Podrobný výpis o publikaci

The paper analyses the functions and importance of multilingualism in American Jewish literature, with special attention paid to the poetry of an American Jewish poet of Polish origin, Irena Klepfisz, who in her most recent poems intertwines Yiddish and English. For her, America is a linguistic and cultural exile, not a place she would call home. That is why she started to fuse these languages. Unlike the previous writers, she does not use Yiddish to add a specific cultural coloring to the text but to emphasize the different linguistic and cultural experience that is closely connected with the language. She feels that as the language of immigrants, English cannot depict the Holocaust and the world of Yiddishkayt correctly. That is why Klepfisz retorts to multilingual poetry to transcend the borders between nations and cultures and offer a mirror or a reference point for each other. Moreover, a bilingual text can be viewed as a way for a non-English text to gain wider audience and acceptance, and at the same time to start influencing and changing the view of America and its people.