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“To hear... as the generation have heard...”: Autobiographical prose of O. Mandelstam in the context of Russian-Jewish literature and memoirs (1840–1930s)
https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2019-6-94-119
Abstract
The article is devoted to O. Mandelstam’s “The Noise of Time”. This autobiographical prose is considered in the context of cultural models of Jewish and Russian-Jewish memoirs of the 1840s–1930s, including Leon Mandelstam’s, M.L. Lilienblum’s, A.G. Kovner’s, P.Yu. Vengerova’s, S.M. Dubnov’s. Those texts are considered along with the prose of S. Frug, L. Levanda, S. An-sky as well as historical and cultural essays by S.M. Dubnov, P.S. Marek, S.L. Zinberg written in 1880–1910s. Summarizing the development of ideological trends among the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia, they allow the author to show the fundamental similarity of the “Noise of Time” with their most important topics, conceptualizing the ideological crisis of the turn of the 19–20th centuries, as well as the difference in the worldviews of several generations of Jewish “fathers” and “children.” The article analyzes metaphorical concepts that were used in Jewish and Russian-Jewish literature, memoirs and journalism to characterize the period of Jewish modernization in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Those concepts included an idea of “chaos” as a mixture of the different worldviews systems. All it made clear that the complex of meanings embedded in those concepts in terms of the Russian-Jewish world was not only open to Mandelstam, but was reflected in the composition of several chapters of “The Noise of Time”.
About the Author
G. A. EliasbergRussian Federation
Galina A. Eliasberg, Cand. of Sci. (Philology), bld. 6, Miusskaya Square, Moscow, Russia, 125993
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Supplementary files
For citation: Eliasberg G.A. “To hear... as the generation have heard...”: Autobiographical prose of O. Mandelstam in the context of Russian-Jewish literature and memoirs (1840–1930s). RSUH/RGGU Bulletin: “Literary Teory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies”, Series. 2019;(6):94-119. https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2019-6-94-119
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