Dream as the Only Evidence: Samuil Kissin and the Jewish Population in the Front Zone of the Great War

• In Event: Dream Records as Historical Sources and Literary Narratives

Abstract

My talk deals with multiple cognitive and identity difficulties that eyewitnesses endured in processing the tragic Jewish experience of the First World War. For Russian-Jewish men of letters, these difficulties were mainly the result of their divided loyalties, as their Russian cultural identification precluded their acknowledgement of the widespread Russian anti-Jewish violent activities during the war. My case study concerns identity predicaments of the minor modernist Russian-Jewish poet Samuil Kissin (1885-1916) or “Muni” (his moniker), reflected in his inability to process his war experience, both existentially and literarily. In the history of Russian modernism “Muni” is known primarily as a hero of an eponymous essay written by his friend, the major Russian modernist poet of Polish-Jewish origin Vladislav Khodasevich, who eventually included the essay in his book Necropolis (1939). I analyze Kissin’s dream, described in his diary shortly before his suicide, which can be regarded as his only known response to the contemporary tragic situation of the Jewish population in the war zone, which he inevitably witnessed.

Author

• Edward Waysband, U of Pennsylvania