Alongside Sartre's question `What is literature?' we might ask what is `a' literature? Perhaps the answer is `any group of texts studied together for purposes of comparison'. As soon as texts are grouped in this way, links and contrasts emerge in a potentially enlightening way. On the other hand, a study of `Jewish literature' throws up a host of methodological difficulties; just who is Jewish? And are all writings by Jews `Jewish writing'? (A sensible answer is suggested in a quotation from Polish author Artur Sandauer: `Jewish writers are those who raise the question of their origin in their works either explicitly or indirectly and in whose works Jewish topics appear' (p185)).
From either an anti-Semitic or a philo-Semitic perspective, the categorization may be sub-tended by essentialist presuppositions (as some popular anthologies patently are). The editors and preface writer of this collection of studies pick their way through the hidden dangers of such a study with the utmost care. On the other hand, their undertaking raises not only the question of what it means to be Jewish, but equally importantly, of what it means to be European. Paradoxically, it is less shocking to posit the existence of Jewish literature as a category, than to see European literature as a homogeneous category. It is worth recalling that this is an American publication, and there is an unspoken assumption that there must be a category `Europe' as a counterweight or antithesis to the category `America' (which may hold true in the `Anglosphere', but not in the French or Spanish-speaking world).
That is a problem to which there is no clear solution, and so the division of the work into chapters on Jewish writing within different Nation-States accommodates the diversity of language and history, while stopping short of any synthesis. On the other hand, the differing roles of Jews in national histories and of the Shoah within those traditions means the studies differ in scope and form, especially in the interpretation of the title word `contemporary'. Thus, the Netherlands section is so `contemporary' that it excludes Anne Frank, while the British section begins with the nineteenth century. Whereas the Scandinavian chapter devotes a separate catalogue to each country, the British section includes Ireland.
Although, from a traditional critical standpoint, the Nation state is the basic unit within which literature is studied, this collection, which is divided with a chapter for each Nation State, demonstrates (inadvertently?) that many authors cannot fit into such divisions, and migrate, sometimes several times within a lifetime.
Thus, whereas the British section finds an honourable place for Ronit Lentin, the French section finds no place for Albert Cohen, on the (to-my-mind spurious) grounds he lived in Switzerland -- actually in French-speaking Geneva with walking distance of the border, and heedless of the fact he grew up in Marseilles, that his collected works are in the prestigious Pléîade collection, that he joined De Gaulle and the Free French in London during the War, or that his books are in part set in France. Nor is there any place for André Schwarz-Bart (other than a cursory mention, and a place in the bibliography of available English-language books, but not in the French), possibly on the grounds he was born before the war, except Albert Memmi, born eight years before Schwarz-Bart, is mentioned. Certainly, Le Dernier des Justes would fit in well with the theme of Jewishness as a quest extending beyond loss of faith. There is little mention of Régine Robin, certainly none of her La Québécoite, possibly because it is set in Quebec, for the French-speaking world fits in less snugly with the America-Europe divide. Éliette Abécassis is mentioned, but not her father and occasional collaborator Armand, whose Rue des Synagogues offers a perhaps unfashionable defence of French values. No mention of oriental Jews, like Naïm Kattan. Perhaps the reason is that the editors of this book are Germanists, as if Jewish literature were the natural province of German departments, and the French section is by one such expert, with a clear stress on the centrality of the Shoah. This obliterates the very French trauma of the Dreyfus affair, and its profound effect on such opinion formers as Édmond Fleg. No mention either of Marek Halter or Joseph Joffo (not intellectual enough? However, Halter's vast historical fresco does portray a reappropriation of (Jewish) history). The inclusions are as strange as the exclusions; we read of `the Jew Marcel Proust' (124), and it is true Proust's mother was Jewish and that this might technically make him a Jew; however, he was baptized, confirmed and brought up a Catholic. Similarly, Modiano is included, but although Modiano is very preoccupied with themes of persecution, it is perhaps the fact he was estranged from his Jewish father that motivated him in a quest that is as much for the father as for Judaism.
Among the works of theory, one is surprised not so see listed La France et les Juifs de 1789 à nos jours, Michel Winock, or The Jews of Modern France, Paula E. Hayman, or to find no mention of Sartre's Réflexions sur la question juive, which may be by a sympathetically inclined Gentile, but has (rightly or wrongly) loomed large in public debate in France. Similarly, some readers will regret that there is no mention of Jacques Derrida, the country's leading philosopher (author of La Circonfession), or Hélène Cixous, a prominent feminist, or even Emmanuel Lévinas who died only as recently as 1995.
The following chapter, on Italian Jewish writing, goes into the degree of historical detail that the French article eschews, and mentions Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani, who might well have been omitted from the article on France because they fell outside Nolden's definition of `contemporary'.
The editors' (laudable) desire to leave freedom to contributors does lead to strange inconsistencies, mainly of periodicity, but also of inclusion and exclusion; for example, French-speaking Switzerland and Belgium, arguably cultural provinces of France, are omitted (but Germany and Austria have a section each), while several other studies include writers who have emigrated to Israel. Some sections are thematic, while others are catalogues. André Schwarz-Bart and Vasily Grossman do not appear in the French and Russian sections respectively, but are included among the English translations. Many of these `discrepancies' may in part be attributed to the fact each Nation-State is accorded roughly the same number of pages, while the number of authors to be discussed is in fact variable. And in part to the fact that the subject under discussion does not, ultimately, lend itself to segmentation in line with Nation-State borders.
On the other hand, the collection's great merit is to exist; it has few rivals and, perhaps, after this study limited to `contemporary' writing (however defined), there is a place for a broader study less limited in time, possibly `since the enlightenment' or `since 1900'.
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David
A brave and valuable attempt at a subject hard to tie down
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 9, 2011