'Man of Words': Charles Brasch: Editor Supremo, Rabbi, & Dutch Uncle of New Zealand Letters (Curnow, CAXTON AND THE CANON (Part Ii)) (Company Overview‪)‬

I I wish to trace the Jewishness of Charles Brasch in terms of the creative antinomy of his nature: native intellectual and New Zealand secular Jew--one of the talmidei hakhamim (pupils of the wise and sons of Talmud). Diana Trilling, writing of 'New York Jewish intellectual life' in the mid-twentieth century noted that the character of thought in this sub-group, 'whatever the politics to which it might attach itself, had its roots in the Jewish European rather than the American past'. In terms of Antipodean canon-formation, a similar claim might be made for Brasch as another product of that 'sternly questioning' and reflexive Jewish intellectual tradition. (1)