Bruno Schulz and Galician Jewish Modernity

by Karen Underhill

Overview

In the 1930s, through the prose of Bruno Schulz (1892–1942), the Polish language became the linguistic raw material for a profound exploration of the modern Jewish experience. Rather than turning away from the language like many of his Galician Jewish colleagues who would choose to write in Yiddish, Schulz used the Polish language to explore his own and his generation's relationship to East European Jewish exegetical tradition, and to deepen his reflection on golus or exile as a condition not only of the individual and of the Jewish community, but of language itself, and of matter. Drawing on new archival discoveries, this study explores Schulz's diasporic Jewish modernism as an example of the creative and also transient poetic forms that emerged on formerly Habsburg territory, at the historical juncture between empire and nation-state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253069931
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Series:	Jews of Eastern Europe
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Karen Underhill is Associate Professor of Polish and Jewish Studies in the Department of Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Bruno Schulz and the Archaeology of Polish Jewish Modernism
1. Leading the Word Out of Its Golus: Jewish Writing in the Polish Vernacular
2. "A Creation Born of the Longing of Golus": Schulz's 'E.M. Lilien' and the Art of the Modern Jewish Book
3. The Sunday Seminars of Bruno Schulz and Debora Vogel
4. Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass
5. Acculturation without Assimilation: Polish Contexts for a Translational Poetics
6. "What Have You Done with the Book?": The Scriptural Impulse from Idolatrous Iconography to Redemptive Midrash
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"I've fought in two world wars and countless smaller ones on three continents. I've led thousands of men into battle…. I've seen the headwaters of the Nile and tribes no white man had ever seen before. I've won and lost a dozen fortunes, and loved only one woman." What a treat it is to hear Robert Duvall roar in this heartwarming coming-of-age saga (reportedly based on Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson's childhood). Shy and sheltered Walter (Haley Joel Osment) has one of those fabled, only-in-the-movies summers spent in the nurturing company of his two uncles. Duvall and Michael Caine star as Hub and Garth, cantankerous old coots who live out in the sticks with no phone or television and delight in taking potshots at a parade of traveling salesmen. They reluctantly agree to take the boy in after his irresponsible mother deposits him on their doorstep. Walter is regaled by incredible tales of the brothers' rollicking exploits, in particular Hub's adventures in the Foreign Legion and his love of a desert princess. As in Big Fish, Walter will learn how much of these tales is tall and how much is true. Less interesting is the hubbub concerning the ill-gotten millions the brothers supposedly have stashed around their farm. At the heart of Secondhand Lions is the wisdom the indefatigable Hub imparts to Walter in his signature "What Every Boy Needs to Know About Being a Man" speech. Fair warning that tears will be jerked by film's end, but with its simple-life nostalgia, colorful characters, and crowd-pleasing scenes (as when Hub dispatches a quartet of taunting, leather-jacketed hooligans), Secondhand Lions soars as one of the year's very best family films.

From the Publisher