In Their Surroundings. Localizing Modern Jewish Literatures in Eastern Europe. Edited by Efrat Gal-Ed, Natasha, Gordinsky, Sabine Koller, Yfaat Weiss, 2022
Within a vibrant polylingual and multicultural atmosphere, an eventful history marked by revoluti... more Within a vibrant polylingual and multicultural atmosphere, an eventful history marked by revolutions, the breakdown of empires, the rise (or reappearance) of young nations (partly with an inflated sense of nationalism), and mass migration to the New World, a modern Jewish literary thinking took shape. Numerous processes of cultural transfer played a major role in forging the concept of Europe for Eastern European Jewish intellectuals.
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Papers by Efrat Gal-Ed
members and students, explores Falkovitsh’s life story, his work and influence
as a teacher and scholar. Using journalistic and archival material,
she pieces together his role as an important participant in the great Soviet
Yiddish culture project, which broke off shortly after the end of the Second
World War.
Im Fokus dieses Beitrags steht die Frage nach dem geeigneten biographischen Textverfahren, wenn die Lebenswelt eines Protagonisten nicht länger existiert: Wenn meinem Lesepublikum die Referenzpunkte für den Kontext des Einzelschicksals, das es darzustellen gilt, fast zur Gänze fehlen.
Rumäniens fungierte und bereits knapp zwanzig Jahre später dem Nationalsozialismus und dem rumänischen Faschismus zum Opfer
fiel. Erst 1919 nach dem Anschluss der Bukowina an Großrumänien mit seiner mehrheitlich Jiddisch sprechenden, knapp eine Million zählenden
jüdischen Bevölkerung entstand trotz diskriminierender Maßnahmen und Zwangsrumänisierung ein dynamisches jiddisch-literarisches Feld, das man später Jung-tschernowiz [Junges Czernowitz] bzw. Jung-rumenje [Junges Rumänien] nannte.
If we attend to the time of publication of ‘Ir ha- metim (1892) and Di toyte shtot (1901), then we are dealing with two time-delayed translation processes. Thus, in the process of the Yiddish literary compression of the story, two components are interwoven: a translation back into the language of the portrayed world, and a reworking of diverse passages. Modifications in the form of corrections, rewriting and re-creation during the translation are common in self-translations. Peretz translated in both directions and appeared not as self-translator but as author; accordingly, both versions of the present story were read as original texts.
Peretz’s practice of self-translation raises questions about the translation of his artistic intentions into literary works in both languages. Can we discern differences of textual production between the two languages? What part do correction and revision have in the translation process, what role does self-translation have in the creative process?
verband sich die Frage nach Zugehörigkeit: Wie sollte der Zusammenhalt jiddischer
Kulturinseln gewährleistet werden? Auf welche Weise haben jiddischsprachige
Kulturschaffende teil an den kulturellen Prozessen der herrschenden Kulturen,
in denen sie leben? Was muss jiddische Literatur leisten, um der
Weltliteratur anzugehören?
Anhand vonÄußerungen und Handlungenvon Literaten und Kulturaktivisten
werden in diesem Aufsatz einige Grundzüge ihrer Welt- und Selbstbilder rekonstruiert,
und es soll gezeigt werden, wie die ausgreifenden kulturellen Erwartungen
auf einen autonom gestalteten historischen Wandel des jiddischsprachigen
Kollektivs und seiner Stellung in der Völkergemeinschaft zielten.
an independent literary genre: the biblical poem, in which the presence of the biblical text, though for the most part radically reshaped and rewritten, remains tangible.
form. And for the reader, the term opens up a mode of approach to Manger’s literary
practice.
Yiddish Writers Association, and proclaimed, “The modern Yiddish literary group
in Romania has as far as possible betrayed the local; its desire is to be at the center,
and in the turbulence, of European culture.” His statement alludes to a paradigm
shift, a movement from a closed system to a pluralistic one. But did Manger the poet
erase his local traces or transfigure them?
Studying the young Manger’s creative process reveals the necessity of clarifying
the relations among the varied elements of his cultural heterogeneity. At the
beginning, he seems to reject Yiddish motifs, material, and sources, striving instead
to correspond to his German models. With time, however, he emends his relationship
to the great literatures, and does so by turning back to the local, this time
considering it as something of equal worth, and thus valuing his minority culture
more highly. Moving repeatedly back and forth between German and Yiddish, he
finds his way to his own poetry, and gains confidence in reinterpreting and
reconfiguring the motifs and material of his diverse sources. Combining the local
and the European becomes for him a conscious process, the staging of the local as a
means of making poetry. His transversal process reveals
As an itinerant poet travelling on Romanian back roads, Manger encountered many wayside crosses with scenes of crucifixion, and found in the image of Jesus a tragic companion, who embodied homelessness, helplessness, and human pain. From 1921 to 1928 this companion mirrors in Manger’s work the shadows of the poet’s soul and also engages his fascination; in the figure of Christ Manger was able to name the unbearable in his own life, experimenting in that process with symbolist and expressionist forms and models.
In 1927, Manger discovered his deep connection to the Besht. Childhood memories of travelling with his grandfather in the Carpathian Mountains reinforced the connection. Mesmerized by the figure of the Besht, Manger then developed in a new group of poems a healing counter-world to the one depicted in the Christ poems, a world that is tangibly inhabited by the sacred.
Manger thus moved from Golgotha into the open space between Kosev (Kosov) and Kitev (Kuty), and in so doing created poems with a new sonority, poignantly evocative of Yiddish folk songs. The Christ figure disappears once Manger becomes aware of this poetic and psychological fault line in himself, though Christian motifs remain part of his poetic vocabulary.
Books by Efrat Gal-Ed
volume in the series Yiddish: Editions & Research, contains thirteen scholarly contributions that illuminate aspects of the transnational and translational character of Yiddish literature in diverse places and periods. A central focus is the Yiddish cultural spaces of the Soviet Union and Poland between the world wars.
members and students, explores Falkovitsh’s life story, his work and influence
as a teacher and scholar. Using journalistic and archival material,
she pieces together his role as an important participant in the great Soviet
Yiddish culture project, which broke off shortly after the end of the Second
World War.
Im Fokus dieses Beitrags steht die Frage nach dem geeigneten biographischen Textverfahren, wenn die Lebenswelt eines Protagonisten nicht länger existiert: Wenn meinem Lesepublikum die Referenzpunkte für den Kontext des Einzelschicksals, das es darzustellen gilt, fast zur Gänze fehlen.
Rumäniens fungierte und bereits knapp zwanzig Jahre später dem Nationalsozialismus und dem rumänischen Faschismus zum Opfer
fiel. Erst 1919 nach dem Anschluss der Bukowina an Großrumänien mit seiner mehrheitlich Jiddisch sprechenden, knapp eine Million zählenden
jüdischen Bevölkerung entstand trotz diskriminierender Maßnahmen und Zwangsrumänisierung ein dynamisches jiddisch-literarisches Feld, das man später Jung-tschernowiz [Junges Czernowitz] bzw. Jung-rumenje [Junges Rumänien] nannte.
If we attend to the time of publication of ‘Ir ha- metim (1892) and Di toyte shtot (1901), then we are dealing with two time-delayed translation processes. Thus, in the process of the Yiddish literary compression of the story, two components are interwoven: a translation back into the language of the portrayed world, and a reworking of diverse passages. Modifications in the form of corrections, rewriting and re-creation during the translation are common in self-translations. Peretz translated in both directions and appeared not as self-translator but as author; accordingly, both versions of the present story were read as original texts.
Peretz’s practice of self-translation raises questions about the translation of his artistic intentions into literary works in both languages. Can we discern differences of textual production between the two languages? What part do correction and revision have in the translation process, what role does self-translation have in the creative process?
verband sich die Frage nach Zugehörigkeit: Wie sollte der Zusammenhalt jiddischer
Kulturinseln gewährleistet werden? Auf welche Weise haben jiddischsprachige
Kulturschaffende teil an den kulturellen Prozessen der herrschenden Kulturen,
in denen sie leben? Was muss jiddische Literatur leisten, um der
Weltliteratur anzugehören?
Anhand vonÄußerungen und Handlungenvon Literaten und Kulturaktivisten
werden in diesem Aufsatz einige Grundzüge ihrer Welt- und Selbstbilder rekonstruiert,
und es soll gezeigt werden, wie die ausgreifenden kulturellen Erwartungen
auf einen autonom gestalteten historischen Wandel des jiddischsprachigen
Kollektivs und seiner Stellung in der Völkergemeinschaft zielten.
an independent literary genre: the biblical poem, in which the presence of the biblical text, though for the most part radically reshaped and rewritten, remains tangible.
form. And for the reader, the term opens up a mode of approach to Manger’s literary
practice.
Yiddish Writers Association, and proclaimed, “The modern Yiddish literary group
in Romania has as far as possible betrayed the local; its desire is to be at the center,
and in the turbulence, of European culture.” His statement alludes to a paradigm
shift, a movement from a closed system to a pluralistic one. But did Manger the poet
erase his local traces or transfigure them?
Studying the young Manger’s creative process reveals the necessity of clarifying
the relations among the varied elements of his cultural heterogeneity. At the
beginning, he seems to reject Yiddish motifs, material, and sources, striving instead
to correspond to his German models. With time, however, he emends his relationship
to the great literatures, and does so by turning back to the local, this time
considering it as something of equal worth, and thus valuing his minority culture
more highly. Moving repeatedly back and forth between German and Yiddish, he
finds his way to his own poetry, and gains confidence in reinterpreting and
reconfiguring the motifs and material of his diverse sources. Combining the local
and the European becomes for him a conscious process, the staging of the local as a
means of making poetry. His transversal process reveals
As an itinerant poet travelling on Romanian back roads, Manger encountered many wayside crosses with scenes of crucifixion, and found in the image of Jesus a tragic companion, who embodied homelessness, helplessness, and human pain. From 1921 to 1928 this companion mirrors in Manger’s work the shadows of the poet’s soul and also engages his fascination; in the figure of Christ Manger was able to name the unbearable in his own life, experimenting in that process with symbolist and expressionist forms and models.
In 1927, Manger discovered his deep connection to the Besht. Childhood memories of travelling with his grandfather in the Carpathian Mountains reinforced the connection. Mesmerized by the figure of the Besht, Manger then developed in a new group of poems a healing counter-world to the one depicted in the Christ poems, a world that is tangibly inhabited by the sacred.
Manger thus moved from Golgotha into the open space between Kosev (Kosov) and Kitev (Kuty), and in so doing created poems with a new sonority, poignantly evocative of Yiddish folk songs. The Christ figure disappears once Manger becomes aware of this poetic and psychological fault line in himself, though Christian motifs remain part of his poetic vocabulary.
volume in the series Yiddish: Editions & Research, contains thirteen scholarly contributions that illuminate aspects of the transnational and translational character of Yiddish literature in diverse places and periods. A central focus is the Yiddish cultural spaces of the Soviet Union and Poland between the world wars.
time an annotated and orthographically standardized edition, supplemented by four new essays, of Elye Falkovitsh’s remarkable Yiddish grammar, Yidish. Fonetik, grafik, leksik un gramatik [Yiddish. Phonetics, Graphics, Lexis, and Grammar]. It was published in Moscow in 1940 and remains one of the most important reference works in Yiddish linguistics.
the series Yiddish: Edition & Research, offers for the first time a rich collection
of Yiddish essays in standardized spelling. It contains sixty-nine critically
edited essays by thirty-five authors, and provides glimpses of the aesthetic
programs, the artistic reflections, and the cultural discourses of Yiddish modernity,
chiefly in Europe and North America, during the interwar period
and after the Shoah.
This comprehensive and multifaceted collection of modern Yiddish short stories marks the fourth volume in the series "Yiddish Editions & Research." A unique collection that includes works in standardized orthography by more than thirty authors, it sheds light on Yiddish life in Europe, the Americas, Soviet Union, and Israel, both before and after the Shoah. Some of the short stories are made accessible here for the first time in book form.
von Efrat Gal-Ed. Mit Umschrift des Jiddischen