Street

Israel Rabon (1900 – 1941) – one of the most vivid and unusual Jewish writers in Poland. He was a poet, prose writer, translator, and literary critic. The entire creative life of the writer took place in Łódź, a major... cultural center that was associated with many outstanding Jewish literati.
 
The most significant work of Rabon is the novel "Street," written in 1928. Formally, this small book is included in the series of novels about the "lost generation." However, in essence, we have before us a text full of literary experiments. If the term "postmodernism" had existed during Rabon's time, his book would have become the first postmodern novel in Europe. The writer widely experiments with the blending of genres and styles.
 
Describing the life of the urban common people, he uses stylistic models mastered by this social layer: circus, cinema, pulp fiction, and proletarian press. Next to the "low" styles, the high ones – realism, symbolism, expressionism – are equally represented.