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JEWISH POSTMODERN WRITERS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

The unusual connection between a process of globalization and cultural conflict as its reflection
in modern literature has the most powerful expression in Jewish prose writing. The strong and
permanent expression of love towards their own culture and tradition, in the works of Jewish
writers put almost the whole Jewish nation on the pedestal of the sublime race.
In the works of modern novelists who write about the Jewish community, permanently, there are
the most inherent themes of solitude, finding the roots, assimilation, alienation, and also the
respect for the community, family and religion. The majority of Jewish writers primarily have
written about the uniqueness and the sublime characteristics of their nation.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the novel and short stories became popular and
accepted forms for Jewish writers to put forward their national thoughts and feelings through the
literary texts. Jewish works have represented the indicators of their bad destiny, their sacrifice for
the better world by the solitude and alienation of Jewish individual in America. The writers made
Jews victims of modern society. They write about society where snobbism and material things
are prevailing models, but the spiritual and religious aspects are met only sporadically. That
society has come under the harsh criticism by Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow.
Jewish writers managed to interlace the theme of alienation and sick society with the theme of
Jewish family. Family represents the sanctity and the foundation of proper upbringing, normal
behavior and social-cultural acceptance of a Jewish entity.
Philip Roth has managed to interlace the motive of solitude and the loss of faith in his novel
Letting go. Letting go is a novel in which Roth expands his themes from Jewry to universal
topics: love, family, betrayal, marriage and sex. The works od Philip Roth are excellent examples
of the rejection of traditional Judausm. His Portnoys Complaint led to accusation that Roth is a
Jewish anti-semite . But Roth argues that his characters does not represent all Jews and that each
story stands individually for itself.
Bernard Malamuds novels are full of solitary characters, who are symbolic presentations of
goodness and humanity. The Natural is an unusual novel in Malamuds poetics. It is a novel of a
man trying to be capricious despite the numerous pressures and assignments he has to cope with.
Saul Below- Henderson the Rain King is the most popular novel by Saul Bellow. It is an example
of a hero quest seeking not a particular point of arrival, but pure motion. The novel maintains a
vision of the absurdities and life-denying tendencies that are part of modern civilization. Another
Bellows novel, Dangling Man, is written in the personal voice of the protagonist whose
principal domain is his own sensibility.
The Jews have endured heavy atrocities during a long period of time and become an influential,
powerful, rich and respected people. The immense feeling of belonging to a strong community
enables Jews to get involved easily in society without any loss of national identity.
Literary works of the Jewish writers comes to be seen as a mysterious organic unity, and
expression of their national identity.

Nabokovs impressionistic expression of free consciousness

Vladimir Nabokov is an important writer for his stylistic subtlety, deft satire, and ingenious
innovations in form. His tone, partly satirical and partly nostalgic, suggested a new emotional
state of mind making the new impulsive bond of Nabokovs expression of his free consciousness
and his unique impressionism at the same time.
The beauty of his language, the originality of his imagery, the grotesque comedy of his fictional
world, and the incredible skill and intelligence are only a part of Nabokovs art.
His greatest achievements are rhetorical, and he will continue to be read for the brilliance of his
language and sharpness of his observation, for his impressionistic rendering of reality. Nabokov
is, without question, a part of the impressionistic novel tradition.
The idea of associational thinking and the emphasis on the imagination, as the primary reality are
essentially philosophic aspects of impressionism. There are particular literary devices that writers
in the impressionistic mode use to express their view of subjective reality. Narration through a
limited consciousness is perhaps the most important, but there are others reflected in Nabokovs
fiction such as an associative order of narration.
Narration through a limited consciousness seems generally to imply that the readers central
concern is to be with the education of the narrator. But in Nabokovs fiction the reader learns ,
and what he learns is generally what the narrator fails to recognize. Nabokovs purpose in
placing the point of view in a confused observer intended to to point out that reality is an infinite
variety of perceptions and impressions.
In Lolita the point of view rests not only within a limited consciousness but within a morally
eccentric consciousness. The limited point of view is used to emphasize the reality of the
subjective consciousness and to explore the moral and philosophical complexity of experience
without the authors judgment on his characters attitudes and actions.
The most interesting thing about Nabokovs narrative technique is the way in which he always
manages to impress the presence of the implied author on the readers consciousness without
making direct intrusions into action and without comment.
Nabokovs narrative technique obviously differs in certain ways from most other impressionistic
writers.
Nabokov is concerned with the infinite levels of perception an creation of a subjunctive world in
his art. His remarks on the role of memory in artistic development demonstrate the
impressionistic, direction of his creativity.
For Nabokov all poetry and prose is an attempt to try to express ones position in regard to the
universe embraced by consciousness. (Nabokov, Speak Memory, 1948: 155) The fleeting
moment, the state of flux, the fragmented world of the impressionist becomes a Nabokovian
world in which all phenomena are linked in a spiral relation to time, and which the author
attempts to represent.
Images, from the hallucinations and reality, compose Nabokovs world, and his language is a
attempt to find fresh metaphors, original similes, to unite objects that appear to be totally
unalike; to bridge the gap between thought and expression.
These different objects through metaphorical and personified imagery become almost a
Nabokovian convention, and can be found everywhere in his fiction
Nabokov uses impressionistic devices in his own private way to create a world in which images,
language, magic flights of illusion and allusions, and imagination constitute reality. The pain of
finite consciousness, the suffering produced by ignorance, vulgarity, cruelty,; all are escapable
only through art, and it is this escape that is the central concern of Nabokovs fiction. Only art is
everlasting and immortal, Nabokov said.

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