Auf ein Miniaturbild klicken, um zu Google Books zu gelangen.
Lädt ... Zelmenyaner (1937. Auflage)von Moshe Kulbak
Werk-InformationenThe Zelmenyaners: A Family Saga von Moyshe Kulbak
Keine Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Gehört zu VerlagsreihenDie Andere Bibliothek (396) Bemerkenswerte Listen
Die Selmenianer sind eine jüdische Gro\U+00df\familie, deren traditionelle Schtetl-Sentimentalität durch die Umwälzungen der Russischen Revolution und die neue sowjetische Ordnung aus den Fugen gerät. In ihre Stadt schleicht sich das Gespenst des Bolschewismus ein und wird nicht mehr weichen: Sowjetmacht plus Elektrifizierung. Vier Generationen von Selmenianern, allesamt »schwarzhaarig und knochig gebaut«, mit einer »breiten, niedrigen Stirn, fleischigen Nasen und Grübchen in den Wangen« leben auf dem Hof des längst verstorbenen Ahnen Selmele. In dieser Geschichte einer Familie, die sich im Konflikt zwischen Modernisierungsverweigerung und Fortschrittsglauben behaupten muss, leben die dynastischen Erzählungen des Alten Testaments und die heitermelancholische Haltung chassidischer Überlieferungen fort, während zugleich die literarische Doktrin des Sozialistischen Realismus einzieht. In seinem als Fortsetzungsroman in einer Minsker Zeitung zwischen 1929 und 1935 verfassten Selmenianern, stellt sich Moische Kulbak dem Konflikt zwischen dem Jüdisch-Sein und den stalinistischen Vorstellungen vom »Neuen Menschen« Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
Aktuelle DiskussionenKeineBeliebte Umschlagbilder
Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)839.133Literature German literature and literatures of related languages Other Germanic literatures Yiddish literature Fiction 1860-1945Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
Bist das du?Werde ein LibraryThing-Autor. |
The tale centers around the older generation's desires to retain their old ways, including the vestiges of their Jewish beliefs and practices, in the face of the growing incursions of Soviet society and economic collectivisation. As the younger generation grows to maturity, they less interested in the old ways and more interested in being good Bolsheviks. Even the older Zelmenyaners are pushed to end their independent lives as tradesmen (tailors, tanners, carpenters) and go to work in the factories, like good Soviet workers.
The story is in fable-like, farcical narrative. Rumor, scandal and gossip, feud and loyalty, busybodies and misanthropes swarm and swirl about the courtyard. Knowledge of the outside world is minimal, sometimes comically so, for most of the Zelmenyaners, although the outside world has been though town within recent memory, in the form of the German Army, who stormed through during World War One. One of the brothers, in fact, has been made a widower during an artillery barrage. Two of the men, one from each adult generation fought in the Russian Army during that war, with the younger going on to fight with the Reds in the Russian Revolution.
Our affection for this crowd is cemented early on, and though the story is played for comedy, the pathos is evident throughout as the family fights a losing battle to retain their way of life, their heritage and their family identity in the face of societal forces from without and betrayal from within.
I found this book moving for many reasons. For one thing, it describes the place my grandparents came from, the place where they would have lived, and most likely would have died within a decade of the action of this novel, had they not left for America in the early 20th century. Furthermore, Kulbak was also a poet, and his descriptions, especially his uses of natural settings to set mood, are often wonderful. The winter snow and freezing cold becomes almost a character, a member of the family. But here is a description of the end of one summer:
"The first thin, slanting autumn rains began to fall. Beneath them the silent summer, its myriad colors squelched and soiled, was snuffed out in the gardens. Disconsolate beet leaves with hard, purplish veins lay cast between the vegetable beds. Dirty yellows, oranges, and browns were trodden silently underfoot. On days like that you didn't need an antenna to hear distant cries."
Oh, to be able to read this in the original Yiddish. Adding poignancy to the reading was this note on the book's back cover:
Moyshe Kulbak (1896-1937) was a leading Yiddish modernist poet, novelist and dramatist. He was arrested in 1937, during the wave of Stalinist repression that hit the Minsk Yiddish writers and cultural activists with particular vehemence. After a perfunctory show trial, Kulbak was shot at the age of forty-one." ( )