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- Title
LE GHETTO DANS LE ROMAN ROUMAIN DE L'ENTRE-DEUX-GUERRES.
- Authors
BURLACU, LILIANA
- Abstract
Two years pass between 1931, when A.L. Zissu, one of the most important representatives of the Jewish community in Romania, voices publicly his doubt regarding the existence of the Romanian language Jewish literature, and the moment of publication of the volume opening the series of the ghetto-illustrating novels (I. Peltz, Calea VăcăreÈ™ti, 1933). By the time of the political rise of the radicalized right wing, which concluded with the ostracizing of the Jewish community, and, in the cultural sector, with the blacklisting of their literary creation, Foc în Hanul cu Tei [Fire in the Linden Tree Inn] (1934) by the same I. Peltz, Ghetto Veac XX [20th Century Ghetto] by Ury Benador, and Copilăria unui netrebnic [A Wretched Man's Childhood] (1936) by Ion Călugăru were published. From the VăcăreÈ™ti Route of Greater Romania's growing metropolis, through the Jewish neighborhood of an important town by the Danube (Brăila), to "ulicioara Èšiprei" in the anonymous Moldavian bourg of Dorohoi, the ghetto novel tends to complete out of time the fresco of the interwar Jewish community; the scope of this phenomenon can be guessed by looking at the started literary projects, some of them abandoned after the first volume (Ury Benador's trilogy, Ghetto veac XX), some other completed (continuing Copilăria unui netrebnic, Ion Călugăru writes Trustul [The Trust], 1937, and Lumina primăverii [The Light of Spring], 1939). From the very beginning, the frequency of the phrase in the literary text is insignificant, despite the fact that it has been present in the Romanian prose writing since the third decade of the 20th century in two of the titles, at Benador (Ghetto veac XX) and Ludo (Ghettouri [Ghettos]). Here, too, the ghetto refers to its historic meaning of elsewhere, its local pinpointing being challenging; and when referenced, it is done metaphorically, linked with a state of sentimental isolation, at I. Peltz and Ury Benador. By the time of the terrible connotations it would acquire in the following decade, the "ghetto" painted by the Romanianlanguage Jewish writers would grow perceptively close to what Loïc Wacquant calls the "ethnic neighborhood", and the idea is backed by a flexibility of its boundaries and an incipient intrinsic cultural diversity. Commitments such as the rejection of the artificial, objectivity, personal experience guide the Jewish writer's narrative endeavor in the temporal cut-out of the third decade: overall, the ghetto novel resounds, first of all, owing to its biographic nature, while some other particularities include the "harmony of space", by keeping the plot within the exclusive perimeter of the ghetto and by anchoring it in everyday life.
- Subjects
ROMANIA; CULTURAL pluralism; JEWISH communities; METROPOLIS; JEWISH ghettos; ROMANIAN literature; INTERWAR Period (1918-1939)
- Publication
Dacoromania Litteraria, 2020, Vol 7, p194
- ISSN
2360-5189
- Publication type
Article