This article examines some of the constituent elements of an often metaphysical "Jewish angst" or "Jewish toska" found in the Yiddish language drama "The Golem" (Der goylem, 1921). In this masterpiece by Russian Jewish writer H. Leivick, the renowned man-made clay giant clay of ancient Kabbalah legend, is the creature of sixteenth-century Rabbi Loew, the Maharal of Prague, and becomes an emblem of Jewish melancholic nostalgia. Such toska is directed simultaneously at the ontologically distant Creator, supremely unattainable, and at the equally unreachable messianic era. The Golem's sense of estrangement from his own existence, explored here in tandem with Leivick's biography, ultimately renders him a personification of nostalgia itself.
University of Genoa, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-6957-0170
Titolo del capitolo
Nostalgia and Creaturality in H. Leivick’s Тhe Golem
Autori
Laura Quercioli Mincer
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4.04
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2015
Copyright
© 2015 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Melancholic Identities, Toska and Reflective Nostalgia
Sottotitolo del libro
Case Studies from Russian and Russian-Jewish Culture
Curatori
Sara Dickinson, Laura Salmon
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
194
Anno di pubblicazione
2015
Copyright
© 2015 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/978-88-6655-822-4
ISBN Print
978-88-6655-821-7
eISBN (pdf)
978-88-6655-822-4
eISBN (xml)
978-88-9273-384-8
Collana
Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici
ISSN della collana
2612-7687
e-ISSN della collana
2612-7679