The Grammar of Displacement: Entwined Stories in Ruth Almog and Jenny Erpenbeck
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Michal Ben-Horin
Abstract
Since 1945, the memory of the Holocaust and the Second World War has played a major role in Hebrew and German literature. This article suggests a comparative reading of prose works by Ruth Almog and Jenny Erpenbeck that deal with these memories, in light of the challenges identified by scholars of modern Hebrew and German literature. What literary devices do these writers use to respond to the catastrophe of the twentieth century? In what way do their stories intersect? To what extent do they reflect German-Hebrew dialogue? I argue that by combining historical details and fiction within a literary texture based on contiguity, variation, and intertextual relations, both writers call into question the binary of perpetrator versus victim and calamity versus redemption. I show how their grammar of displacement in Hebrew and in German helps account for the literary workings of memory and ethical justice.
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Hebrew Literature in Europe
- “God Who Brought us Close and Then Repented”: Hester Panim and Revelation in Avraham Ben-Yitzhak’s Writings
- Hebrew Dreams in the Berlin of Yesterday: German-Jewish Symbiosis Fantasy on the City’s Streets in Lifney Hamakom by Haim Be’er and Avedot by Lea Goldberg
- Understanding the Meaning of “Aspeset”: Hermeneutical Approaches, Reading Practices and the Departure from Germany in Two Lea Goldberg Novels
- New Beginnings?
- Hortulus 37, 1959: Translation as Collaboration in an Anthology of New Poetry from Israel
- Ethical Implications of German-Hebrew Homophony: Analyzing Dan Pagis’ “Sealed Railcar” Cycle
- Franz Rosenzweig’s and Paul Celan’s Early German Translations of Yehudah Halevi’s Hebrew Poems
- The Following Generations of Readers and Writers
- Die Muttersprache, die schweigt, und die Stiefmuttersprache, die erzählt. Zu Aharon Appelfelds Sprachpoetik zwischen Deutsch und Hebräisch
- On Translated Literature’s Intended Reader(s): The Case of Yoram Kaniuk’s The Last Berliner
- The Grammar of Displacement: Entwined Stories in Ruth Almog and Jenny Erpenbeck
- Exploring Israel/Palestine Through the Eyes of Writers: German-Language Authors and Undiscriminating Anthropological Glasses
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Hebrew Literature in Europe
- “God Who Brought us Close and Then Repented”: Hester Panim and Revelation in Avraham Ben-Yitzhak’s Writings
- Hebrew Dreams in the Berlin of Yesterday: German-Jewish Symbiosis Fantasy on the City’s Streets in Lifney Hamakom by Haim Be’er and Avedot by Lea Goldberg
- Understanding the Meaning of “Aspeset”: Hermeneutical Approaches, Reading Practices and the Departure from Germany in Two Lea Goldberg Novels
- New Beginnings?
- Hortulus 37, 1959: Translation as Collaboration in an Anthology of New Poetry from Israel
- Ethical Implications of German-Hebrew Homophony: Analyzing Dan Pagis’ “Sealed Railcar” Cycle
- Franz Rosenzweig’s and Paul Celan’s Early German Translations of Yehudah Halevi’s Hebrew Poems
- The Following Generations of Readers and Writers
- Die Muttersprache, die schweigt, und die Stiefmuttersprache, die erzählt. Zu Aharon Appelfelds Sprachpoetik zwischen Deutsch und Hebräisch
- On Translated Literature’s Intended Reader(s): The Case of Yoram Kaniuk’s The Last Berliner
- The Grammar of Displacement: Entwined Stories in Ruth Almog and Jenny Erpenbeck
- Exploring Israel/Palestine Through the Eyes of Writers: German-Language Authors and Undiscriminating Anthropological Glasses
