Home Tongue Earthquake: the Radical Afterlives of Yiddishland
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University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 Home Tongue Earthquake: The Radical Afterlives Of Yiddishland Ariel Yeshoshua Resnikoff University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Jewish Studies Commons, and the Translation Studies Commons Recommended Citation Resnikoff, Ariel Yeshoshua, "Home Tongue Earthquake: The Radical Afterlives Of Yiddishland" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3485. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3485 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3485 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Home Tongue Earthquake: The Radical Afterlives Of Yiddishland Abstract HOME TONGUE EARTHQUAKE presents a case study (or test) of diasporic Ashkenazi translingual poetics in the twentieth- and twenty-first century, which inflects and e-accentsr Hebrew and English, among other national host languages. The transterritorial civilization of diaspora Ashkenaz spread in the late- nineteenth century from “Ashkenaz II” across disparate geographies—from the Americas to Ottoman Palestine, and beyond, via forced migration—and became, in the twentieth-century, the rhizomatic language space known as “Yiddishland”: a modernist shorthand for the prolifically scattered sites of stateless Yiddish culture situated, though never settled, across the globe. This dissertation traces the poetic and aesthetic relations between five diasporic translingual Ashkenazi writers who each in their own mode recognized the terminal widening gap between themselves and the languages they inhabited, and who wrote into this chasm, rather than ignoring it, using the very rejected accented materials at hand—those cast out by monolingual ideological forces—as sustenance for a resistant poetics of survival. These five translation-facing writers—in English, Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978) and Mina Loy (1882-1966), in Hebrew, Avot Yeshurun (1904-1992) and Harold Schimmel (b. 1935), and in Yiddish, Mikhl Likht (1893-1953)—sensed that the social and political, cultural and economic forces of their times were poised to eradicate once again the translingual realities of the dispossessed, whether indigenous or migrant, whether in exile, or hiding, those split between language and land, with one tongue here and one tongue nowhere, as was assumed, or anywhere, as we may find. These writers efusedr to look away, refused to practice their art in any normative monolingual style, for this reason, for making forbidden language mixing a primary modality, as a form of cultural and political disruption. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Comparative Literature and Literary Theory First Advisor Charles Bernstein Keywords Mongrel, Multilingual, Poetics, Translation, Translingual, Yiddish Subject Categories Comparative Literature | Jewish Studies | Translation Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3485 HOME TONGUE EARTHQUAKE: THE RADICAL AFTERLIVES OF YIDDISHLAND Ariel Resnikoff A DISSERTATION in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Supervisor of Dissertation ________________________ Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature Graduate Group Chairperson ________________________ Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies Dissertation Committee Kathryn Hellerstein, Professor of Germanic Languages Bob Perelman, Professor of English Emeritus HOME TONGUE EARTHQUAKE: THE RADICAL AFTERLIVES OF YIDDISHLAND COPYRIGHT 2019 Ariel Resnikoff iii For Rivka & in Memory of Ernest Nissan Alexander iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the immense support and guidance of so many people in my life. I must give huge thanks here to Charles Bernstein, my greatest teacher and the director of my dissertation; and to Kathryn Hellerstein and Bob Perelman, my visionary committee members; and to Pierre Joris and Rachel Blau DuPlessis, my brilliant external advisers and confidantes; and to Jerome Rothenberg, Harold Schimmel and Helit Yeshurun, my translingual elders; and to Zali Gurevitch, Gabriel Levin and Yoram Verete, my radical secular “rabbis”; and to Stephen Ross, my brother and closest collaborator; and to Joel and Irene Resnikoff, Moshe and Yocheved Resnikoff, and Ernie and Frances Alexander, the origins of my originlessness; and to Robin Alexander, who not only gave me a fish but taught me to fish; and to Kevin Platt, a friend & mentor through it all; and to JoAnne Dubil, the “guardian angel” of Comparative Literature at Penn; and to Ted Rees, Chris Mustazza, Rui Castro, Rachel Zolf, Brandon Brown, Alli Warren, Alan Bernheimer, Jason Mitchell, Kevin Killian, erica kaufman, Rui Castro, Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, Diane Rothenberg, Jennifer Marie Bartlett, Jake Marmer, Yosefa Raz, Jean Day, Steven Seidenberg, Kiki Lipsett, Susan Bee, Al Filreis, Sophia Dahlin, Chana Kronfeld, Nicole Peyrafitte, Katy Schneeman, Julia Bloch, Leora Fridman, Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Bill Berkson, Ted Greenwald, Melissa Riley, Syd Staiti, Lilach Lachman, Adam Sax, Yonina Alexander, Trisha Low, Maya Levine and Julie Levitan, for the many rich conversations and occasions for sound-boarding; and to Max Finder, Charlie Engelman, Jonah Liben, v Danny Shimoda and Ari Finkelstein, for so many years of friendship and brotherhood; and to Eve Guterman, who gave me kemakh for my torah when I needed it most; and to Steve Jacobson, Jeanie Ungerleider and the whole Dorot family for believing and investing in my work; and to my students and colleagues at Kelly Writers House and the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, who've taught me to teach; and to all my Philadelphia people, who I love so dearly; and to my many poetry kith & kin, across languages, continents and temporalities; and most of all, to my beloved Rivka, without whom "I wouldn't even have a clue," who nourishes my mind, body and spirit with her extraordinary light. vi ABSTRACT HOME TONGUE EARTHQUAKE: THE RADICAL AFTERLIVES OF YIDDISHLAND Ariel Resnikoff Charles Bernstein Home Tongue Earthquake presents a case study (or test) of diasporic Ashkenazi translingual poetics in the twentieth- and twenty-first century, which inflects and re- accents Hebrew and English, among other national host languages. The transterritorial civilization of diaspora Ashkenaz spread in the late-nineteenth century from “Ashkenaz II” across disparate geographies—from the Americas to Ottoman Palestine, and beyond, via forced migration—and became, in the twentieth-century, the rhizomatic language space known as “Yiddishland”: a modernist shorthand for the prolifically scattered sites of stateless Yiddish culture situated, though never settled, across the globe. This dissertation traces the poetic and aesthetic relations between five diasporic translingual Ashkenazi writers who each in their own mode recognized the terminal widening gap between themselves and the languages they inhabited, and who wrote into this chasm, rather than ignoring it, using the very rejected accented materials at hand—those cast out by monolingual ideological forces—as sustenance for a resistant poetics of survival. These five translation-facing writers—in English, Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978) and Mina Loy (1882-1966), in Hebrew, Avot Yeshurun (1904-1992) and Harold Schimmel (b. 1935), and in Yiddish, Mikhl Likht (1893-1953)—sensed that the social and political, cultural and economic forces of their times were poised to eradicate once again the vii translingual realities of the dispossessed, whether indigenous or migrant, whether in exile, or hiding, those split between language and land, with one tongue here and one tongue nowhere, as was assumed, or anywhere, as we may find. These writers refused to look away, refused to practice their art in any normative monolingual style, for this reason, for making forbidden language mixing a primary modality, as a form of cultural and political disruption. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix INTRODUCTION: FRAMING EXPANDED-YIDDISH 1 CHAPTER 1, SECTION 1: TRANSLATION: MIKHL LIKHT, “EVERY NEW POET, PROEM” 28 CHAPTER 1, SECTION 2: DOUBLE EXPOSURES: A TEST OF JEWISH AMERICAN MODERNIST POETICS 31 CHAPTER 2, SECTION 1: GOY ISRAELS AND THE SPECKLED PIG-CUPID: TRANSLINGUAL MISCEGENATED POETICS ACROSS YIDDISH AND ENGLISH 74 CHAPTER 2, SECTION 2: ADAPTATION: ROOTING EROTIC TRASH, A TRANSLINGUAL MASH-UP OF MINA LOY AND MIKHL LIKHT 116 CHAPTER 3, SECTION 1: TRANSLATION: AVOT YESHURUN, "FROM WHOM DID I TAKE PERMISSION?" 130 CHAPTER 3, SECTION 2: RUDDER TO RUDDER: TOWARD A SPECTRAL CREOLE-HEBREW POETICS 134 CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3: TRANSLATION: AVOT YESHURUN, "THE HOUSE" 159 CHAPTER 4, SECTION 1: NEW YORK-SCHOOL HEBREW: ON THE HIDDEN EMINENCES OF HAROLD SCHIMMEL 179 CHAPTER 4, SECTION 2: ADAPTATION: BOW-NOW, HAROLD SCHIMMEL AND GEORGE SCHNEEMAN, AN ANNOTATED COLLABORATION 198 CONCLUSION: EXPANDED-YIDDISH POETICS TODAY 207 BIBLIOGRAPHY 216 ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Fragment of the Cambridge Yiddish codex of 1382, which was discovered in Cairo in the late-nineteenth century. Reproduced from Katz 22. Figure 2: Dovid Katz’s diagram of “Internal Jewish Trilingualism.” Reproduced from Katz