Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines a group of multicultural Jewish poets, Algerian Sadia Lévy, Argentine Juan Gelman, and Israeli Margalit Matitiahu, to address the issue of multilingualism within a context of minor languages and literatures, nationalism, and diaspora.
Trade Review"A splendid work that will be a fascinating read for all those who are interested in Jewish literatures and languages and in poetology." -- Lazar Fleishman * Stanford University. *
"The close readings that the author provides make the work of these three poets accessible to anyone interested in multilingual, transnational poetry and in the Jewish literary repertoire...
Homeless Tongues therefore does more than expand specific canons (of Jewish literatures, of world literatures, and of literatures, to use Rebecca Walkowitz's terms, that are "born translated"). The book ultimately shows that linguistic diversity is good for people and good for democracy, which also is what makes
Homeless Tongues so significant and timely in the current political climate." -- Tabea Alexa Linhard *
Shofar: Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies *
"In this book, Monique Balbuena rescues three Sephardi poets from near oblivion. Significant on their own, together they challenge the usual canons of Jewish literature and the general consensus on Jewish languages, as well as the standard theories of minority literatures." -- Nancy E. Berg * Washington University *
"Monique Balbuena shifts between theoretical arguments and a meticulous analysis of poems by the three authors, providing us a deep reading of the texts. At the same time, she places the poems in a changing context, using interpretive tools from literary theory. The author's contribution is an original and ambitious one: it allows us to see relationships that aren't always evident and it offers new insight into 20th-century Jewish literary history." -- Elisa Martín Ortega *
Sefarad *
"
Homeless Tongues has opened a new path for Sephardic scholarship....
Homeless Tongues takes a crucial step forward in assigning value to contemporary Sephardic literature....Balbuena also provides a much needed summary of the field of Jewish Spanish, Sephardic studies, and contemporary Sephardic culture in general. The reference section of the monograph—almost as large as her lengthy chapters—provides a veritable gold mine for future scholarship." -- Judith K. Lang Hilgartner *
Studies in Contemporary Jewry *
"The great strength of this volume lies in its expert close readings, which in their unusual length and detail offer a rare opportunity for a reader to become intimate with unfamiliar sources....Balbuena's analysis of Sephardic, in general, and Ladino, in particular, poetic production addresses a major gap in research on Jewish literature. The perspectives elaborated in this book are valuable for any scholar of minor languages or literatures, and they will be particularly useful to those interested in the increasingly vital field of Sephardic studies." -- Harry Eli Kashdan *
Symposium *
Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstract
This introduction first introduces poet Clarisse Nicoïdski as a Sephardic poet who shifts languages and genres when she moves from French to Ladino, and prose to poetry, when confronting the death of her mother, her people and her culture. Then the introduction briefly presents Deleuze and Guattari's formula for "minor literatures" and the counter-arguments this book presents to it. The text then proceeds discussing basic concepts that are central to the book and to the poets here discussed: genres of Sephardic poetry, the Judeo-Spanish language, its development and its many names, multilingualism and Jewish langauges, and Diaspora.
1Minor Literatures and Major Laments: Reading Sadia Lévy chapter abstract
This chapter presents Sadia Lévy, an Algerian poet who attempted to inscribe himself in the gallery of French Symbolists while writing in a French enriched by infusions of Hebrew and Judeo-Spanish, activating biblical and Kabbalistic genres in his poems. Lévy allows us to look at the development of modernism from a different angle, and serves as an example that will prompt changes in Jewish historical narrative, destabilizing certain views of Jewish culture, more specifically about Sephardi and North African Jews. Writing in French in colonial Algeria, Lévy makes us rethink the boundaries that define a French and a Francophone author. Having written one of the first Maghrebi novels in French, his precedence has gone unrecognized because as a Jew, he is considered French—an ideological exclusionary act that misses his ambivalent position and does not recognize that the privilege of his French citizenship is more artificial than ever.
2At the Crossroads: Greece, Israel and Spain in Margalit Matitiahu's Hebrew-Ladino Poetry chapter abstract
Chapter 2, on Israeli contemporary poet Margalit Matitiahu, focuses on her bilingual Hebrew-Ladino books—especially her first volumes, Kurtijio Kemado and Alegrika. It discusses the critical reception of her work within Hebrew and Ladino literatures and, observing that her readers and critics are for the most part still divided across linguistic borders, offers a reading of two poems in both their Hebrew and Ladino versions, with attention to the specificities of the languages and their respective audiences, and observing the poet's strategies of self-translation. This chapter also brings to the foreground the politics of Jewish languages and questions the concepts of diasporic and nationalist identities, pointing to a critique of the nation and the attempted creation of a homogenizing national subject. It also touches upon the place of the Shoah in Sephardic memory and identity.
3Archaeology of the Language/Archaeology of the Self: Juan Gelman's Journey to Ladino chapter abstract
Chapter 3, about Argentine Ashkenazi poet Juan Gelman, destabilizes notions of fixed identity and breaks down dichotomic divisions of ethnic origins as it traces Gelman's gradual rewriting of himself as a Sephardic Jew at the very moment when he most identifies as a Jew. It reads Gelman's bilingual Ladino-Spanish collection Dibaxu as the culmination of his rewritings of Spanish canonical authors. It focuses on the "process of self-Sephardization," initially triggered by Gelman's historical condition as a political exile, and then fed by his translation and rewriting of canonical medieval Spanish Hebrew poets. He proceeds in a linguistic "excavation" of the many layers in the Spanish language, and writes himself as a Sephardic Jew. In opposition to an oppressive regime with which his language is associated, Gelman makes a deterritorializing move and radically assumes a new language: the Jewish, exilic and minor Ladino.
Conclusion: Wither chapter abstract
The conclusion revisits the main arguments of the book and discusses new developments and possibilities for the creative production in Ladino. It seeks to turn the focus from the atmosphere of death that surrounds the language to an acknowledgement, or even celebration, of Sephardim as present-day, creative, living Jews.
