Leseprobe
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The Quest for Redemption
Rares G. Piloiu
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Belletristik / Essays, Feuilleton, Literaturkritik, Interviews
Beschreibung
The Quest for Redemption: Central European Jewish Thought in Joseph Roth's Works by Rares Piloiu fills an important gap in Roth scholarship, placing Roth's major works of fiction for the first time in the context of a generational interest in religious redemption among the Jewish intellectuals of Central Europe. In it, Piloiu argues that Roth's challenging, often contradictory and ambivalent literary output is the result of an attempt to recast moral, political, and historical realities of an empirically observable world in a new, religiously transfigured reality through the medium of literature. This diegetic recasting of phenomenological encounters with the real is an expression of Roth's belief that, since the self and the world are in a continuing state of crisis, issuing from their separation in modernity, a restoration of their unity is necessary to redeem the historical existence of individuals and communities alike. Piloiu notes, however, that Roth's enterprise in this is not unique to his work, but rather is shared by an entire generation of Central European Jewish intellectuals. This generation, disillusioned by modernity's excessive secularism, rationalism, and nationalism, sought a radical solution in the revival of mystical religious traditions-above all, in the Judaic idea of messianic redemption. Their use of the Chasidic notion of redemption was highly original in that it stripped the notion of its original theological meaning and applied it to the secular experience of reality. As a result, Roth's quest for redemption is a quest for a salvation of the individual not outside, but within, history.
Rezensionen
"In this cogent and thorough study, Rares Piloiu presents Joseph Roth as a religious and historical theorist, comparing and contrasting his ideas with those of other Central European Jewish intellectuals of his time (Buber, Brod, Benjamin, Kafka, etc.). In this context, Piloiu systematically examines the lives of Roth's literary characters in light of his complex and evolving understanding of Messianic concepts of salvation, as influenced by Chasidism. Literary analysis is enhanced by discussions of historical conditions in Roth's lifetime and insights gleaned from secondary literature and Roth's correspondence and journalistic pieces. The result is a welcome new contribution to Roth studies."
"The depth of the author's knowledge about Jewish religious thought, German-language intellectual history, and interwar Central European culture is breathtaking, and he manages to weave these different strands of modern European history into one convincing and highly readable book."
"Rares Piloiu convincingly rereads Joseph Roth's literary texts in the light of Jewish thought, helping to solve the perennial problem of reconciling Roth's 'revolutionary' early work with his 'religious' middle and 'conservative' late periods. The concept of redemption that Piloiu applies does not solve the divergent intellectual positions and contradictions between and within Roth's narrators and characters; rather, it shows that it was these very contradictions that concerned Roth. Far from being indecisive or vague, Roth confronted his paradoxes consciously, creatively, and above all poetically. Scholars of European literature, Jewish studies, and European history will find this book invaluable."
Kundenbewertungen
Joseph Roth, messianic redemption, Central European Jewish intellectuals, modernist literature