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Der Nister (Pinkhes Kahanovitsh, 1884-1950) is widely regarded as the most enigmatic author in modern Yiddish literature. His pseudonym, which translates as 'The Hidden One', is as puzzling as his diverse body of works, which range from mystical symbolist poetry and dark expressionist tales to realist historical epic. Although part of the Kiev Group of Yiddish writers, which also included David Bergelson and Peretz Markish, Der Nister remained at the margins of the Yiddish literary world throughout his life, mainstream success eluding him both in- and outside the Soviet Union. Yet, to judge from the quantity of recent research and translation work, der Nister is today one of the best remembered Yiddish modernists. The present collection of twelve original articles by international scholars re-examines Der Nister's cultural and literary legacy, bringing to light new aspects of his life and creative output.
First time in Paperback The Family Mashber is a protean work: a tale of a divided family and divided souls, a panoramic picture of an Eastern European town, a social satire, a kabbalistic allegory, an innovative fusion of modernist art and traditional storytelling, a tale of weird humor and mounting tragic power, embellished with a host of uncanny and fantastical figures drawn from daily life and the depths of the unconscious. Above all, the book is an account of a world in crisis (in Hebrew, mashber means crisis), torn between the competing claims of family, community, business, politics, the individual conscience, and an elusive God. At the center of the book are three brothers: the busin...
A critical look at the later work of the Russian Jewish author in the Soviet Union and its significance to Russian and Jewish history. In Der Nister’s Soviet Years, author Mikhail Krutikov focuses on the second half of the dramatic writing career of Soviet Yiddish writer Der Nister, pen name of Pinhas Kahanovich (1884–1950). Krutikov follows Der Nister’s painful but ultimately successful literary transformation from his symbolist roots to social realism under severe ideological pressure from Soviet critics and authorities. This volume reveals how profoundly Der Nister was affected by the destruction of Jewish life during WWII and his own personal misfortunes. While Der Nister was writi...
This book examines the symbolist tales of Der Nister (1884-1950), a Soviet Yiddish writer who wrote before and after the Revolution in the USSR, and in Berlin in the 1920s. It offers various intertextual readings of the tales, determining the influence of the French and Russian symbolist movements and the Jewish folk and art-tale, and retracing the political and artistic background of Jewish modernism in the Soviet Union and in Berlin in the 1920s. Drawing on various literary theories, it also investigates the narrative structure of Der Nister's tales, based on the midrashic mashal-nimshal figure, as well as his sophisticated use of symbol and allegory. Finally, it examines the intrusion of the economics of modernity (the city, the masses, inflation) which leads to the disintegration of the system of allegorical symbolism, the collapse of storytelling, and Der Nister's final renunciation of symbolism.
The main focus of this book is Jewish life under the Soviet regime. The themes of the book include: the attitude of the government to Jews, the fate of the Jewish religion and life in Post-World War II Russia. The volume also contains an assessment of the prospects for future emigration.
In Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin, Marc Caplan explores the reciprocal encounter between Eastern European Jews and German culture in the days following World War I. By concentrating primarily on a small group of avant-garde Yiddish writers—Dovid Bergelson, Der Nister, and Moyshe Kulbak—working in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, Caplan examines how these writers became central to modernist aesthetics. By concentrating on the character of Yiddish literature produced in Weimar Germany, Caplan offers a new method of seeing how artistic creation is constructed and a new understanding of the political resonances that result from it. Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin reveals how Yiddish literature participated in the culture of Weimar-era modernism, how active Yiddish writers were in the literary scene, and how German-speaking Jews read descriptions of Yiddish-speaking Jews to uncover the emotional complexity of what they managed to create even in the midst of their confusion and ambivalence in Germany. Caplan's masterful narrative affords new insights into literary form, Jewish culture, and the philosophical and psychological motivations for aesthetic modernism.
Tracing Germany's significance as an essential crossroads and incubator for modern Jewish culture
This text describes how Yiddish storytelling became the politics of rescue for generations of displaced Jewish artists, embodying their hopes and fears in the languages of tradition. It suggests that there lies an aesthetic and moral sensibility totally at odds with Jewish humour and piety.
he most famous play in the Yiddish repertoire, S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk has been made into two films and three operas and has been staged all over the world. As an extraordinary product of the Yiddish imagination, however, its literary and religious roots have never been thoroughly explored. With a new translation of Ansky’s play that conveys its brilliant supernatural poetry, this anthology comprises thirty highly diverse literary masterpieces dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Beginning with the first Yiddish tale about a possession (1602), these works influenced Ansky or formed a cultural and spiritual network that shows us how the era and tradition precipitated the drama. The result is a literary mosaic that shows a vast array of styles, from the earthy simplicity of homespun folk tales to the delicacy and elegance of polished literary expression. Joachim Neugroschel brings together a wide variety of stories, verse narratives, and even modern melodrama—many never before translated into English.
Journeys beyond the Pale is the first book to examine how Yiddish writers, from Mendele Moycher Sforim to Der Nister to the famed Sholem Aleichem, used motifs of travel to express their complicated relationship with modernization. The story of the Jews of the Pale of settlement encompasses current-day Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland.