Circular Landscapes: Montage and Myth in Dvoyre Fogel's Yiddish Poetry

Abstract

Abstract:This article examines the iconoclastic Modernist poetry of the Polish writer and critic Dvoyre Fogel (Debora Vogel, 1900–1942) and presents the first English translation of selections from her Yiddish poetry collection Manekinen (Mannequins, Warsaw 1934). Using poetic strategies of repetition, montage and stasis, Fogel developed a unique style informed by Unist and Constructivist visual art. Her representations of domestic space, materiality, sex work and reproductive labor anticipated elements of postwar feminist aesthetics. Despite her contributions to the Polish avant-garde, Fogel's writing has largely been eclipsed by her relationship with Bruno Schulz, whose work she profoundly influenced. My article examines three primary aspects of her work: the principle of simultaneity (simultanizm—the representation of multiple spatiotemporal perspectives); critiques of commodification, as in the suite of ballads on sex work and material consumption; and her mythologization of industry and commerce. The recovery of Fogel's poetry and literary theory invites a reconsideration of stillness and domesticity—alongside the prevailing focus on dynamism, self-revelation and mobility—as significant aspects of Yiddish modernism.