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Book Reviews It is the other reason for the notorious cold-heartedness ofPa!adise; it is why everyone who is supernally happy in Paradise, happier than ever before, will soon become preternaturally unhappy, unhappier than ever before. A dream that flowers only to be undone will bring more misery than a dream that has never come true at all. The secret meaning of Paradise is that it too is hell. 113 Few writers tum sentences around with Ozick's skill, and fewer still can bring Jewish ideas to the equation. All of which makes The Puttermesser Papers a cause for celebration. It is her fIrst book of fIction since The Messiah ofStockholm (1987) and more than fulfIlls the high expectations readers bring to anything Ozick writes. I Sanford Pinsker Department of Humanities Franklin & Marshall College On the Margins of Modernism: Decentering Literary Dynamics, by Chana Kronfeld. Berlekey: University ofCalifornia Press, 1996. 294 pp. $45.00 (c); $18.00 (P). The project Chana Kronfeld has undertaken in this book is twofold: it challenges current theoretical constructions ofmodernism focused on Euro-American classics, and it calls into question current literary periodizations in Hebrew criticism focused on PalestinelIsrael. In other words, this book criticizes common approaches to modernism based on the exclusion of minor literatures, like Hebrew and Yiddish. It criticizes as well the genealogical paradigm in Hebrew and Yiddish for its exclusion of important "minor" modernist poets. In her introduction, "Minor Modernisms," Kronfeld argues that both Hebrew and Yiddish modernisms remained largely deterritorialized expressive systems. The breathtaking project ofYiddish modernism came to an abrupt end with the decimation of the Yiddish writers in the Nazi genocide and the Stalinist purges. In "Theory/ History" Kronfeld points out the inadequacies in the concept of literary periodization. The concept ofperiod is monolithic and exclusionary. Kronfeld suggests that we adopt the more fluid concept of literary trend and use a more diverse and multiple scheme of chronological progress allowing for the simultaneous existence of multiple trends, major and minor. Kronfeld calls for the replacement not only of the chronological graph, but also of the map that traditionally gave primacy to activities in Palestine/Israel. This politicization of Hebrew modernism does not do justice to IThis review appeared in The Jewish Exponent, a weekly newspaper in Philadelphia. Used by permission. 114 SHOFAR Winter 1998 Vol. 16, No.2 important work in Hebrew and Yiddish in Europe and the United States. Furthermore, the primacy of the map masks the fact that much of Hebrew and Yiddish modemism was shaped by foreign and intemational trends. In "Behind the Graph and the Map," Kronfe1d goes on to analyze three poems by Esther Raab, considered a minor poet. In chapter 4, "Beyond Language Pangs," Kronfeld goes on to analyze the various modernist styles of Fogel, Shlonsky, and Amichai. Her close reading is delightfully nuanced and attentive. She brings out the way in which the poets rebel against tradition, forging their own styles, while at the same time pointing up the way in which they maintain the writing tradition on which they draw. This dialectical relationship between tradition and rebellion is studied further within the context ofbiblical allusion in chapter 5, "Theories ofAllusion and Imagist Intertextuality." Here Kronfeld looks at poems by Amichai and Zach, interpreting both as critics ofGod, much in the tradition of Job and Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev. In addition to calling attention to the allusive artistry of Amichai and Zach, Kronfeld points up the important theoretical work done in Israel on allusion. Chapter 6, subtitled "On the Boundaries of Affiliation," is devoted to Yehuda Amichai. Kronfeld discusses Amichai's celebration ofthe ordinary and deflation of the sacred as larger ideological moves underlying his critique ofmodernity. She is brilliant in analyzing Amichai's combination of readability and elusiveness, familiarity and surprise in his unique use of metaphor. Chapter 7, subtitled "Liminal Moments in Hebrew and Yiddish Literary History," focuses on the work ofDavid Fogel and Moyshe Leyb Halpern. Both poets were precursors ofmodernism in their respective Hebrew and Yiddish contexts. Recovering and reclaiming marginal prototypes like Halpern and Fogel is vital for an accurate reconstruction of literary history. In chapter 8, "The Yiddish Poem Itself," Kronfeld offers close readings...

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