The Jewish Library in Argentina: Carlos M. Grünberg's Cosmopolitan Poetry and Polyglot Translation

• Applicant: Cynthia Gabbay, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 499208013

In the intersection of Romance (especially Hispanic) literary studies and Jewish studies, this project will examine the Jewish imaginaries introduced in Argentine literature through intertextuality and translation, particularly in their relation to Neo-Sephardism. The study aims to illuminate the relation between European and Jewish Literatures, and Jewish Literature in postcolonial Argentina. It choses as a case study the poetry and hyperpolyglot translation by Carlos Moisés Grünberg (1903-1968). A set of interdisciplinary tools will be organized in order to identify these imaginaries and to study the author's relation with the avant-guard 'Florida Group' and the magazine Martín Fierro in Argentina. Jewish poetry and what will be defined as 'Jewish translation' will be analyzed as re-signifiers of Argentinian literature. The project proposes to examine the methods with which the author engaged when translating Jewish and European literature, in particular, the Calque method, characteristic of traditional Ladino translations, which the author employed in order to translate sacred and traditional Hebrew texts. Besides the study on intertextuality in the author's poetry volumes 'Las cámaras del rey' (1922), 'El libro del tiempo' (1924), 'Mester de judería' (1940), and 'Junto a un río de Babel' (1965), it will analyze Carlos M. Grünberg's translations of works by Heinrich Heine, Umberto Saba, H. Leivik, Judah Magnes, and Daniel Pasmanik. This endeavor will be also of importance eventually when defining 'The Jewish Library in Argentina', a literary system with multiple interconnections between texts, languages, significations, intertextualities, histories, and times.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants