Modernity, messianism and assimilation in Albert Cohen’s Solal

Abstract

This article discusses the novel Solal by the French-language Jewish writer Albert Cohen in the light of its protagonist's journey from the insular Jewish community of Cephalonia in Greece to France, where he struggles to integrate into the modernity that has fascinated him since childhood. In the eyes of this protagonist, Western modernity takes on the shape of a kind of new Messiah, according to a belief that was widespread among Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Solal's journey thus becomes emblematic of the fate of an entire generation and its outcome points to the tragic nature of this endeavor, making the novel a refutation of the Western European genre of the Bildungsroman.