The hasidic story and the Yiddish cabaret: folk performance as a barbaric disruption in S. Y. Agnon's The Bridal Canopy. Issue 3 (2nd September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stern, Zehavit
• Is Part Of: Journal of modern Jewish studies. Volume 16:Issue 3(2017)
• Page Start: 437
• Page End: 450
• Publication Date: 2017-09-02
• Subjects: Jews -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Judaism -- Periodicals; Jews -- Periodicals; 305.8924
• DOI: 10.1080/14725886.2017.1354444
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1472-5886

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Focusing on S.Y. Agnon's novel The Bridal Canopy ( Hakhansat kala ), 1931, this article investigates an under-explored path in modern Jewish literature where folklore and popular culture serve as a radical disruption of European literary norms. Whereas modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures typically strove for what Dan Miron called "cultural normalcy, " struggling to mould Jewish materials (including language, modes and genres of writing, and ways of life) into European literary standards, Agnon's first novel flaunts "Jewish otherness." Agnon orchestrates a polyphony of Jewish performers, including the storyteller, the badkhn, the purim-shpiler and the popular Yiddish cabaret the Singers of Brod . Introducing the sensibilities of the Yiddish vernacular into the highbrow Hebrew book, improvised performance into the written text, simple rhyming into Agnon's rich prose – all these disturbances add up to what might be called, following, Theodor W. Adorno's term, a "barbaric" interference in the esteemed European genre.