Restoration and Utopia: The Messianic Aspect in the Work of Jakob van Hoddis and Gejza Vámoš. Notes on Gejza Vámoš and Jewish Thought Outlined on the Background of Sami Sjoberg’s Chapter “Redemption, Utopia and the Avant-Garde” (Utopia 2015)

• Published in: Slovenská literatúra
• Main Author: Dagmar Garay Kročanová
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Czech; Slovak
• Published: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slovak Literature 2022
• Subjects: modern jewish messianism; expressionism; jakob van hoddis; gejza vámoš; Literature (General); PN1-6790; sami
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.31577/slovlit.2022.69.3.7; https://doaj.org/article/3dc687fdfcdd4218a58d350121245bcf

The article provides a summary of Sami Sjoberg’s text “Redemption, Utopia and the Avant-Garde. German-Jewish Visions of the Future” (2015) which outlines the context of Jewish messianism in the early 1920s Germany with the special focus on the ways in which it inspired expressionist writers. Sjoberg understands avant-garde art and writing as a means of making abstract concepts more real and as a way for recontextualizing the tradition. Through Jakob van Hoddis’ concept of Selbstpoetik – a poetics of the self –, Sjoberg presents the idea of the personal messiah as a form of utopia. Even though the philosophy of Gejza Vámoš drew on different literature, both in his fiction and philosophy, the author revisits the key tenets of the dogma – creation, revelation and redemption. He tackles the problem of fragmented reality (the principle of cruelty), separation of man from God, Jewish segregation and the questioning of the meaningfulness of religious rites. He outlines a vision of the new era, restoration (a return to the original unity, the principle of love and Golden Age), but also the expectation of a catastrophe. Although Vámoš’s modernist version of the new world is invested with restorative and utopian attributes, it primarily accentuates rational, scientific and prognostic solutions for the perceived problems.