Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 2 no. 43 July 23, 1992 1) Opera (Blumke Steinberg) 2) Extracts from Chulyot (Leonard Prager) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 12:06:58 EDT From: "Blossom S. Kirschenbaum (Blumke Steinberg)" Subject: Opera and Yiddishkayt Responding to Robert H.'s comment on his immigrant parents' love of opera, I'd like to say the same was true for my Papa, born 1895 in Zashkov; he came to New York about 1920, frequented Second Avenue theaters, the dairy restaurants, also Katz's Delicatessen; but his great love was opera and from him I first heard the names of Caruso, Melba, Beniamino Gigli, etc. and then saw/heard Ezio Pinza as Boris Goudenov. When he told me about Halevy's LA JUIVE, I understood that opera could be written also by Jews. Even before English was fully intelligible, he said, opera was easy to follow, as were Shakespeare's plays--he understood that English more readily than ordinary talk. (Maybe it was more clearly pronounced.) He was a plain man, my Papa, not at all a snob; but my parents knew quality and preferred a little of the best to a lot of the mediocre or poor. The only salmon or tuna in our house was Bumble Bee brand--and I know the same was true in many households; back about 1960, in Cambridge, gentile friends in a Jewish context were much perplexed by a conver- sation about parental preference for Bumble Bee, "we would never have Geisha at our house"--they didn't "get" this striving for "only the best." Maybe it was an Americanized extension of "kosher" vs. "treyf." Youthful rebellion could be as simple as buying the "wrong" kind of salmon. Things change with time; my children have other musical preferences than opera; but I'd be surprised to find in their refrigerators any mayonnaise other than Hellman's. Sometimes things skip a generation, too; maybe an eynikl will value my collection of libretti as I loved those from Papa. Blumke Steinberg 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 12:04:54 IST From: Leonard prager Subject: Abstracts from CHULYOT _ABSTRACTS_ of the Hebrew-language journal _Chulyot_ vol.1, no.1 (University of Haifa) Shalom Luria, Editor Dovid-Hirsh Roskies Ayzik-Meyer Dik: The Storyteller as Enlightened Maggid Contrary to earlier studies (the author's included) which focussed on Ayzik-Meyer Dik as forerunner of all that was modern in Yiddish folk literature, the present essay begins with Dik's departure from politics and parody. For financial as well as ideological reasons, Dik began to address himself exclusively to his dear female reader, to write in the cursed "Jargon" and to present himself as a staid scholar who, for a change, told stories. From among all the available Haskala genres -- parody, satire, quasi-biblical novel, sentimental novel -- Dik selected a middle path in which fantastic material clashed with its fellow, and satire warred on Jewish folly in Czarist Russia. Thanks to his phenomenal output, the insignifant _mayse-bikhl_ ('storybook') has become a register of historical progress and a permanent gallery of folk-types, from rabbis to robbers. And in one exceptionally successful work, "Boruske the Watchman," Dik discovered a substitute "I" in the person of his famous countryman, the Maggid of Dubno. Ayzik-Meyer Dik The Impoverished One An interesting tale about a Jewish merchant from Nicklesburgh {Yiddish: Niklsburg -- apparently not a real place, but suggestive of Nikolayev, Ukraine}, Tsodek Pikante, who lost his property in a fire and became a pauper. He left his wife at home and went out into the world to gather donations. What helped him was a writ from the famous rabbi, Reb Shmelke. Believing his story, the rabbi took pity on the merchant and provided him with a written recommendation. He managed to collect a sum of money and sold Reb Shmelke's writ to another beggar. The latter went abroad, where he died suddenly. Reb Shmelke's writ was all that was found on the dead man, and notice was sent to the widow that her husband was dead. The widow remarried and gave birth to a son. On the day of the _bris_ ('circumcision ceremony'), her former husband, Tsodek Pikante, came home -- after having been robbed on the way. An acquaintance in Vilna paid his fare home. The wife recognized her husband and, grasping her tragic situation, fainted. Understandably, the tale did not have a happy ending. Saul Ginzburg On the Panic of 1835/1836 The historian Saul Ginzburg (1866-1966), who was also a student of literature and folklore, discusses in his introductory essay to Ayzik-Meyer Dik's Hebrew story , "The Panic," the fiction's historical backround. The cause of the panic was a supposed decree by Nicolai the First's minister forbidding Jewish minors to marry, so that the government could conscript them for military service. Word of that would-be decree of 1835 led to widespread panic. Jews hysterically married off virtually any unmarried child. The maskil Ayzik-Meyer Dik mocks the panic, which he probably observed for himself in the town of Nieswiez {Yiddish: Nesvizh}. Ayzik-Meyer Dik The Panic Ayzik-Meyer Dik first printed this story in Hebrew in 1867 in _HaMelits_ (nos. 41, 42, 43) and a year later, in 1868, in Yiddish in Vilna under the title "The Town of Havoc." {The original has "The Town of Heres." _heres_ is Hebrew for 'ruin, havoc' -- it is used here as a characteronymic, like Kaptsansk, etc.}. We reproduce here the Hebrew version which appeared in the Petrograd journal _Heavar_ ('The Past') (2 {1918}:34-44), since Saul Ginzburg notes in his introduction that he printed it from a manuscript. The story recounts in a humourous vein how the Jewish community in the town of Havoc received the evil decree forbidding Jewish girls under the age of twelve and Jewish boys under the age of eighteen to marry. It was like the fast day of the Ninth of Av. The community decided to follow their rabbi's advice and immediately arrange marriages. The panic is described as a mad whirlpool affecting one and all, with parents running amok in the hope of "rescuing" their children. A grotesque tale in every sense of the word! Shalom Luria "Table Talk" -- Yude-Leyb Gordon's Yiddish Poems It appears that the reknown Hebrew poet and Haskala writer, Yude-Leyb Gordon (YaLaG), who often vented his antipathy to Yiddish ("Jargon"), wrote lovely, moving poems in Yiddish and even assembled them into a booklet (20 poems, 104 pages) whose fourth edition appeared in Vilna in 1899, seven years after the poet's death! YaLaG's Yiddish poems were popular among readers and surely deserve an honored place among the bilingual poets of his generation (Mikhl Gordon, Avrom-Ber Gotlober, Eliezer Tsvi-Hakoyen Tsveyfl, and even Mendele-Moykher Sforim). By analyzing several of his poems, the essay attempts to prove that YaLaG's poetic achievement in Yiddish deserves the reader's interest and the critic's attention. It is important to recall that so embittered a maskil as YaLaG wrote about Yiddish in the following vein: "The language of the _Tsenerene_ is holy to me, That language which all Jews speak, The language of my grandmother Khyene (May she enjoy a luminous Paradise!), The language of grandmother and grandfather, Of my father, of my mother...." Avner Holtsman A Source for Y.-L. Perets' Biography in a Letter from Yankev Dinezon The author discusses a letter in Hebrew which the Yiddish writer Yankev Dinezon wrote to Mikhe-Yoysef Berditshevski in reply to the latter's request for information on Perets' life and work. Dinezon was Perets' closest friend and associate and Berditshevski could assume that the Yiddish writer probably knew more about Perets than anyone else. In the first part of his letter, Dinezon writes about the earliest stages of Perets' life, starting with his childhood years in Zamosc. He outlines Perets' artistic development to the time he becomes the central figure in Yiddish literature. In the second part of the letter, Dinezon expresses his own views regarding the linguistic and literary relations between Hebrew and Yiddish. In addition, he discusses some of his own ideas regarding the creative process, including the use in his fiction of autobiographical material. The author deals with the personal and literary relations between the three artists -- Berditshevski, Dinezon and Perets -- and places Dinezon's letter within its larger historical and cultural context. Abraham Novershtern The Dance of Death: On Perets' _At Night in the Old Market Place_ An analysis of the first critical response to Perets' drama -- a 1908 article by the Bundist critic B. Vladek -- helps place the play in the twilight atmosphere which dominated Yiddish literature after the failure of the first Russian revolution. In analyzing the figure and the speech of the batkhn ('jester'), one realizes how _At Night in the Old Market Place_ reflects Perets' literary and spiritual self-struggle: on the one hand an approach suggestive of the later Haskala and on the other an augury of Yiddish modernism -- despite Perets' reservations regarding contemporary modernism. These meanings in the text assert themselves because the text itself assigns a central place to the theme of death, to apocalyptic strivings and to metaphysical wrestling with the mood of the times. Avidov Lipsker The Tenth Muse The four issues of Uri-Tsvi Grinberg's _Albatros_, which appeared in Warsaw and Berlin from 1922 to 1923, are a kind of milestone in the integration of poetic, publicistic, graphic and typographic values. In the graphic configuration of _Albatros_ one recognizes the character of Yiddish modernism, with its expressionist and avantgarde qualities. This modernism was crystallized in the "Yung yidish" circle in Poland. The editor Uri-Tsvi Grinberg cleverly adopted this new direction, and especially the devices known to him from the German press (particularly the periodicals _Action_ and _Der Sturm_) and from the publishing activities which grew up around them. The author tries to show how typographical ideas turned up in _Albatros_ and underwent changes there, largely because of the contribution of the artist Henrik Barlevi, the student of El Lisitski, who was a pioneer of avantgarde typography in Europe before World War II. He gives the esthetic and poetic approach of _Albatros_, which established the invaluable foundations of Uri-Tsvi Grinberg's activity, not only as modern poet, but as initiator of the artistic design of books and periodicals in the Land of Israel from 1924 onwards. Leonard Prager On Avrom Sutskever's "To Poland" Avrom Sutskever's "To Poland" is a deeply-engaged poem, product of the poet's hurt and disillusion at encountering renewed antisemitism in liberated Poland, which he visited on his way to Western Europe after leaving the Soviet Union. It is also the poet's lament _cum_ celebration of the great moments in what often seemed like a Polish-Jewish symbiosis. For the sake of the few who sacrificed their lives in saving Jews, the poet refrains from judging the entire Polish people and he does not cry out for revenge. But he understands that Jewish life in Poland belongs to the Past. With grief at leaving the ancient cemeteries and joy at looking forward to life in the Land of Israel, the poet says good-bye to Poland. Abraham Novershtern Der Nister's Letters to Shmuel Niger Thirty-four letters which Der Nister wrote to Shmuel Niger during the years 1907 to 1913 are given here. Together with one letter already published, this group encompasses Der Nister's entire correspondence of literary import which is in the Shmuel Niger Collection at YIVO. There emerges from this correspondence a picture of a complex relationship between writer and editor. It appears that even though Niger reacted nagatively to Der Nister's first work, the writer valued the critic's opinion highly. It is quite possible that Niger's judgements significantly influenced the direction and character of Der Nister's art. From the notes to the letters one learns of several unknown works by Der Nister which appeared in the Yiddish press (among them an early translation into Russian), of reviews of his books in Russian-Jewish periodicals, and of publisher's offers which stimulated Der Nister to translate children's literature into Yiddish and to begin his original work in that genre. (abstracts edited and translated by Leonard Prager) ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol 2.43 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.