Beyond Marginality: Anglo-Jewish Literature After the Holocaust

235 Pages·1985·2.77 MB·English

by  Efraim Sicher

Beyond
Marginality
ANGLO-JEWISH LITERATURE
AFTER THE HOLOCAUST
EFRAIM SICHER
State University of New York Press
Beyond
Marginality
SUNY SERIES ON MODERN JEWISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Sarah BIacher Cohen, EDITOR
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1985 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.
For information, address State University of New York
Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sicher, Efraim.
Beyond marginality.
(SUNY series on modern Jewish literature & culture)
Bibliography: p. 189.
Includes index.
1. English literature-Jewish authors-History and
criticism. 2. English literature-20th century-History
and criticism. 3. Jews in literature. I. Title.
II. Series: SUNY series on modern Jewish literature
and culture.
PR120.J48S53 1985 820'.9'8924 84-15266
ISBN 0-87395-976-0
ISBN 0-87395-975-2 (pbk.)
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Writers in the Isles
Chapter One 3
Assimilators and Assimilated: From Israel Zangwill to
Louis Golding
Chapter Two 15
Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Literature: A Political and
Cultural Background
East
Chapter Three 29
East End Writers I: Litvinoff, Mankowitz, Kops
Chapter Four 55
East End Writers II: Arnold Wesker
East-North-East
Chapter Five 91
Hackney and Other Provinces: Harold Pinter and Peter
Shaffer
v
vi Contents
North-West
Chapter Six 117
The Golders Green Novel: Glanville, Charles, Rubens,
Raphael
After
Chapter Seven 139
Anglo-Jewish Poetry After the Holocaust: Dannie Abse
and Jon Silkin
Chapter Eight 153
The Poetry of Survival
Notes 169
Bibliography of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Writing 189
Index 229
Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE to express my deep gratitude to my colleague, Dr.
David M. Roskies, for invaluable bibliographical assistance; to Pro
fessor Harold Fisch, to whom I am indebted more than he might
admit; to Professor Richard E. Sherwin for his encouragement; to
Professor Sarah Blacher Cohen, for her confidence that the project
was worthwhile; and, not least, to Borey Hoolom, without whom
this book would not have been written.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Beer Sheva
Adar 5743
vii
viii Acknowledgments
CREDITS
2 lines from "Surprise! Surprise!" and 4 lines from "After the Release
of Ezra Pound" by Dannie Abse, in his Collected Poems, London: Hutchinson,
and Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. Reprinted by permission
of the author. © Dannie Abse, 1970, 1977.
12 lines from "I Was Not There" by Karen Gershon, in her Selected
Poems, London: Gollancz, 1966. Reprinted by permission of the author.
© Karen Gershon, 1966.
3 lines from "In a Cold Season" and 9 lines from "Treblinka" by Michael
Hamburger, in his Collected Poems, Manchester: Carcanet Press, 1984. Re
printed by permission of the author. © Michael Hamburger, 1973, 1984.
3 lines from "This Time" by Bernard Kops. Reprinted by permission of
the Editor of European Judaism. © European Judaism, 1982.
7 lines from "To T.S. Eliot" by Emanuel Litvinoff, in his Notes for a
Survivor, Newcastle: Northern House, 1973. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers. © Emanuel Litvinoff, 1973.
4 lines from "Struma" by Emanuel Litvinoff, in his The Untried Soldier,
London: Routledge, 1942. Reprinted by permission of Routledge & Kegan
Paul PLC, London, Henley & Boston. © Emanuel Litvinoff, 1942.
9 lines from "Returning, We Hear the Larks" by Isaac Rosenberg, in
The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg, edited by Ian Parsons, London: Chatto
& Windus, 1979. Reprinted by permission of the publishers. © The Author's
Literary Estate and Chatto & Windus, 1979.
2 lines from "Job" by Nelly Sachs, translated by Michael Roloff, in
Sachs' Selected Poems, London: Cape, 1968. Reprinted by permission of
Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt-am-Main, Jonathan Cape PLe, London, and
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc., New York. © Suhrkamp Verlag, 1961; © Farrar,
Straus & Giroux Inc., 1967.
8 lines from "Milkmaids," 4 lines from "Nature with Man," 4 lines
from "Death of a Son," 3 lines from "The Coldness," 2 lines from "The
People," 4 lines from "Isaiah's Thread," 3 lines from "A Word about Freedom
and Identity in Tel-Aviv" and 3 lines from "To My Friends" by Jon Silkin,
in his Selected Poems, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Reprinted by
permission of Routledge & Kegan Paul PLe, London, Henley and Boston.
© Jon Silkin, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1976, 1977, 1980.
3 lines from "A Prayer Cup" by Jon Silkin, in his Selected Poems,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Reprinted by permission of Norton
& Co., New York, MidNAG Publications, and Routledge & Kegan Paul PLC,
London, Henley and Boston. © Jon Silkin, 1976, 1980.
4 lines from "Into Praising," 2 lines from "The Lapidary Style," and 3
lines from "Lapidary Words" by Jon Silkin, in his The Psalms with their
Spoils, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Reprinted by permission of
Routledge & Kegan Paul PLe, London, Henley & Boston. © Jon Silkin, 1980.
5 lines from "Portrait of a Modern Jew" by Nathaniel Tarn, in his Old
Savage/Young City, London: Cape, and New York: Random House, 1964.
Reprinted by permission of Jonathan Cape PLC and the author. © Nathaniel
Tarn, 1964.
Introduction
I
N SOME WAYS this is a personal book. For one thing, any selection
of literary material out of a wide variety of talents and genres
is going to be subjective. Among the Jews writing in Britain in
the three decades from 1953 are recognized major literary personalities
(Arnold Wesker, Harold Pinter, Frederic Raphael, Jon Silkin, Peter
Shaffer), while others are not always as well-known (the novelists
Brian Glanville, Bernice Rubens, Gerda Charles; the poets Dannie
Abse, Michael Hamburger, Karen Gershon; the East Enders Emanuel
Litvinoff, Bernard Kops, Wolf Mankowitz). Yet all of these writers
deal with problems of identity and community, reflected in their
treatment of roots and alienation, menace and derangement, guilt
and suffering. These are universal motifs, but their particular sig
nificance for Jewish writers relates both to their dissatisfaction with
an inherited marginal status and to their critical portrayal of the
Anglo-Jewish community.
The question of dual allegiance establishes a relationship with
the Jewish community whether the writer wills it or not, while the
Holocaust and the outside forces of History make inevitable the
existential quest for literary and socioethnic selfhood. To accuse the
modern Jewish writer, as Philip Roth and Brian Glanville have been
accused, of anti-Semitism or self-hate is to deny the possibility of
being a Jew and a writer, for the protest against the Jewish family
so evident in contemporary literature is a protest against social and
cultural marginality; it is a cry of pain, a pain from within which
requires examination and treatment, not condemnation.!
ix