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Yiddish Poetry and the Tuberculosis Sanatorium: 1900-1970
Contributor(s): Gilman, Ernest B. (Author)
ISBN: 0815633793     ISBN-13: 9780815633792
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
OUR PRICE:   $24.70  
Product Type: Hardcover
Published: December 2014
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry
- Social Science | Jewish Studies
- Literary Criticism | Jewish
Dewey: 839.114
LCCN: 2014028927
Series: Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art
Physical Information: 0.68" H x 6.15" W x 9.37" (0.91 lbs) 208 pages
Themes:
- Ethnic Orientation - Jewish
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Part literary history and part medical sociology, Gilman's book chronicles the careers of three major immigrant Yiddish poets of the twentieth century - Solomon Bloomgarten (Yehoash), Sholem Shtern, and H. Leivick - all of whom lived through, and wrote movingly of, their experience as patients in a tuberculosis sanatorium. Gilman addresses both the formative influence of the sanatorium on the writers' work and the culture of an institution in which, before the days of antibiotics, writing was encouraged as a form of therapy. He argues that each writer produced a significant body of work during his recovery, itself an experience that profoundly influenced the course of his subsequent literary career. Seeking to recover the imaginary of the sanatorium as a scene of writing by doctors and patients, Gilman explores the historical connectionbetween tuberculosis treatment and the written word. Through a close analysis of Yiddish poems, and translations of these writers, Gilman sheds light on how essential writing and literature were to the sanatorium experience. All three poets wrote under the shadow of death.Their works are distinctive, but their most urgent concerns are shared: strangers in a strange land, suffering, displacement, acculturation, and, inevitably, what it means to be a Jew.