ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.48.12
D. Roskies
{"title":"Speaking for the Shulhoyf: The Vilna Voices of Ayzik-Meyer Dik","authors":"D. Roskies","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.48.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.48.12","url":null,"abstract":"When the Maskil Ayzik-Meyer Dik (ca. 1807–1893) retooled as a kritiker, a writer of satire, he did so by keeping it local. Most effectively, he exposed the evils and failings of the Jewish body politic by locating his satires in and around the crowded shulhoyf, the Great Synagogue and Courtyard, of his native Vilnius. Endowed with a phenomenal memory and a wicked sense of humour, there was no end to the gallery of schnorrers, shnorrerkes, rogues and misfits whom he could rescue from out of the recent, unenlightened past. But to speak for Jewish Vilna the way that Eugène Sue had spoken for Paris meant learning a new set of skills. To write popular fiction meant to draw upon the dialogical nature of language itself: the way low-lives and charlatans mimicked the speech of the learned class, while uncensored speech betrayed their boorishness, voracious appetites and debauchery; the way the speech of servant girls trafficked in the speech of their mistresses and outperformed them. Who spoke for the shulhoyf was the folksshrayber, the popular writer. Speech was dialogical, because to become a responsible folksshrayber required that one allow others to do the talking. Willy-nilly, and despite his professed ideology, Dik became the first writer to turn Ayalon-Linove-Vilna into the natural habitat of Yiddish.","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83311490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.48.13
Avner Holtzman
{"title":"Vilna as a Centre of Hebrew Literature: The Journal Hazman","authors":"Avner Holtzman","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.48.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.48.13","url":null,"abstract":"In 1904, a Hebrew journalistic and literary initiative was established in Vilna, headed by the writer and publisher Ben-Avigdor, and the journalist and editor Ben Zion Katz. Vilna was chosen, among other reasons, for being a deeply rooted centre of Hebrew culture, with a long tradition of printing and publishing. The new initiative revived it as a magnet for Hebrew writers and journalists, an impressive team that joined together to create the daily Hazman (The Time) and its supplements. The editors’ policy was not to impose a binding political line on the paper, but to give an opening to all the factions in the Jewish public, while also hoping to expand the target audience of the paper. The year 1905 was the time of glory of Hazman, both for its news and its literary sections. But its momentum was halted during 1906, due to the political storm in Russia and the rapid decline of Hebrew journals, which lost most of their readership to the flourishing Yiddish press. Thus, the Hazman affair embodies a dramatic crossroads. It was the beginning of the decline of Hebrew literature in Eastern Europe, alongside the laying of the foundations for Hebrew literature in the Land of Israel during the first two decades of the 20th century. This essay draws an outline of the affair on the basis of a variety of sources, including the newspaper itself, memories of the personalities involved, and correspondence that has survived from those days.","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88264180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.48.05
C. E. Kuznitz
{"title":"Touring Vilna: Images of the City and its Jews in Guidebooks and Travelogues, 1856–1939","authors":"C. E. Kuznitz","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.48.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.48.05","url":null,"abstract":"From the mid-19th century through the end of the interwar period, a variety of texts about Vilna were published to guide and inform both tourists and armchair travellers. The Polish, French and German language guidebooks and travelogues considered in this article were composed both by native sons and visitors who wished to share their impressions of the city, its notable sights, and its residents. While some overlooked the presence of Jews, most devoted some space to Vilna’s Jewish landmarks. Overwhelmingly, they focused their attention on the Jewish quarter, the traditional heart of Jewish life, although a minority ventured to newer neighbourhoods, where they discovered a vibrant modern community. Their attitudes included a mix of sympathy, fascination and revulsion; many employed the language of orientalism, even as they invested that language with a variety of meanings. These authors’ narratives were shaped by their views of the various groups that comprised Vilna’s diverse population, as well as by commitments ranging from Polish nationalism to pacifism. Such accounts thus illuminate competing visions of the larger society and the place of Jews within it","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86804253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.48.11
Mindaugas Kvietkauskas
{"title":"From Shulhoyf to Montparnasse: Cultural Collage in Moshé Vorobeichic's Photography Book The Ghetto Lane in Wilna (1931)","authors":"Mindaugas Kvietkauskas","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.48.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.48.11","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the artistic genesis of the first avantgarde photography book in Lithuanian art history, The Ghetto Lane in Wilna (1931) by Moshé Vorobeichic-Moï Ver (Moshe Raviv, 1904–1995), and aims to conduct the first in-depth reconstruction of Vorobeichic’s early biographical and creative period in Vilnius in the 1920s in the local Jewish and multicultural milieu. The research is based on archival materials from Lithuanian state archives and the Raviv family archives in Israel. Vorobeichic, who was born in 1904 in Zaskavichy (currently in Belarus), made his artistic debut in Vilnius in 1923, and studied at the Faculty of Fine Art at Stephen Bathory University from 1923 to 1925. He continued his art studies at the Bauhaus school in Dessau (1927 to 1929) and, from 1929 in Paris at the École Technique de Photographie et de Cinématographie. From 1930 onwards, the photographer used the artistic pseudonym Moï Ver, under which his avant-garde photography book Paris, hailed as a masterpiece of the genre, was published by Editions Jeanne Walter in 1931. During the same period, Vorobeichic participated in Jewish cultural life in Vilnius, and was involved in the early stages of the formation of Yung Vilne, the acclaimed literary and artistic group of interwar Yiddish Modernism. The article aims to identify the cultural contexts in which Moï Ver’s artistic world-view and avant-garde style started to develop. The reconstruction of these contexts makes it possible to identify new semantic aspects in his avant-garde photography book The Ghetto Lane in Wilna, and to rethink its artistic concept. In this way, the cross-cultural semantics of Moï Ver’s photographic collages of Jewish Vilnius will emerge.","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87867253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.46.11
Aistė Kučinskienė
{"title":"About Birutė, Comparative Studies, Translation, and Hope","authors":"Aistė Kučinskienė","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.46.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.46.11","url":null,"abstract":"Birutė Ciplijauskaitė, Tarp lituanistikos ir ispanistikos. Moterys XIX–XX amžių Europos literatūrose, sudarė ir iš ispanų k. vertė Akvilė Šimėnienė, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2019, 284 p., ISBN 978-609-425-255-6","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82555776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.48.07
V. Levin
{"title":"Maps, Synagogues, the City of Vilne, and Zalmen Szyk","authors":"V. Levin","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.48.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.48.07","url":null,"abstract":"The absolute majority of maps of East European cities marked only one or two major synagogues, while tens or hundreds of smaller synagogues and Jewish prayer houses were omitted. Using Vilnius as a case study, the article argues that this omission was not only a consequence of viewing the Jews as a ‘not indigenous’ part of the population, but also reflected the reality. The absolute majority of synagogues and prayer houses had no role in the cityscape of Vilnius and other cities of Eastern Europe, and therefore were not noticeable to non-Jewish people. Either synagogues and prayer houses were situated in courtyards, or they had no external features designating them as Jewish sacred places. Only the Great Synagogues and the Choral Synagogues of ‘modernised’ Jews attempted to be visible and prominent in the cityscape. The discussion of the issue of visibility of Jewish sacral buildings is based on the Yiddish guidebook to the city of Vilnius published by Zalmen Szyk in 1939. This book is a unique work, which combines the description of Vilnius ‘in general’ with special attention paid to the Jewish public institutions existing in the city, the majority of them synagogues and prayer houses.","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84607270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.46.05
D. Jakaitė
{"title":"Prayer Poetry in the Conversations of Henrikas Nagys and Liūnė Sutema: From Despair to Salvation","authors":"D. Jakaitė","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.46.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.46.05","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is to examine and compare the most noticeable semantic aspects of prayer poetry in the works of Henrikas Nagys and Liūnė Sutema. The classical religious (theological) thought and the modern approach to prayer are important for the concept of prayer. The poetic prayer is more characteristic of Liūnė Sutema than Nagys; this phenomenon leads to a new understanding of the encounter of the two poets in this poetic space. The figures of sister, brother and father, the poetically individual forms of the collective subject (“we”) in the poetry of Nagys and Liūnė Sutema express the significance of the community, which corresponds to the Christian tradition of prayer. The prayer community of both authors share the poetically strong drama of guilt and repentance, truth and error, fidelity and betrayal. The analysis of God as the addressee of prayer revealed a dialogic interpretation of the Bible and the relevance of traditional prayers in the poems of both poets. The wrath of God and its dualism, which takes on the form of antiprayer, and a radical doubt about God’s will is the dominant feature of Nagys’ poetry. God in Liūnė Sutema’s poetry is more personal and is characterized by a paradoxical preservation of tradition. One of the poetically strongest forms of prayer in Liūnė Sutema’s poetry is the variations of “thy will be done” prayer. It is also one of the most suggestive means of a dialogue with Nagys’ poetry.","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81361132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.48.14
Lara Lempertienė
{"title":"Moyshe Kulbak's and Zalman Shneour's Vilnius: Poetic Reality versus Gloriours Contruct","authors":"Lara Lempertienė","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.48.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.48.14","url":null,"abstract":"During the interwar period, many attempts were made to perceive and interpret the legacy of Jewish Vilnius, both in the city itself and abroad. Many of the images of the city created in that period betray nostalgic and half-mythological features, even while they present a living and breathing Jewish environment. This essay is a comparative case study of two literary texts that might provide some answers to these questions. One is the Hebrew poem Vilna by Zalman Shneour (1919), and the other is the Yiddish poem ‘Vilne’ by Moyshe Kulbak (1926). Each poet, the paper argues, set opposing goals for himself: for Shneour, it was creating an ode to a legendary centre of Jewish learning and spirituality; while Kulbak attempted to capture the pulse of the actual city that he lived in. Accordingly, Shneour essentially reiterated every traditional rhetorical trope of Jewish Vilnius, without creating a new poetic vision of it; whereas Kulbak used the potential of modernised Yiddish and Expressionist poetics to paint a vibrant and exciting portrait of the city. However, after the trauma of the physical loss of Jewish Vilnius during the Second World War, it was Shneour’s stylistic approach and depiction of the city that would prevail.","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80594463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ColloquiaPub Date : 2021-12-30DOI: 10.51554/coll.21.46.06
Birutė Avižinienė
{"title":"Literature and Its Authors in the Interwar Lithuanian Radio Programs","authors":"Birutė Avižinienė","doi":"10.51554/coll.21.46.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.51554/coll.21.46.06","url":null,"abstract":"In the article, the author discusses the presentation of the Lithuanian literature by the State Radio Broadcast “Valstybės radiofonas” in 1926-1940. The author presents specific literary radio program genres (recitations, radio drama, lectures, and commemorations), identifies those Lithuanian authors who received the most attention, examines the image of the national writer and the function it played in radio lectures and programs, and the ways in which the writers themselves took part in the radio programs.Radio lectures dedicated to Lithuanian writers and literature and commemorations of the writers’ anniversaries had consistently strengthened the point of view of the Lithuanian Nationalist and Republican Union towards literature and attributed educational function to it. This function is particularly noticeable in the interpretations of the works and biographies of the three authors most often discussed on the air: Maironis, Kudirka, and Vaižgantas. These writers were treated as heroes, whose example was fostered to follow. The image of national writers was employed to create the personal cult of President Antanas Smetona. In accordance with this image, the political leader was presented as the successor of the activities of the writers’ who occupied a significant place in the society.In addition to this ideologized attitude to literature, another approach, which created preconditions for more independent literary processes and more critical reader, began to emerge. Interwar radio broadened the usual forms of literary communication and provided a platform for discussing literary news and a stage for the youngest writers who made their debut in the late 1920s and 1930s. Radio programs dedicated to literature (such as literary evenings and book reviews) demonstrate both the emerging reflection on literary processes and the more critical listener, and testify to the growing autonomy of literature.","PeriodicalId":37193,"journal":{"name":"Colloquia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90550835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}