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The Radical Years of IL Peretz

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The Radical Years of IL Peretz THE RADICAL YEARS OF I.L. PERETZ Adi Mahalel Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Adi Mahalel All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Radical Years of I.L. Peretz Adi Mahalel This dissertation analyzes the works of Yiddish and Hebrew writer Isaac Leib Peretz (1852- 1915) during the 1890's. It criticaly engages with the entire range of Peretz’s literary output during this period in both languages. It argues that Peretz functioned as a literary agent of the Jewish working class in Eastern Europe which was an ethnic-class fraction that was represented politically by the emerging Jewish Socialist Bund. During this period, Peretz's Yiddish-centric ideology emerged alongside his development as a writer of prose as well as of poetry. Thus he evolved from being a social realist, naturalist, and romantic bilingual politically radical writer into becoming a predominantly Yiddish writer of symbolist drama, folk-tales, and neo-romantic Hasidic stories and poetry during the 20th century. This thesis refutes the long-standing convention in Peretz-scholarship that his interest in new literary styles coinsided with a rejection of revolutionary politics; rather it reflected his ongoing search for new ways of expressing his radicalism. Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 A. The Intellectual and Historical Backdrop of Peretz's Early Work (1888-1892) ........... 1 B. The Radical Years of I.L. Peretz: My Thesis .............................................................. 19 Chapter 1: Education, Professions, and Literary Proclamations: Peretz between Positivism and Proto-Socialism ................................................................................................................. 29 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 29 Bildung for the Masses, Professions for the Common People ............................................. 30 Taking on the Modern Job Market: Iber Profesyonen ......................................................... 35 Peretz's Yiddish Literary Proclamations of the Early 1890's: In Postvogn and Bilder fun a Provints Rayze .............................................................................................................. 39 In Postvogn: Imagining the National-Feminist and creating a new path for Yiddish Literature .......................................................................................................................... 40 Peretz's Stylistic Proclamation .......................................................................................... 41 The State of the Nation on the Road ................................................................................ 43 Storytelling ........................................................................................................................ 51 i Liberalism Revised ............................................................................................................. 55 Who Hates Whom? ........................................................................................................... 56 From the Province to the City and Back .......................................................................... 61 Representing Poverty ....................................................................................................... 64 Imperialism and Peretz's Journey to the Provinces .......................................................... 69 Artistic Techniques ............................................................................................................ 77 Appendix .............................................................................................................................. 84 Chapter 2: A Radical Shift: Becoming a Social Protest Writer ............................................... 86 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 86 Bontshe Shvayg: the Workers Will Not Be Silent ............................................................... 87 The Debates Over Bontshe .............................................................................................. 91 Coda ................................................................................................................................. 94 Weaving the Revolution ...................................................................................................... 95 Context ............................................................................................................................. 96 The Bund .......................................................................................................................... 98 The Story ........................................................................................................................ 100 ii Coda ............................................................................................................................... 110 Jewish Women in Peretz's Work ....................................................................................... 112 Peretz's Writing On Women as Compared with the Maskilim ...................................... 113 The Stories ..................................................................................................................... 117 The Yiddish Folk Hero .................................................................................................. 131 Revolutionizing the Means of Artistic Production and Radicalizing the Jewish Calendar in the Yontef Bletlekh ............................................................................................................ 133 The Format of the Bletlekh ............................................................................................ 136 The Usage and Distribution of the Yontef Bletlekh ...................................................... 141 The Content of the Yontef Bletlekh ............................................................................... 149 Socialism Brings Peace .................................................................................................. 160 Coda ............................................................................................................................... 162 Appendix ............................................................................................................................ 164 Chapter 3: To Be A Fighter With Both Fists! Peretz the Radical Hebrew Writer................. 166 Radical Hebrew Arrows ..................................................................................................... 166 Socialism in Hebrew before Peretz ................................................................................ 171 Literature in The Arrow ................................................................................................. 175 iii "Beating Their Heads Against the Wall": Satirizing the Choveve Zion in Hebrew and in Yiddish ............................................................................................................................... 181 The Audacity to Demand Realism: Peretz and the New Wave of Hebrew Literature ...... 200 Peretz‘s Response to the Demand for "Realism" ............................................................ 207 Peretz's Major Hebrew Prose and 1890's Creations ....................................................... 213 Coda ................................................................................................................................... 240 Appendix ............................................................................................................................ 241 Chapter 4: On Love and Class-War: Peretz's 1890's Hebrew and Yiddish Poetry ................ 243 Introduction: The Socialist Prophet ................................................................................... 243 Writing Hebrew Poetry ...................................................................................................... 250 Early Years as a Poet ..................................................................................................... 250 Socialist Yiddish Poetry and Political Poetry .................................................................... 276 Peretz's Poetry in the Context of Socialist Yiddish Poetry .............................................. 286 Collecting "Jewish Folklore" ......................................................................................... 291 Between Marx, Heine, and Peretz .................................................................................. 301 Chapter 5: Between Liberal Satire and Socialist Roots: Peretz's Hasidic Creations of the 1890's ..................................................................................................................................... 313 iv Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 313 Peretz and Religious Figures: the Beginning ................................................................... 316 Faith and Revolution, Secularism and Imperialism: Between Peretz and Eagleton ...... 338 To Make Sense
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