Zionism and the Fin de Siecle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky / Edition 1

by Michael Stanislawski

Overview

Michael Stanislawski's provocative study of Max Nordau, Ephraim Moses Lilien, and Vladimir Jabotinsky reconceives the intersection of the European fin de siècle and early Zionism. Stanislawski takes up the tantalizing question of why Zionism, at a particular stage in its development, became so attractive to certain cosmopolitan intellectuals and artists. With the help of hundreds of previously unavailable documents, published and unpublished, he reconstructs the ideological journeys of writer and critic Nordau, artist Lilien, and political icon Jabotinsky. He argues against the common conception of Nordau and Jabotinsky as nineteenth-century liberals, insisting that they must be understood against the backdrop of Social Darwinism in the West and the Positivism of Russian radicalism in the fin de siècle, as well as Symbolism, Decadence, and Art Nouveau.

When these men turned to Zionism, Stanislawski says, far from abandoning their aesthetic and intellectual preconceptions, they molded Zionism according to their fin de siècle cosmopolitanism. Showing how cosmopolitanism turned to nationalism in the lives and work of these crucial early Zionists, this story is a fascinating chapter in European and Russian, as well as Jewish, cultural and political history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520227880
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/02/2001
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	303
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Michael Stanislawski is Nathan J. Miller Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University. His previous books include Psalms for the Tsar (1988) and For Whom Do I Toil? (1988).

Table of Contents

	List of Illustrations	ix
	Acknowledgments	xi
	Introduction	xiii
1.	Cosmopolitanism, Zionism, and Assimilation: The Case of Theodor Herzl	1
2.	Max Nordau, the Improbable Bourgeois	19
3.	Nordau and Novikova: Romance with an Antisemite and the Road to Zionism	36
4.	Nordau's Zionism: From Heine to Bar Kochba	74
5.	From Jugendstil to "Judenstil": Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in the Work of Ephraim Moses Lilien	98
6.	Vladimir Jabotinsky, from Odessa to Rome and Back: "Dichtung and Wahrheit"	116
7.	Jabotinsky's Road to Zionism	150
8.	Jabotinsky's Early Zionism: From "In the City of Slaughter" to Alien Land	178
9.	Vladimir Jabotinsky, Cosmopolitan Ultra-Nationalist	203
	Conclusion	239
	Notes	249
	Bibliography	267
	Index	277

Editorial Reviews

A pioneering intellectual biography and [a challenge to] conventional understandings of the great-leader biography as a genre. This is a rich and complex book. [Stanislawski's] writing is always lively and often brilliant.

Forward

An important contribution for serious students of Zionism and yet another example of the continuing intensity of the new historians.

Jerusalem Post