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Lingering Bilingualism: Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures in Contact

Lingering Bilingualism: Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures in Contact to a moment in the Grail legend when the curse of the Waste Land is lifted and the earth returns to flourishing life. But Molloy’s escape from his own being, however liberating, may not be the “redemptive moment” Ullyot claims since, in Molloy’s own words, “it made no difference and all the horrors” of life begin all over again (Beckett 49). This is essentially a book about modernism’s formulation of an aesthetic of failure, and there are times when the armature of the Grail quest seems to get in the way of Ullyot’s larger purpose. For example, when, in Céline, a girl’s botched abortion is compared to the wound of the Fisher King, one begins to feel that the Grail material is being forced on the modern novel. On the whole, however, Ullyot’s book makes a multiple contribution to the study of literary modernism: it enlarges our understanding of modernism’s relation to a formative period in the literary tradition, it brings together some of the most important modernist works in new ways, and it serves as a welcome corrective to readings of those works that reduce them to so many expressions of nihilism. On the contrary, these are http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Lingering Bilingualism: Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures in Contact

Stahl, Neta
Comparative Literature , Volume 69 (3) – Sep 1, 2017
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright � Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/00104124-4164509
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Abstract

to a moment in the Grail legend when the curse of the Waste Land is lifted and the earth returns to flourishing life. But Molloy’s escape from his own being, however liberating, may not be the “redemptive moment” Ullyot claims since, in Molloy’s own words, “it made no difference and all the horrors” of life begin all over again (Beckett 49). This is essentially a book about modernism’s formulation of an aesthetic of failure, and there are times when the armature of the Grail quest seems to get in the way of Ullyot’s larger purpose. For example, when, in Céline, a girl’s botched abortion is compared to the wound of the Fisher King, one begins to feel that the Grail material is being forced on the modern novel. On the whole, however, Ullyot’s book makes a multiple contribution to the study of literary modernism: it enlarges our understanding of modernism’s relation to a formative period in the literary tradition, it brings together some of the most important modernist works in new ways, and it serves as a welcome corrective to readings of those works that reduce them to so many expressions of nihilism. On the contrary, these are

Journal

Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Sep 1, 2017

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