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Urban and Picturesque : Kadya Molodowsky and Rokhl Korn's imaginary landscapes

Tue, December 18, 12:45 to 2:15pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Harborview 2 Ballroom

Abstract

This paper examines two Jewish women poets' responses to the engulfed world of the Yiddishland through their correspondence (1948-1972) and their respective poetry. While the surging voices of these Yiddish dichterins (to quote Ezra Korman's anthology of 1928) is part and parcel of the emergence of modernity in their adoptive cities, Montreal and New York, it bears witness to the intellectual ferment present in various languages and cultures. Both Kadia Molodowsky and Korn have produced a body of works with a strong autobiographical component and characterized by what can be called today "cultural hybridity", depicting imaginary landscapes where communities (Jews and Gentiles), as well as languages (Yiddish and Eastern European languages, English and Hebrew) interact.

As their respective works have been analyzed by several critics and scholars, who focused on the decisive role that these women played in the Yiddish milieu of their time, and the manner in which they can be distinguished from their male counterparts, I will turn to their correspondence and to the critical reception their works elicited in order to analyze their efforts to adapt from the countryside of Galicia to urban contexts, stressing the paradoxes of emigration and exile that shape their works. In this paper, I suggest that Molodowsky and Korn's autobiographical signature is unique and covers a wide range of landscapes, from urban to picturesque, associated to specific themes (loss, trauma, love and death) and having a universal impact. In conclusion, I will question the significance of their "autobiographical acts" today through literary translation from Yiddish to English and to French.

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