The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France PDF
Preview The Némirovsky Question: The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France
t h e n é m i r o v s k y q u e s t i o n This page intentionally left blank THE NÉMIROVSKY QUESTION The Life, Death, and Legacy of a Jewish Writer in Twentieth-Century France S U S A N R U B I N S U L E I M A N New Haven and London Copyright © 2016 by Susan Rubin Suleiman. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Excerpts from Irène Némirovsky, Le vin de solitude, are quoted with the permission of Albin Michel Publisher, Paris. An earlier version of chapter 1 appeared in Yale French Studies, no. 121 (2012). Set in Janson Text type by Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941798 ISBN 978-0-300-17196-9 (cloth : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Emma, Pablo, Alexander, and Nessa This page intentionally left blank To ask oneself about Jewish identity is already to have lost it. But it is to hold on to it still, for otherwise one would not be asking. Between that already and that still is located the limit, stretched like a tightrope on which the Judaism of Western Jews ventures forth and takes its risks. —emmanuel levinas What have I in common with the Jews? I don’t even have anything in common with myself. —franz kafka Admittedly, every man is other than himself, and in fact being human consists in that possibility of being outside and beyond one’s self. . . . But the Jew is doubly absent from himself, and in that sense one could say that he is the human being par excellence. —vladimir jankélévitch This page intentionally left blank Contents Note on Translations and Citations xi Introduction: A Writer Reborn . . . and Debated 1 part i irène 1. The “Jewish Question” 19 2. Némirovsky’s Choices, 1920–1939 45 3. Choices and Choicelessness, 1939–1942 93 part ii fictions 4. Foreigners and Strangers: Némirovsky’s Jewish Protagonists 133 5. Portraits of the Artist as a Young Jewish Woman 173 part iii denise and elisabeth 6. Orphans of the Holocaust: Two Lives 209 7. Gifts of Life: A Mother and Her Daughters 252 Notes 293 Bibliography and Sources 331 Acknowledgments 345 Index 349 Photographs follow page 130
The list of books you might like
