An Inch or Two of Time: Time and Space in Jewish Modernisms

Jordan D. Finkin

Published by Penn State University Press 2015

An Inch or Two of Time

Time and Space in Jewish Modernisms

Jordan D. Finkin

Volume 3 in the series Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271071978

Overview
Contents

About this book

In literary modernism, time and space are sometimes transformed from organizational categories into aesthetic objects, a transformation that can open dramatic metaphorical and creative possibilities. In An Inch or Two of Time, Jordan Finkin shows how Jewish modernists of the early twentieth century had a distinct perspective on this innovative metaphorical vocabulary. As members of a national-ethnic-religious community long denied the rights and privileges of self-determination, with a dramatically internalized sense of exile and landlessness, the Jewish writers at the core of this investigation reimagined their spatial and temporal orientation and embeddedness. They set as the fulcrum of their imagery the metaphorical power of time and space. Where non-Jewish writers might tend to view space as a given—an element of their own sense of belonging to a nation at home in a given territory—the Jewish writers discussed here spatialized time: they created an as-if space out of time, out of history. They understood their writing to function as a kind of organ of perception on its own. Jewish literature thus presents a particularly dynamic system for working out the implications of that understanding, and as such, this book argues, it is an indispensable part of the modern library.

Author / Editor information

Finkin Jordan D. :

Jordan D. Finkin is Visiting Scholar in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Reviews

“An Inch or Two of Time sets forth a complex, elegant argument that recontextualizes eastern European modernist Yiddish and Hebrew poetry. Jordan Finkin’s book revisits concepts of Jewish collective memory and redefines the arc of Jewish history through the disruptive language and fragmented style and themes of interwar Jewish poetry. Finkin’s argument centers on the conjoined metaphors of time and space that are expressed and embedded in this poetry in the Jewish languages, Yiddish and Hebrew. Through them, Finkin addresses the broader issues of disrupted time and space, which informed all of modernist literature, art, and music during a period when these concepts were radically redefined in modernity at large. Finkin discovers the redefinition of ‘time and space, history and territory,’ which leads to new understandings of the idea of ‘nation’ and of literature. By reading key examples of Yiddish, Hebrew, and German modernist poetry through the conceptual prism of time and space, Finkin argues persuasively the degree to which these particular examples of Jewish modernist poetry can illuminate modernism in general.”
—Kathryn Hellerstein, University of Pennsylvania

“The book rewards a slow stroll through its dense pages, as Finkin brings enormous erudition in the primary and secondary sources to a patient, quiet reading of some well-known and many lesser-known texts.”
—Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Modern Philology

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Th e Aesthetics of Spatiotemporality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 A Brief Essay on Time, Space, Nation, and Metaphor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2 “Heymen un Reymen”: Homelandscapes, Shtetlekh, and Other Creative Spaces Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
3 Temporaesthesia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
4 Th e Revolutionary Principles of Time and Space Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
5 Enclosed in Distances: Th e Poetic Experiments of Yocheved Bat-Miriam Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Appendix: Y. L. Perets, “Th e Little City” or “Th e Shtetl” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 264
Keywords: Jewish Modernism; Jew; Judaism; Finkin; literature; aesthetic; drama; creative; metaphorical; perspective; national-ethnic-religious community; culture; vocabulary

eBook

Published: June 19, 2015
ISBN: 9780271071978