(English) Dreams Versus (Hebrew) Reality: Henry Roth’s Call it Sleep as ‘Jewish

#(English) Dreams Versus (Hebrew) Reality: Henry Roth’s Call it Sleep as ‘Jewish| 来源: 网络整理| 查看: 265

This article examines Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep as a particular example of minor literature written in America while suggesting a new term: ‘Jewish-American minor literature’. It has been argued that Jewish-American literature is not minor literature in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s terms mainly due to the openness of American English to other ethnic languages such as Yiddish.1 However, this article shows that it is Hebrew, and not Yiddish, that functions as ‘minor language’ in the text—both as a language spoken by a minority and according to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept, as it undermines the theme of linguistic assimilation governing the surface structure of the book. Yet this ‘subversive’ Hebrew is neither transcribed/transliterated in the text, nor is it referred to or talked about in the novel. Rather, it is ‘hidden’ behind the English lines of the book. In fact, it is the emerging of such ‘concealed’ Hebrew hollowing out the idea of Americanisation in the text that turns Call It Sleep into what I call ‘Jewish-American minor literature’.2 Inviting further research, this article may open the door for a new research field investigating (whether there are any) other appearances of covert Hebrew words in additional Jewish-American works written exclusively in English and whether these works too can be considered as ‘Jewish-American minor literature’.

中文翻译：

（英语）梦想与（希伯来语）现实：亨利·罗斯（Henry Roth）称之为“美国犹太小文学”的睡眠

本文将亨利·罗斯 (Henry Roth) 的《叫它睡觉》(Call It Sleep) 作为美国小文学作品的一个特殊例子，同时提出了一个新术语：“犹太裔美国小文学”。有人认为，犹太裔美国文学在 Gilles Deleuze 和 Felix Guattari 的术语中并不是次要文学，这主要是因为美国英语对其他民族语言（如意第绪语）的开放性。1 然而，本文表明它是希伯来语，而不是意第绪语，它在文本中充当“次要语言”——既是少数人使用的语言，也是根据德勒兹和加塔里的概念，因为它破坏了支配本书表面结构的语言同化主题。然而，这个“颠覆性”的希伯来语既没有在文本中转录/音译，也没有在小说中提及或谈论。相当，它被“隐藏”在本书的英文行后面。事实上，正是这种“隐蔽”的希伯来语的出现在文本中挖空了美国化的概念，才将《睡梦之城》变成了我所说的“犹太裔美国未成年文学”。2 邀请进一步研究，这篇文章可能会打开大门对于一个新的研究领域，调查（是否有）隐蔽的希伯来语单词在其他专门用英语写成的犹太裔美国作品中的其他表现，以及这些作品是否也可以被视为“犹太裔美国未成年人文学”。

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