Research Colloquium | Natasha Gordinsky (Haifa) | Speaking Hebrew in the Russian Empire: Uri Nissan Gnessin's Poetics of Literary Dubbing

The Research Colloquium is hosted by the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg in collaboration with the ScienceCampus. This particular talk is organised in partnership with the professorship of Slavic-Jewish Studies.

Abstract:

My presentation focuses on modernist writings of Uri Nissan Gnessin (1879–1913). While situating his prose within the geopolitical and cultural context of an empire, I will employ Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia and Ben Tran’s notion of “literary dubbing” to interpret Gnessin’s groundbreaking Hebrew debut, “Zhenya” (1903). I will argue that the Hebrew language serves as one of the main protagonists in this short story. Gnessin’s text centers on the themes of reading and writing in Hebrew, as well as translating from Hebrew to Russian, which are integral to the plot. Simultaneously, his early fiction functions as a laboratory for testing the poetic possibilities of envisioning Hebrew as both a vernacular and an oral language.

Bio:

Natasha Gordinsky is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Haifa and holds a PhD in Hebrew literature from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her current research focuses on Hebrew modernism and on contemporary translingual literature. She is an author of two books: “Ein elend schönes Land.” Gattung und Gedächtnis in Lea Goldbergs hebräischer Literatur, transl. by Rainer Wenzel, Göttingen 2019 (first publ.: In Three Landscapes. Leah Goldberg’s Early Writings, Jerusalem 2016 [Heb.]); Kanon und Diskurs. Über Literarisierung jüdischer Erfahrungswelten, Göttingen 2009 (with Susanne Zepp). She has recently co-edited two volumes: In Their Surroundings. Localizing Modern Jewish Literatures in Eastern Europe, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,2023 (together with Efrat Gal-Ed, Sabine Koller and Yfaat Weiss) and Disseminating Jewish Literatures. Knowledge, Research, Curricula, De Gruyter 2020 (together with Susanne Zepp, Ruth Fine, Kader Konuk, Claudia Olk and Galili Shahar)