Forms of Exile in Jewish Literature and Thought

This volume deals with the concept of exile on many levels—from the literal to the metaphorical—combining analyses of predominantly Jewish authors of Central Europe. The concept and forms of exile are analyzed from many different points of view and great importance is devoted especially to forms of inner exile.

Bronislava Volková is a bilingual poet, semiotician, translator, collagist, essayist and Professor Emerita of Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, where she was a Director of the Czech Program at the Slavic Department for thirty years. She is a member of the Czech and American PEN Club. She went into exile in 1974, taught at the Universities of Cologne and Marburg and subsequently at Harvard University and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She has published eleven books of existential and metaphysical poetry in Czech and seven bilingual editions illustrated with her own collages. She is also the author of two books on linguistic and literary semiotics, Emotive Signs in Language (John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1987) and A Feminist’s Semiotic Odyssey through Czech Literature (Edwin Mellen Press, N.Y., 1997), as well as the leading co-author of a large anthology of Czech poetry translations Up The Devil’s Back: A Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Czech Poetry (with Clarice Cloutier, Slavica Publishers, 2008). Her scholarly publications include topics of Czech poetry, Czech popular culture, issues of exile, gender, implied author values and emotive signs. Her poetry has been translated into twelve languages and her selected poems appeared in book form in six of them. She has also received a number of literary and cultural awards.

“Forms of Exile ... presents a coherent framework for bringing all these authors together, and it does a critical service by shining a light on some lesser-known Central European writers such as Ladislav Fuks and Egon Hostovsky. One could easily envision a syllabus on Central European exilic literature being developed along the lines of this volume’s content.”

— Ari Linden, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies

“In this book of essays [the author] creates an original and ingenious typology of the forms of exile. Her grasp of this phenomenon is unusually inventive, not only as a result of her long-term study, but also through personal experience of more than forty years of exile… It is a book that stimulates and inspires many thoughts and developments. It is appropriate not only for academic readers, but also for a general public interested in questions of exile. It could also be fruitfully used as a textbook in literature courses covering central European literature of the period.”

— Věra Hoffmannová, Modern Language Review

“Bronislava Volková’s book is an unusual and thought-provoking project on the topic of exile, which delves into issues of human conditions (including extreme ones), states of mind and forms of revolt and ostracism. It also pursues the reasons that created the sick societies of the twentieth century. It shows exile’s capacity to transform one’s consciousness, come back to oneself and find true freedom and community in a wider sense of the word. These ideas are exemplified on outstanding Jewish writers and thinkers originating from a broad geographical area from Ukraine all the way to France. The study further points out the neglected and undervalued fact that the majority have found a refuge and realization in America.”

—Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz, Professor Emerita, Department of Germanic Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

“A true tour de force of scholarship, close and nuanced reading of a broad range of major European authors and public figures including some who defined modernity with its complexities and discontents. Bronislava Volková's book both offers an in-depth analysis and an engaging synthesis of the pervasive twentieth century experience, condition, and trauma of exile. These most prominently entail identity challenges and imaginative ways to explore alienation, fear of deracination, and anxiety of identity and creativity loss. This fascinating new book convincingly proves how those fears and anxieties led to some of the most remarkable and consequential masterpieces of twentieth century creativity.”

—Dov-Ber Kerler, Cohn Chair of Yiddish Studies and Professor of Jewish and Germanic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

“Few scholars have the knowledge of exile in all of its intricate dimensions that Bronislava Volková exhibits so clearly and concisely in the pages of this book. Living for most of her life away from her native country and culture, she has found a home in literature, especially that of exiled Central European Jewish authors. For anyone interested in learning more about these writers and the transformative effect of territorial displacement, cultural dispossession, and internal exile, this book will serve as a masterful guide.”

—Alvin Rosenfeld, Professor of English and Jewish Studies and Director of Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University, Bloomington