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1

Roguish Self-Fashioning and Questing in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything”

100%

Blake J.

Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

|

2019

|

issue 9

100-117

EN

This paper examines self-fashioning in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything,” a story about a Sarajevo teenager’s journey through ex-Yugoslavia to the Slovenian town of Murska Sobota. His aim? “[T]o buy a freezer chest for my family” (39). While in transit, the first-person narrator imagines himself a rogue of sorts; the fictional journey he takes, meanwhile, is clearly within the quest tradition. The paper argues that “Everything” is an unruly text because by the end of the story the reader must jettison the conventional reading traditions the quest narrative evokes. What begins as a comic tale about a minor journey opens out, in the story’s final lines, into a story about larger historical concerns, namely, the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. By introducing contemporary history, Hemon points beyond the closed world of his short story, while rejecting the quest pattern he has established.

2

Tuwim’s Wedge: 'Survival Strategies' of a Polish-Jewish Poet

86%

Tomassucci G.

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica

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2016

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vol. 36

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issue 6

49-67

EN

Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered a rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish-Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.

3

Tuwim’s Wedge: 'Survival Strategies' of a Polish-Jewish Poet

86%

Tomassucci G., University of Pisa D. o. P., g.tomassucci@teletu.it

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica

|

2016

|

vol. 36

|

issue 6

EN

Tuwim’s approach to the “Jewish question” has already been analyzed by Polish and foreign scholars. The article is intended to consider some “survival strategies” of the Polish poet from a slightly different angle. In Poland, in the period between the wars Jewish writers were persuaded to accept total polonization and a rejection of their ethnic identity; yet, at the same time they often suffered a rejection from the circles of Polish artists. Any attempt of highlighting their Jewish identity or even a slight interest in Jewish culture incited brutal Jew-bashings. Tuwim considered his being a Polish Jew not only as a fact to be proud of, but also as an opportunity for engaging with self-criticism. He painfully felt the Jewish question as “a powerful wedge cleaving [his own] worldview”. However, like many other Polish-Jewish writers he masked its enduring presence in his own psyche, constructing his public persona through a process of self-fashioning. This paper tries to follow the traces of this “wedge” in Tuwim’s works: from poems supposedly having nothing to do with the “Jewish question”, to encrypted allusions to the great Yiddish writers, from his relentless questioning of all forms of intolerance and nationalist rhetoric, to his conviction that a new poetic language could “reform the world” and become a homeland for all readers regardless of their nationality.

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2 Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica

1 Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture

1 2019

2 2016

2 Tomassucci G.

1 Blake J.

1 University of Pisa D. o. P.

1 g.tomassucci@teletu.it

Roguish Self-Fashioning and Questing in Aleksandar Hemon’s “Everything”

Tuwim’s Wedge: 'Survival Strategies' of a Polish-Jewish Poet

Tuwim’s Wedge: 'Survival Strategies' of a Polish-Jewish Poet