The Quest for Redemption: Central European Jewish Thought in Joseph Roth's Works by Rares G. Piloiu

Author:Rares G. Piloiu [Piloiu, Rares G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Criticism, Jewish, Modern, 20th Century, Subjects & Themes, Politics
ISBN: 9781557538307
Google: FKOWDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1557538301
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:58:20.685000+00:00

For Roth, true redemption is possible only when the dissonance of modern existence is lifted and the contradictions brought about by secularization, individualism, and rationality are definitively surmounted. By finding his redemption in death, Piczenik joins the same gallery as Tarabas, Job’s Mendel Singer, and Eibenschütz, who all experience deliverance in or shortly before death in a gesture of expiation or reconciliation with a world in which they have rediscovered their sense of salvation. According to Hans-Jürgen Blanke, “nur im Tod, scheint Roth ausdrücken zu wollen, ist jene letzte Erlösung und Befreiung von allen irdischen Ketten möglich; dem Lebenden bleibt sie versagt bis er seinen Leidensweg durchmessen hat” ‘Roth appears to say that only in death is that last redemption and liberation from all earthly chains possible; the living person is denied it until he has gone through all his pains and sorrows’ (65). And yet for Roth death is seldom a defeat, a conclusion of the individual’s futile search for redemption or for meaning. It is more often a successful completion of this search and the anticipation of a deferred yet certain promise of a final renewal. What is exhausted in the end is not the life of the individual but rather the meaninglessness of mundane historical existence. Life ceases to exist as it was before, but a new redeemed life appears on the horizon. This is why the order affirmed through Roth’s characters’ final expiation or revelation is the order of redemption in this life, the restoration of the possibility for a hopeful existence in the here and now. In this sense, Hansotto Ausserhofer considers Mendel Singer of Hiob and Nissen Piczenik “Propheten des messianischen Reiches” ‘prophets of the messianic kingdom’ (329).

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