Translation and Cultural Nationalism in Jewish Vilna, 1915-1923

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

Jews in Vilna (Wilno/Vilnius) saw themselves as the cultural elite of East European Jewry, if not the entire Jewish world. During World War I and immediately thereafter, they attempted several projects of literal and figurative translation from Russian (or European) high culture into a semi-mythical Jewish artistic folk idiom, and vice versa. These projects accompanied lively discussion of what constituted Jewish art. As Vilna attracted musicians, poets, actors, and artists in addition to writers, critics, and political activists, the city became a center for experiments in new forms of art and culture, where artists struggled to create distinctively Jewish art that would appeal to a wide Jewish audience. Although students of Jewish history and culture are aware of Vilna’s rabbis, maskilim, Zionists, socialists, and secular Jewish scholars, other forms of Jewish culture in Vilna have heretofore received much less attention.

This panel treats three different cultural projects centered in Vilna. Andrew Koss’s paper explores Jewish nationalists’ appropriation of the sculptor Mark Antokolski’s work for the creation of Jewish folk art during World War I. Paula Eisenstein Baker’s paper looks at successful attempts in 1922-23 to create an audience for a genre that translated Jewish themes into art music. Sara Feldman’s paper explores the translation of EUGENE ONEGIN from Russian novel to Yiddish poem in 1918-23.

The papers, stemming from ongoing collaboration among the panelists, discuss the cultural products themselves as well as the political and cultural ambitions of their creators, the tension between cosmopolitanism and the desire for authenticity, and the establishment of institutional frameworks for the dissemination and reception of these works. They also consider the effects of World War I, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the Polish annexation of Vilna, and the collapse of Russian cultural hegemony on Jewish culture. The panel brings together music, literature, and the visual arts and provides varied disciplinary approaches – namely history, musicology, and literature, respectively. The respondent, Slavicist David Frick, will provide points of comparison to Vilna’s non-Jewish cultures and to its early modern history.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

Chair

• Cecile E. Kuznitz, Bard College

Individual Presentations

• Translating Russian-Jewish Engraving into Jewish Folk Art in Wartime Vilna - Andrew N. Koss, Colgate University

• Yiddish Opera, Russian Culture, and the Jerusalem of Lithuania - Sara Feldman, University of Michigan

• Translating Jewish Themes into Art Music in 1920s Vilna: Coda or Continuation? - Paula Eisenstein Baker, University of St. Thomas, Houston