Biada ci, narodzie‑morderco! Zemsta w wierszu Wej dir Jicchoka Kacenelsona
Woe Betide You, Murderer‑Nation! Vengeance in Jicchok Kacenelson’s Wej Dir

Summary/Abstract: This paper investigates the conceptualisation of Jewish vengeance, as demonstrated in Jicchok Kacenelson’s Wej Dir, the poem written on the 31st of May 1942, in the Warsaw Ghetto. In the course of the reading presented, the concept of affective vengeance is introduced, that is, a figure situated between two radical forms of retaliation on the Nazi Germans present in the literary works of Jewish authors: the vengeance‑fantasy and the accomplished vengeance. The paper focuses on analysing three particular issues: the forms of vengeance (posthumous revenge of spirits and the dead, and the revenge of nature), its direct motivation, and the avenging subject with its inherent duality. This subject, as it is argued, on the one hand becomes the representative of the nation and the “avenger of blood,” while on the other – identifies itself with the nation, and turns into the collective subject.

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