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BRIDGING IDENTITIES

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ISAAC GOLDEMBERG

ISAAC GOLDEMBERG, a longtime resident of New York City, is an internationally recognized and award-winning writer and poet. In 1976 he published The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner—a classic among major Latin American novels which has gone through several editions in Spanish, French, English and Hebrew, and which in 2001 was selected by an international panel of critics—convened by the Yiddish Book Center—as one of the 100 greatest Jewish books of the past 150 years. Play by Play and El nombre del padre, two other novels, are available in Spanish, French, and Italian. He has also published several books of poetry: Hombre de paso (Just Passing Through), Los autorretratos y las máscaras (Self-Portraits and Masks), Peruvian blues, which received the Peruvian PEN Club Poetry Award for 2001, Libro de las transformaciones, and Diálogos conmigo y mis otros, among others. He is also the author of two plays: Hotel AmériKKa (published in Spanish and English), and Golpe de gracia, for which he received the prestigious Premio Estival de Teatro 2003.

When reflecting on issues of identity in twentieth-century Peruvian literature, José María Arguedas (1911–1969) and Isaac Goldemberg come to mind. Arguedas addressed head-on the uneasy linkages between European and local indigenous cultures; Goldemberg has added Jewish traditions to that already conflictive relationship. Although in both his prose and his poetry, he mingles the sounds of the “shofar” and the “quena,” a middle ground remains as elusive as any attempt to articulate in unison both Spanish and Quechua as conveyors of radically different views of the world.

The encounter of cultures has never been peaceful, except when the conquered relinquished their own selves to a vision imposed by others. Co-existence has always been problematic (and still bloody in too many quarters) when claims are made to possessing the sole truth. Even a purported solution cedes to either a dominant culture or caves in to a powerful and growing minority. Other than outright conflict, negotiations between competing forces generate the potential for significant literary prowess. That was true in the most dramatic texts written by Arguedas; it is also true, albeit in a different vein, in Goldemberg’s works.

If one were to seek out the axis around which Goldemberg’s literature revolves, “identity” undoubtedly emerges above every other motif. From The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner, to his most recent collection of poetry Diálogos conmigo y mis otros (2013) and this, his latest novel Remember the Scorpion, Goldemberg reflects on the core issue that shapes him as a multicultural writer (and persona). We are not dealing simply with hybrid cultures, and not solely with the often-studied complexities of mestizaje. His multi-layered works bring together Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jewry and Judaism; indigenous practices that surge forth from Catholicism as performed by Peruvian “mestizos;” contemporary predicaments and Colonial legacies; the unraveling of a familial Peruvian setting and a potential reconstruction in a New York habitat; the linguistic mix of Spanish-Hebrew-Quechua and linguistic variations of English and Spanglish. The sum of all these ingredients, and a folk version of both Judaism and Christianity, are wrapped together in a body that cannot be contained nor signified by any one of the boxes so cherished by pollsters and census analysts. What is striking, moreover, is that multiple identities are oftentimes presented through the humorous vein that is a trademark of many masters of nineteenth and twentieth-century Yiddish literature.

Rather than engage in the futile game of influences and predecessors, it seems more useful to anticipate that those who come to Goldemberg’s pages from the Hispanic tradition will probably move towards the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and, as I myself did at the beginning, to Arguedas. Those steeped in U.S. letters will recognize traces that range from Bellow to Roth. Yiddish speakers will recognize a touch of Scholem Aleichem and Bashevis Singer. Even Woody Allen is not too far off when crossing a New York street, although it is the Nuyorican poets who are more likely to recognize a kindred spirit in Goldemberg’s search for a word that enunciates multiple identities and (be)longings.

Goldemberg’s signature is traced across fragmented and overlapping identities. These are not shifting identities; at most, readers will find varying degrees of emphases as he attempts to balance the motifs that inform his literary pages. It is not surprising, therefore, that in his case we may speak of the “aesthetics of fragmentation” and, at the same time, ponder the “aesthetics of integration.”

Identity is a springboard for analyzing Jewish-Latin American traditions, as well as considering literature on the margins of the Latin American canon (and for some to also ponder their own place in the universe). One of the most telling statements on the significance of Goldemberg’s production is precisely his place in contemporary literature. Plainly stated: it is inconceivable not to include at least one of his works when addressing Latin American-Jewish letters. Furthermore, it would be folly to navigate Peruvian letters without including an author who, from a unique vantage point, raises questions about the very definition of nationality and goes to the very core of “mestizaje.”

Goldemberg’s characters may lead us to wonder whether he privileges the existence of a “Universal Jew,” of someone able to become acclimated to any culture while maintaining some version of “being Jewish.” Both his fiction and his most poignant poetry incorporate this problematic dimension. Conversely (pun not necessarily intended), they also challenge all conventional definitions of “Latin American” as inextricably linked to a dominant culture and a majority religion. To date, his works posit shifting and uneasy movements within multiple identities, not the dissolution of any of them.

Goldemberg’s texts affirm that fragmentary / fragmented beings can indeed be whole. That is how they stay with us, as they also elicit our own pursuit of what multiple identities signify. Perhaps, therein lies the very core of Goldemberg’s aesthetics.

Saúl Sosnowski

Professor, Latin American Literature

University of Maryland, College Park

Editor, Hispamérica