Devorah Baron, it focuses on their shared admiration for and common intertextual engagements with Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856–57), as seen in Baron's translation of the classic novel, Agnon's realist novel Sippur pashut (1935) and Baron's "Fradl" (1946). A close reading of Baron's later story "Fradl" discloses the intertextual traces of both Baron's Madame Bovary and Agnon's novel, references that can be read as overturning elements of Agnon's and Flaubert's masterworks in specifically feminist and non-idyllic ways. The presence in many of her stories, including "Fradl," of a controlling first-person female narrator, one who lives apart from the world being described and employs multilayered intertextuality and ars-poetic reflection, suggests an effort to craft an image of the woman writer capable of intervening in and reconfiguring the literary past.
{"title":"Breaking the Idyll: Rereading Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Agnon's Sippur pashut through Devorah Baron's \"Fradl\"","authors":"Wendy Zierler","doi":"10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/prooftexts.37.3.16","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:It has been a commonplace in the criticism and interpretation of the fiction of Devorah Baron (1887–1956) to refer to her fiction as a form of poetry in prose, or as an \"idyll\" that poetically represents a static shtetl past. This article breaks the idyll, so to speak, showing how Baron's ambitious fiction reshapes the narrative perspective, plot, and motifs of several layers of (male) canonical tradition, specifically. Part of a larger comparative study of the fiction of S. Y. Agnon and Devorah Baron, it focuses on their shared admiration for and common intertextual engagements with Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856–57), as seen in Baron's translation of the classic novel, Agnon's realist novel Sippur pashut (1935) and Baron's \"Fradl\" (1946). A close reading of Baron's later story \"Fradl\" discloses the intertextual traces of both Baron's Madame Bovary and Agnon's novel, references that can be read as overturning elements of Agnon's and Flaubert's masterworks in specifically feminist and non-idyllic ways. The presence in many of her stories, including \"Fradl,\" of a controlling first-person female narrator, one who lives apart from the world being described and employs multilayered intertextuality and ars-poetic reflection, suggests an effort to craft an image of the woman writer capable of intervening in and reconfiguring the literary past.","PeriodicalId":43444,"journal":{"name":"PROOFTEXTS-A JOURNAL OF JEWISH LITERARY HISTORY","volume":"27 1","pages":"607 - 641"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84466104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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