Samuel J. Spinner
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781503628274
- eISBN:
- 9781503628281
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503628274.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
The avant-garde short stories of the Yiddish writer Der Nister were a form of primitivist literary abstraction, fracturing the narrator-ego into a kaleidoscopic and disorienting landscape, thereby ...
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The avant-garde short stories of the Yiddish writer Der Nister were a form of primitivist literary abstraction, fracturing the narrator-ego into a kaleidoscopic and disorienting landscape, thereby destabilizing the privileged subject at the center of the Western literary tradition. The primitivist aesthetic theory of Carl Einstein clarifies Der Nister’s own innovative solution to the problem of abstraction—as a visual and spatial phenomenon—in literature. Einstein noted that primitivist abstraction was in principle achievable in literature but in practice absent. Der Nister’s familiarity with Yiddish folklore gave him a resource for the creation of a literary abstraction motivated by both literature and the visual principles familiar from modernist painting. His primitivism resulted in a revolutionary aesthetics that fused Jewish sources with the universalist claims of his politics.Less
The avant-garde short stories of the Yiddish writer Der Nister were a form of primitivist literary abstraction, fracturing the narrator-ego into a kaleidoscopic and disorienting landscape, thereby destabilizing the privileged subject at the center of the Western literary tradition. The primitivist aesthetic theory of Carl Einstein clarifies Der Nister’s own innovative solution to the problem of abstraction—as a visual and spatial phenomenon—in literature. Einstein noted that primitivist abstraction was in principle achievable in literature but in practice absent. Der Nister’s familiarity with Yiddish folklore gave him a resource for the creation of a literary abstraction motivated by both literature and the visual principles familiar from modernist painting. His primitivism resulted in a revolutionary aesthetics that fused Jewish sources with the universalist claims of his politics.
Mikhail Krutikov
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814720202
- eISBN:
- 9781479878253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814720202.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter examines the convergence of fantasy and reality in Yiddish literature produced in the Soviet Union around 1929. It first considers a series of high-profile ideological campaigns in the ...
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This chapter examines the convergence of fantasy and reality in Yiddish literature produced in the Soviet Union around 1929. It first considers a series of high-profile ideological campaigns in the Soviet Union that affected Yiddish writers such as Leyb Kvitko, Der Nister, and Perets Markish. It then assesses the impact of international developments on Soviet Yiddish politics, including the outbreak of Arab violence in Palestine, before shifting to a discussion of literary productivity in 1929. In particular, it analyzes the short stories of Der Nister and Shmuel Godiner, as well as Meir Wiener's novel Ele Faleks untergang (The Downfall of Ele Falek).Less
This chapter examines the convergence of fantasy and reality in Yiddish literature produced in the Soviet Union around 1929. It first considers a series of high-profile ideological campaigns in the Soviet Union that affected Yiddish writers such as Leyb Kvitko, Der Nister, and Perets Markish. It then assesses the impact of international developments on Soviet Yiddish politics, including the outbreak of Arab violence in Palestine, before shifting to a discussion of literary productivity in 1929. In particular, it analyzes the short stories of Der Nister and Shmuel Godiner, as well as Meir Wiener's novel Ele Faleks untergang (The Downfall of Ele Falek).
