Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 41 July 21, 1992 1) Kulturstreit revisited (Yankel Kessler) 2) Anshel/Shmuck (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Sex (David Neal Miller) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Jul 92 12:14 PDT From: KESSLER Subject: RE: Mendele Vol 2.38 I think Dave Sherman has a reasonable complaint: the de gustibus argument holds for him. However, I have always tried to make a distinction that seems destined to fall on stuffed ears, especially in our age of the arrogant citizen's ego, which reacts irritably to any and all criticism, out of anxious defensiveness, I surmise. I recall a terrific argument I had with my sisterinlaw years ago, decades ago. She just loved AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, if that was the name of the movie musical with Gene Kelly, a nonpareil hoofer himself. It won all the Awards said she and she loved it. I said it was Crapola. She was immediately upset: the snobbish poet and critic and highbrow attacking the historian and sociology world of utter middlebrow taste. That was in the year's of the first fascination with lower/mid/highbrow, Dwight MacDonald's leap into the first glimmering what is now known as popular culture (aka, The People, and we know the source of that mythology in bad Marxism, Cf Empson, the Pastoral Myth). At any rate, I said, I too enjoyed the movie immensely; but it was nevertheless crapola. She couldnt see the distinction between enjoying a form of entertainment and criticizing it for what it is, objectively, as it were, on the basis of canons of taste. NO use to point out that she might enjoy the Van Gogh print, cheap, of sunflowers, but as an object it was, well... We spend our lives and efforts learning to discriminate between better and worse, higher and lower, we learn to dance, to draw, to play the piano or klezmer clarinet...but let us remember, there is such a thing as connoisseurship, and when an expert goes through a drawer of etchings say, and shows us what is to be learned about this or that state of an etching, this or that inking, this or that technique in drawing and preparation, and some fetch high prices because of value, and some because of rich overbidding, but that junk doesnt necessarily sell at Sotheby's because we LIKE it or enoy it, and the movie isnt good because it grosses 300 millions, even though we might like it a lot. A ride on a deathdefying rollercoaster is a great thrill, bungee cord jumping from the Rio bridge ins Taos is a great enjoyment, but AS A FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT OR ART...well, when we watch the Olympics this week we will observe what most of my writing students fail to observe: there is form that wins, and form that comes in last, and though we might enjoy the dash, the coaches do say this is the right way to come off the blocks and this is the wrong way, and the same with, say modern dance: there are fine dancers and clumsy dancers, there are great ballerinas and danseurs nobles, and so-so ones. Art is art, and it has its fine degrees of excellence. Still, one can delight in lindyhopping and even there, well some can really or could really do it! Travolta wasnt much of a dancer, and there is a lot of lying. There is Ella Fitzgerald and there are many lesser singers....and we might like them all for pleasure. The same for Danny Kaye and the Borscht Belt: Eddie Fisher was a pisher. Kessler here. 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Jul 92 15:58 EDT From: ZOGUR@CUVMB.Columbia.edu Subject: Re: Mendele Vol 2.38 Anshel = Angel, No? Ellen, there's some literature on the Yiddish/English shmok/shmuck distinction (and their NON-RELATIONSHIP to German Schmuck). I don't have access to the bibliography at the moment but will be glad to quote chapt verse next month. Mikhl. 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Jul 92 1:15:38 EDT From: David Neal Miller Subject: sex Yiddish terms for "sex," "sexual intercourse," "have sex," and the like order themselves not only along a naughty-nice axis, but along other axes as well. (I hope the linguists on MENDELE will overlook my improvised terminology.) One such axis--and and interesting one--is playful-earnest. My informant, a native Yiddish speaker from Latin America, a rebetsin wed to an orthodox, non-hasidic rosh-yeshive, gives three terms (only) from her active vocabulary, viz. "geshlekht" 'sex', "farker" 'sexual intercourse'--both uttered in a serious near-whisper, and "makhn a mitsve" 'to have sex/make love'--this latter uttered with a non-embarrassed smile. An unabashed lover of daytshmerish, I was delighted to hear "geshlekht" and "farker"; for reasons entirely non-linguistic, I was even more delighted to see this committedly orthodox woman treat lovemaking not vulgarly, but also without excessive earnestness. David Neal Miller ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.41 If your message is intended for MENDELE, please write to: mendele@vax1.trincoll.edu If you want to discuss personal business or have a shmues with the shames, please write to: nmiller@vax1.trincoll.edu Please sign your articles.