"I Seek the Stars in the Daytime": Citation, Recitation, and Leah Goldberg's Hidden German Poem
This article examines the German poem inserted in Leah Goldberg's debut novel Mikhtavim minesi'ah medumah (Letters From an Imagined Journey 1936/37). I argue that the novel serves as a framework through which Goldberg can momentarily become a German poet, stretching the limits of her Jewis...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
De Gruyter
2023
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| In: |
Naharaim
Year: 2023, Volume: 17, Issue: 1, Pages: 33-50 |
| Further subjects: | B
Leah Goldberg
B HEBREW PROSE B German poetry B Epistolary B Zionism |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article examines the German poem inserted in Leah Goldberg's debut novel Mikhtavim minesi'ah medumah (Letters From an Imagined Journey 1936/37). I argue that the novel serves as a framework through which Goldberg can momentarily become a German poet, stretching the limits of her Jewish subjectivity and of the monolingual Hebrew literary sphere. Whereas studies have addressed the intertextual references in Goldberg's novel, scholarly discussions have failed to attend Goldberg's German poem, overlooking her non-Hebrew poetic voice and the literary genealogy to which she ascribes herself. To understand this moment, I attend Ruth's intercultural relations with Erich Kästner and Rainer Maria Rilke, whom she quotes over the course of her travels. In so doing, Goldberg points to Ruth's imagined literary genealogy while putting herself into this tradition as a way to form her voice as a German poet. Written by the protagonist, the poem is recalled and recited in German by Shnithalel, Ruth's friend from India. This German poem, I argue, offers a key to understanding Goldberg's prose as a dialogic mode of writing that grapples with Jewish subjectivity and voice, emerging poetically between self and other (Ich and Sie) and interlinguistically between Hebrew and German. |
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| ISSN: | 1862-9156 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Naharaim
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/naha-2022-0011 |