Away from Nostalgia: Yiddish and Intimacy in Contemporary Argentine Literature

• In Event: Jewishness in the American Imagination

Abstract

This paper explores the presence and uses of Yiddish in three works by renowned and awarded Argentine writers. These are: Me acuerdo (I Remember) by Martín Kohan, Como mi madre que a veces me trata de usted (Like My Mother Who Sometimes Addresses Me Like a Stranger) by Tamara Kamenszain and Salo solo. El patrullero del amor (Lonely Salo. The Love Patrol) by Mauricio Kartun. In Spanish written works, Yiddish language as a differential element places the persistent question of language at the core of the texts. In this regard, this paper examines the place of Yiddish as a minimal inscription and its development within the three texts emerges as an anti-nostalgic element.
Read it as an outcome of the history of Yiddish in Argentina, a country which became a Yiddish cultural center in the 20th century as a consequence of the great Jewish immigration that began at the end of the 19th century, this paper seeks to explore the aesthetic implications of the Spanish-Yiddish language contact in the Argentine Spanish contemporary literary canon, as well as the specificity and nuances of Yiddish language in the aforementioned realm.

Author

• Lila Fabro, The Johns Hopkins University