ISSN:
1477-4623
Content:
A.M. Klein’s writings are imbued from beginning to end with allusions to the Bible and the Talmud and to Jewish liturgy and ritual. Moreover, during the most creative period of his career, Klein was strongly influenced by Kabbalah, specifically by the version of Kabbalah associated with Rabbi Isaac Luria, as expounded in Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. However, although Klein was deeply influenced by the religious beliefs of his people, he did not actually share those beliefs. In contrast with his fellow poet P.K. Page, who at a time of crisis found a lifelong source of consolation and inspiration in Sufism, Klein’s engagement with Kabbalah, similarly at a point of crisis, was short-lived and ended tragically. After being inspired by the Lurianic vision of tikkun to create some of his finest writing, most notably The Second Scroll, he soon turned against its promise of redemption and fell into a silence from which he never recovered. Unlike Page, whose crisis was essentially religious in nature, Klein was not able to find in religion the lasting resolution of a crisis that was essentially secular.
In:
Literature and theology, Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 1987, 24(2010), 2, Seite 137-149, 1477-4623
In:
volume:24
In:
year:2010
In:
number:2
In:
pages:137-149
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1093/litthe/frq021
URL:
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