Copyright by Anna Katsnelson 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Anna Katsnelson Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: ETHNIC PASSING ACROSS THE JEWISH LITERARY DIASPORA Committee: Seth Wolitz, Supervisor John Hoberman Naomi Lindstrom Elizabeth Richmond-Garza Sonia Roncador ETHNIC PASSING ACROSS THE JEWISH LITERARY DIASPORA by Anna Katsnelson, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2011 Dedication Dedicated to my husband and best friend Eric, my son Lev, and my parents Alex Katsnelson and Dr. Sofya Katsnelson. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my wonderful advisor Professor Emeritus Seth Wolitz, who guided my project from its inception; he was and remains the model of a gifted and inspiring educator. His intuition, support, and insightful suggestions throughout my university career and the course of this project have been invaluable. Through Professor Wolitz’s influential lectures I have grown as a teacher, but through his tireless dedication and instrumental feedback my project gained depth, sharpened its objective and ultimately led me to have a successful defense. Dr. Naomi Lindstrom’s comments and advice from the beginning of this project have been invaluable but her suggestions once the Brazilian chapters were written really led me in the right direction and allowed me to focus the project and clean it up. Professor Lindstrom first suggested that I make my Brazilian chapters on both Elisa and Clarice Lispector, it was this suggestion that prompted the study of other familial and collaborative pairs like Evgenia Ginzburg and Vassily Aksyonov, and George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Dr. Richmond-Garza, thank you so much for running the Program of Comparative Literature, my years in the program were some of the best years of my life, you have made an outstanding program through your hard work, both academically and socially, and I am proud to have graduated from this wonderful department. Thank you so much also for helping me with funding, during my eight years, for your wonderful classes that I took at the beginning of my academic career, and for all your help on the dissertation, defense, and job applications. Dr. Sonia Roncador’s fascinating and challenging courses allowed me to v read and investigate Clarice Lispector for the first time. Her encouragement and recommendations helped me to received the Fulbright and establish contacts in Brazil. Thank you for your generosity and kindness throughout my career. Dr. Hoberman, your wonderful comments, support and insights into Jewish literature and identity have truly enriched this project. I would like to thank my committee members for making my defense one of the most memorable and positive experiences in my life. Dr. Leslie O’Bell was instrumental to this project from the beginning; her wonderful classes on Russian literature led to my discovery of Evgenia Ginzburg. I first wrote about Ginzburg for Dr. O’Bells’ course; her comments and advice allowed me to begin thinking of the de-thematization of identity as a dissertation worthy subject. Dr. Adam Newton also encouraged the inception of this project and pointed me towards using Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the minor literature to enrich this project. Dr. Rosana Kohl-Bines, my advisor in Brazil during the duration of the Fulbright fellowship encouraged me to read historical and sociological texts which enriched my dissertation. I would like to thank and acknowledge Dr. Elizabeth Witherell, my wonderful professor from UC Santa Barbara who encouraged me to enter academe. I am incredibly grateful to the faculty and staff in the Program of Comparative Literature at the University of Texas thank you so much for always being there for me, you have made my academic experience an outstanding one. I would like to thank especially the family members, friends and colleagues who really helped me make this project a reality. My husband Eric Rosenbaum not only supported me throughout graduate school but was also my first editor, and who read and vi reread every single word in the project. My father-in-law Eugene Rosenbaum who helped me organize and edit my Brazilian chapters, without his help the project would never have moved forward. He helped me gain the confidence to keep writing other chapters. My dear friend Dr. Katherine Foshko who looked at and commented on the majority of the dissertation; I am incredibly grateful to you for your encouragement and your insights into the historical aspects of my thesis. My cousin Dora Katsnelson, thank you for your insights into speech pathology which helped me in my Brazilian chapters. I would like to thank the other most important person in my life, my mother Dr. Sofya Katsnelson. Thank you so much for being the most wonderful, supportive, and encouraging friend. Thank you for dedicating yourself to me and to Lev, without your support and help with Lev I would never have had the time to spend every day at the library, teach three classes, and write the dissertation. I would like to acknowledge my father Alex who allowed my mother to completely devote herself to Lev in the past 13 months while I worked on finishing the dissertation. Thank you to both my parents for instilling in me a love for literature, Russian culture, languages, art, and travel. I owe everything to both of you. Thank you as well to my wonderful siblings Katia, Misha, Dany for the hours they dedicated to my son, and also for their and my Russian sister Dr. Maria Ubel’s interest and pride in my educational goals. Thank you to my wonderful mother-in-law Rochelle Rosenbaum for her encouragement and moral support throughout these years, as well as babysitting help, and to my sisters-in-law Dr. Marion Rosenbaum Smith for her advice, and Nina Rosenbaum for her praise. Thank you to my other family members and especially Galya and Sonia for all the wonderful food they have cooked for vii us in the last year when the last thing that I could think about was cooking, for their babysitting, and encouragement. I would also like to thank my friends and colleagues in graduate school for all their help and support, because of you my graduate school experience could not have been better or more positive: Eamee Lanning, Mary Keefe, Dr. Karyn Hopper Rayburn, Dr. Marina Potoplyak, and Jackie Zahn. I would like to acknowledge the Fulbright Commission for funding my archival research in Brazil at the Fundacão Casa de Rui Barbosa Archives with the Fulbight IIE grant. The staff at the Fundacão Casa de Rui Barbosa Archives, as well as the staff at the Dorot Divistion at the New York Public Library, especially my favorite librarian Eleanor Yadin for her wonderful sense of humour and willingness to help. viii Ethnic Passing Across the Jewish Literary Diaspora Anna Katsnelson, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisor: Seth Wolitz In my dissertation, I examine the works of six writers (George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Clarice and Elisa Lispector, Evgenia Ginzburg and Vasilii Aksyonov) who did not explore their Jewish identity in their texts and were subsequently left out of the canons of Jewish literature in their respective countries. My goal is to recalibrate the concept of the Jewish canon from the charged notion of identity to a theory of shared thematic material in which the works of hyphenated Jewish writers will be considered under the category of ‘Jewish American, Brazilian, or Russian’ if they share definite attributes. This was a transnational study showing that similar forces were at work not only in one country, but across continents, affecting the sensibilities of Jewish writers in remarkably similar ways. On a larger scale their de-thematized narratives share thematic tropes and belong to a ‘minor, liminal, marginal narrative,’ a narrative which attempted to work within the scope of the master narratives produced by the hegemonic culture. I have claimed that even though these six writers did not thematize identity in their texts, because of the negative political and social situation for the Jew in the first half of the twentieth century in western civilization, this situation and the writers’ own alterity produced similar and overlapping narratives. ix Table of Contents Chapter I: Introduction .............................................................................................1 Introducing the Introduction ...........................................................................1 Literature Review/Historiographical Essay ....................................................2 Chapter Outline .............................................................................................10 Literary Passing ............................................................................................12 Terms and Definitions...................................................................................14 Statement of Primary Sources .......................................................................18 Methodology .................................................................................................21 Language as Identity .....................................................................................22 Nationality and Nationalism .........................................................................23 Collaboration and Solidarity .........................................................................24