Jan 23, 2017
What does it mean for Yiddish writers to write for the world? What are the consequences of translating Yiddish literature for the institutions and anthologies of something called “world literature”? What is gained and what is lost in the exchange? And what might it mean to refuse translation altogether but still project a worldly horizon for writing in Yiddish? In this talk from November 2016, Saul Noam Zaritt, assistant professor of Yiddish Literature at Harvard, takes on these questions by considering the opposing figures of Sholem Asch and Jacob Glatstein. Zaritt examines the possibility of looking beyond untranslatability to imagine the potential for a world literature to-come.
You can read Zaritt’s translation of Glatstein’s essay “The March to the Goyim” discussed in the talk. And see Zaritt’s article published in Studies in American Jewish Literature, “ ‘The World Awaits Your Yiddish Word’: Jacob Glatstein and the Problem of World Literature.”
Saul Noam Zaritt | Jacob Pat Memorial Lecture | Harvard University
November 16, 2016
Co-sponsored by the Judaica Division of the Harvard College Library and the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.
A project of The Jacob and Frieda Pat Endowment in the Harvard College Library and the Abraham and Rachel Bornstein Fund in the Center for Jewish Studies