Literary Babel: The Multilingual Institutions of Soviet Jewish Writing

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel examines the relationship between Jewish writers, translators and the literary institutions of the Soviet state. In doing so, it considers how such figures negotiated between languages and publications venues to produce a body of literature that is both deeply enmeshed in and sometimes at tension with the Soviet project. Taking shape across the geographically and culturally diverse space of the USSR, Soviet Jewish literary production intersected with state institutions in myriad ways. In some cases, Soviet Jewish writers worked through state programs to articulate a new vision for national literary projects, while in others they drew on experience in official publishing venues as a basis for their unofficial literary output. It is the nexus between state institutions and the activity of individual literary figures that many believed to offer a liberatory potential for Soviet Jewish literary expression. By focusing on literature produced in Persian, Hebrew, Turkish, Georgian and Juhuri (spoken by Jewish communities in the Caucasus) in addition to Russian, this panel seeks to broaden our understanding of Soviet Jewish literature to include often neglected geographic and linguistic constellations. In this way, it offers a nuanced sense of the diverse ways that Jewish literary figures functioned in relation to state institutions throughout the Soviet Empire.

Sub Unit

• Jewish Studies

Chair

• Alexandra Zborovsky, U of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Friendship of Peoples and Its Jewish Translator: Semyon Lipkin’s Visions of Multiethnic Space - Marsel Khamitov, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Reading Rustaveli in Hebrew: Boris Gaponov’s Translation of 'The Knight in the Panther’s Skin' - Benjamin Arenstein, U of Chicago

• Babel’s Petersburg Diary and the Language of Early Post Revolutionary Petrograd - Michael Tobias Lerner, UC Berkeley

Discussant

• Sasha Senderovich, U of Washington