Verena Dohrn / Gertrud Pickhan (Hrsg.), Transit und Transformation. Osteuropäische Migranten in Berlin 1918-1939 [Transit and Transformation, Eastern Euroean Migrants in Berlin 1918-1939], Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, pp. 257-273, 2010
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Such a reading of the Cornet is evidenced by a comparison of Rilke’s prose poem with two works by the young Galician poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (1897-1981), later one of the most important representatives of Modern Hebrew verse. Greenberg’s writing was informed by the romantic paradigm of lyrical speech from the start. This paradigm proved problematic in three main aspects: 1. Promising self-fulfillment, it celebrated the void left behind by a self which failed to come into being. 2. Confining itself to the expression of its speaker’s inner world, it repressed its political impact. 3. Its strong tendency to aestheticism inhibited access to political reality through the artistic agency of writing poetry. Greenberg discerned all of these problems in Rilke’s Cornet, while its dimension of cultural policy suggested to him an alternative to obviating them. Using the Cornet as negative foil for his poetical endeavors, he engaged in writing Ergetz oyif Felder (Somewhere in the Fields, 1915) and In Zaitens Royisch (In Times’ Rush, 1919). Developing an extraordinary lyrical voice in Yiddish, he illuminated our understanding of Rilke's Cornet and its resoundingly successful reception.
ובו אני עומדת על היבט אחד של מפעלו הפואטי, היבט מרכזי בעיניי אשר דרכו ניתן ללמוד גם על דרכו של חקר הספרות העברית.
Such a reading of the Cornet is evidenced by a comparison of Rilke’s prose poem with two works by the young Galician poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (1897-1981), later one of the most important representatives of Modern Hebrew verse. Greenberg’s writing was informed by the romantic paradigm of lyrical speech from the start. This paradigm proved problematic in three main aspects: 1. Promising self-fulfillment, it celebrated the void left behind by a self which failed to come into being. 2. Confining itself to the expression of its speaker’s inner world, it repressed its political impact. 3. Its strong tendency to aestheticism inhibited access to political reality through the artistic agency of writing poetry. Greenberg discerned all of these problems in Rilke’s Cornet, while its dimension of cultural policy suggested to him an alternative to obviating them. Using the Cornet as negative foil for his poetical endeavors, he engaged in writing Ergetz oyif Felder (Somewhere in the Fields, 1915) and In Zaitens Royisch (In Times’ Rush, 1919). Developing an extraordinary lyrical voice in Yiddish, he illuminated our understanding of Rilke's Cornet and its resoundingly successful reception.
ובו אני עומדת על היבט אחד של מפעלו הפואטי, היבט מרכזי בעיניי אשר דרכו ניתן ללמוד גם על דרכו של חקר הספרות העברית.
Often callow, this early work testifies to the poet’s quest for a way of writing poetry that would give voice to the Jewish experience in Europe just before and after World War I. Like many other Jewish poets of the period, Greenberg was aware of the pressing need to express Jewishness in a way that would allow for the continued existence of Jewish national identity, among nations jostling for independence in a Europe rife with tensions. Similar to many of these poets, Greenberg also knew that this expression would have to be, of necessity, grounded in modern subjectivity.
Paying attention to the various literary, historical, and political contexts of Greenberg's writing, Green Mountain and Love traces the poet’s valiant attempt to come to terms with modern subjectivity, and in so doing, reinvestigates the mechanisms of modern lyrical discourse. It yields fresh insights into the nature of poetry; its aims and functions in the cultural, political, and historical arenas; and the reader’s relationship with the poetic word.