Testing the boundaries : migration & metamorphosis in Lev Lunts
Abstract
In the early 1920s there were many different ways to be a Russian Jewish writer. Unlike Babel and Mandelstam, Lev Lunts (1900-1924) interrogated his hyphenated identity through humour, parody, fantasy, and satire. Two short stories: “The Homeland” (1922) and “Crossing the Border” (1923) see semi-autobiographical characters occupying the liminal spaces between the Jewish and the Russian, the East and the West, the past and the present. Lunts and his characters are attracted and repelled by the boundaries of genre and taste, demonstrating that literary creativity comes from being in constant motion across border zones, whether by means of migration, metamorphosis or their reversal.
Citation
Finer , E 2019 , ' Testing the boundaries : migration & metamorphosis in Lev Lunts ' , Jewish Culture and History , vol. 20 , no. 1 , pp. 43-61 . https://doi.org/10.1080/1462169X.2019.1557461
Publication
Jewish Culture and History
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1462-169XType
Journal article
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.