Blooming Spaces : The Collected Poetry, Prose, Critical Writing, and Letters of Debora Vogel

Hailed Gertrude Stein of the interwar Lwów, Debora Vogel (1900-1942) was a strikingly original Polish and Yiddish Modernist writer. Her first Cubist-Constructivist poetry collection was hailed by the Introspectivist poet, Aaron Glantz-Leyeles, to be “ultimately modern...proving that Lwów is very close to New York.” Vogel’s highly experimental texts challenged every stereotype of Yiddish literature. Yet the author’s own literary contributions have long been eclipsed by her influential relationship with Bruno Schulz, whose __Cinnamon Shops__ (1934) began as postscripts in his letters to her. The volume at hand is the first collection presenting the full scope of Vogel’s oeuvre in English. This ground-breaking collection features the oeuvre of Debora Vogel (1900-1942), a Modernist Polish and Yiddish writer, philosopher, translator, and art critic. The author's poems are examples of Cubist-Constructivist experimentation in a language that is at once lyrical and philosophical.Vogel's poetry challenges every notion of writing in Yiddish literature from the author's lifetime to ours. The writer's prose collection transplants experiments in photography, film, and painting, into the literary medium. Vogel's articles deal with a variety of topics ranging from abstract art, and individual artists like Marc Chagall and Fernand Leger, to matters of applied arts, including discussions of the interiors of modern apartments, the typography of children's books, and an overview of fashion exhibitions. In addition, Vogel's essays examine racism and anti-Semitism, the tasks of progressive intellectuals' engagement in the society, and the use of literary montage as a way literature 'does politics.' Vogel's extensive travels to Berlin, Stockholm, Vienna, and Paris, and her intimate familiarity with the cityscapes of her native Lwów are reflected in her writings. Vogel's multimodal writing could be read in conjunction with Giorgio de Chirico's, Pablo Picasso's, or El Lissitsky's paintings, Max Ernst's painterly and writerly experiments, or Fritz Lang's, Dziga Vertov's, and Sergei Eisenstein's films. Lyubas situates Vogel as the key, yet unrecognized figure for thought and literature of the early and late 20th century, as well as a thinker whose insights are crucial to grasp the contemporary socio-political issues. This is the first collection of Vogel's writings in English translation "Debora Vogel (1900-1942) wrote in Yiddish unlike anyone else. Yiddish, her fourth language after Polish, Hebrew, and German, became the central vehicle for her modernist experiments in poetry and prose. This ground-breaking collection presents the work of a strikingly original yet overlooked author, art critic and intellectual, and resituates Vogel as an important figure in the constellation of European modernity. Vogel's astute observations on art, literature, and psychology in her essays, her bold prose experiments inspired by photography and film, and Cubist poetry that both challenges and captivates invite the reader on a journey of discovery-into the microcosm of the talented thinker marked by tragic fate and the macrocosm of Jewish history and Poland's turbulent 20th century"-- Provided by publisher Debora Vogel (1900-1942) wrote in Yiddish unlike anyone else. Yiddish, her fourth language after Polish, Hebrew, and German, became the central vehicle for her modernist experiments in poetry and prose. This ground-breaking collection presents the work of a strikingly original yet overlooked author, art critic, and intellectual, and resituates Vogel as an important figure in the constellation of European modernity. Vogel's astute observations on art, literature, and psychology in her essays, her bold prose experiments inspired by photography and film, and Cubist poetry that both challenges and captivates invite the reader on a journey of discovery--into the microcosm of the talented thinker marked by tragic fate and the macrocosm of Jewish history and Poland's turbulent twentieth century.