Description
Book SynopsisIf a history of Russian-Jewish literature in the twentieth century (or, at least, a history of its authors and texts) were ever to be written, it would reveal a number of puzzling lacunae. One such lacuna is Andrei Sobol, a truly significant writer who, paradoxically, has not received due scholarly attention. This can easily be demonstrated by the fact that Sobol’s name goes virtually unmentioned in some of the most representative and authoritative studies dealing with the Russian-Jewish literary discourse. It is this scholarly gap that has prompted Vladimir Khazan to write this volume, a comprehensive and exhaustive account of Sobol’s public, literary, and artistic activities as a purely Russian-Jewish phenomenon. Khazan analyzes his biographical subject within the framework of cultural studies.
Trade Review“In his slim but very informative, provocative, and insightful new book, Israeli scholar Vladimir Khazan, an author of many pioneer studies on Russian Jewish poetics, recovers a largely forgotten figure: the writer and journalist Andrei Sobol (1887–1926). He presents Sobol as precisely such a serious Russian and serious Jewish writer, whose relationship to his Jewishness was meaningful, positive, and complex…The wealth of material presented here by Khazan points in the direction of future investigations of Sobol and his importance for Russian Jewish literature and beyond.” — Marat Grinberg, Modern Language Review "Vladimir Khazan’s in-depth study of the life and work of Andrei Sobol sheds new light on the complexity of Russian-Jewish cultural relationship. The book will be invaluable to both the scholarly community and the interested non-specialist, as it does an outstanding job in lifting the veil on one of the most mysterious figures in the history of the Russian literature during the turbulent revolutionary era." -- Lazar Fleishman, Stanford University
Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Part I. “…And, Apparently, a Very Good Jew”: Sobol as a Russian-Jewish Literary Critic and Journalist
- 1 Baal-Machshoves and Andrei Sobol: Two Views on the Purpose and Objectives of Russian-Jewish Literature
- 2 The Context and Subtext of Sobol’s Open Letter to D. Merezhkovsky
- 3 A Battle that Never Happened (Sobol’s Unpublished Open Letter to Ivan. Bunin)
- PART II. Andrei Sobol and Evreiskii Mir
- PART III. Overcoming the Myth: Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Works
- 1. Between Literature and Politics: Sobol’s Novel Pyl’
- 2. Jewish Themes, Motifs, and Images in Sobol’s Short Stories
- 3. The Fate of Sobol’s Book Evrei
- PART IV. Sobol’s Translation of Wandering Stars
- PART V. Andrei Sobol and the Jewish Theater
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
