A presente tese aborda o primeiro livro escrito em ídiche por Mêndele Môikher1 Sfórim, Dos Kleine Mêntshele (O Pequeno Homenzinho) através de várias leituras do mesmo, em mais de uma versão, às quais sucedeu-se uma traduçãocuidadosa para o português. Faz considerações e referências sobre vida e obra do autor, cognominado jocosamente, por Shólem Aleikhem, de o avô da moderna literatura ídiche. Ele foi também um dos precursores do ressurgimento da língua hebraica. Shólem Yákov Abramovitsh, seu verdadeiro nome, foi um dos importantes intelectuais conscientes do momento histórico e do processo linguístico de seu povo, no final do século XIX, no leste europeu, ao qual propunha auto respeito, profissionalização e não renegação do judaísmo. A escolha de seu pseudônimo, Mêndele, o vendedor de livros, serve de pretexto para a sua participação como personagem das histórias, dada a importância e atuação de tal profissional na sociedade retratada. O texto ídiche é permeado de frases e citações em hebraico que foram trazidas para o português no mesmo padrão de linguagem do texto original. / This dissertation studies Dos Kleine Mentshele The Little Man the first book ever written in yiddish by the writer Mendele Moikher Sforim through many readings of it in more that one version, followed by careful translation into Portuguese. It makes considerations and references about Mendeles life and work. He was nicknamed by Sholem Aleikhem the grandfather of the Modern Yiddish Literature. He was one of the precursors of the revival of the Hebrew language. Sholem Yakov Abramovitch, his real name, was one of the most important intellectuals aware of the historical moment and of the linguistic process of his people at the end of the 19th century in Eastern Europe, and suggested self respect, professionalization and no Jewish denial for the historical moment and the linguistic process. The choice of his pen name, Mendele, the book peddler, allows his participation as personage of his stories because the significance and acting od such professional in the described society. The Yiddish text is permeated by Hebrew sentences and quotations brought to Portuguese at the same linguistic level.

This dissertation explores the history of the translation of world literature into Yiddish through a series of interconnected case studies, stretching from the “founding” decade of modern Yiddish literature through its interwar acme. It features diachronic studies of single translator-authors (Sh. Y. Abramovitsh; Der Nister; Isaac Bashevis Singer) which consider the relationship between translations and original writing; synchronic views of transformative moments in Yiddish literary (translational) history across its multiple centers (1903; 1910; New York, Warsaw, Moscow); and “distant” readings of periodicals and anthologies with an eye to their particular explicit and implicit translation theories and practices as well as to the role of editors and publishers (Sholem Aleichem; Avrom Reyzen) in shaping both real and imagined literary markets. Throughout, it mobilizes the chronically-neglected genre of homegrown Yiddish literary criticism and theory (I.L. Peretz, Chaim Zhitlowsky, Moyshe Litvakov) in the hopes of understanding the shifting stakes and meanings of translation on the terms of translators, authors, critics, and readers themselves. By attending to the ways in which translations functioned as both sources of livelihood and engines of literary growth, this dissertation examines the desired and intermittently realized modernization and “normalization” of Yiddish literature on the world stage.

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This dissertation establishes a category of early Soviet “exodic” literature, which consists of works published in Yiddish or Russian between 1917 and 1935. Reading together texts by Peretz Markish, Andrei Platonov, Moyshe Kulbak, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, Yiddish texts are placed on equal footing with Russian texts to underscore the singular role of Jews in the early Soviet period and demonstrate shared anxieties and practices of resistance to hegemony among groups seemingly separated by language and culture. These anxieties and modes of resistance are what make the Soviet exodic a literature of revolution as it grapples with the complexity of the Soviet period and Soviet identity formation. Drawing upon political theorist Michael Walzer and his text Exodus and Revolution as well as the critical response from Edward Said, this dissertation uses the biblical book of Exodus as a theoretical matrix for the identification and elaboration of narrative sequences and thematic material that constitute a revolutionary genre and applies it to the study of early Soviet literature. Because they are written and published between 1917 and 1935, exodic texts are positioned between the Bolshevik Revolution and the crystallization of high Stalinism. Therefore, they are situated within what is commonly known as the “interwar period.” Such a definition relies upon absence (the absence of war). The Soviet exodic provides this historical moment and its attending texts a positive definition in deference to the revolutionary framework that guides it. This dissertation also considers how the texts enact revolution with the help of critical and queer theory, most notably Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology and Mary Rubenstein’s Pantheologies. These theoretical supports serve to articulate the various queer—that is, non-normative—ways that the selected texts engage pluralism to resist ideological regimes and forces of control as they re-evaluate social and political categories and norms. Queer theory also serves to express the entanglement of self, other, and place, and in so doing, brings ecological anxieties to the fore. Resistance in the Soviet exodic thus takes shape through the queering or misalignment of categories like space, language, or gender performance, and culminates in the figure of the Soviet trickster, who, by means of their unfinalizability, is the embodiment of revolution.

This Master’s thesis explores Jewish masculinity and identity within early twentieth-century literature (1903-1925), using texts written by Jewish authors in late imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union. This was a period of change for Russia’s Jewish community, involving increased secularization and reform, massive pogroms such as in Kishinev in 1903, newfound leadership within the 1905 and 1917 Revolutions, and a rise in both Zionist and Revolutionary ideology. Subsequently, Jewish literary masculinity experienced a significant shift in characterization. Historically, a praised Jewish man had been portrayed as gentle, scholarly, and faithful, yet early twentieth century Jewish male literary figures were asked to be physically strong, hypermasculine, and secular. This thesis first uses H.N. Bialik’s “In the City of Slaughter” (1903) and Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye Goes to Palestine” (1914) to introduce a concept of “Jewish shame,” or a sentiment that historical Jewish masculinity was insufficient for a contemporary Russian world. It then creates two models for these new men to follow. The Assimilatory Jew, seen in Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry cycle (published throughout the 1920s), held that perpetual outsider Jewish men should imitate the behaviour of a secular whole in order to be accepted. The Jewish Superman is depicted in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s “In Memory of Herzl” (1904) and Ilya Selvinsky’s “Bar Kokhba” (1920), and argues that masculine glory is entirely compatible with a proud Jewish identity, without an external standard needed. Judith Butler’s theories on gender performativity are used to analyze these diverse works, published in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian by authors of varying political alignments, to establish commonalities among these literary canons and plot a new spectrum of desired identities for Jewish men. / Graduate / 2020-04-10