Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 5.239
January 31, 1996

1) Sholem Aleichem on Tolstoi (Louis Fridhandler)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 22:13:13 -0500
From: lfridhan@aol.com
Subject: Sholem Aleichem on Tolstoi

In my last post I mentioned a letter by Sholem Aleichem concerned with Tolstoi
which bemoaned Tolstoi's passive silence in the face of injustice. Below is an
English translation.  However, I mistakenly said it was written in 1911.
Should have been 1910.

In the March issue of Fishl Kutner's Der Bay I discuss the writers of various
languages  from whom Sholem Aleichem learned his high esthetic standards.  I
mention Tolstoi only incidentally.  The letter below provides a little more
detail, and reflects some of Sholem Aleichem's own thoughts about Tolstoi.

A few years before 1910 Sholem Aleichem had asked Tolstoi to contribute a few
pieces for a publication meant to aid victims of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903.
Tolstoi generously complied.  Apparently in light of that, a vegetarian
publication invited Sholem Aleichem to write memoirs about Tolstoi. [I believe
Tolstoi was a vegetarian.]  Sholem Aleichem responded as follows [Dos
Sholem-Aleykhem Bukh, p. 234-6]:

Nervi, Italy, December 10, 1910.
Most honored editor of "Vegetarian Review."
Colleague Perper!

I received your letter about your plan to publish impressions and memoirs
about Tolstoi.  Unfortunately, I am bed-ridden.  But fear not.  I'm not yet
ready to bid farewell to this world, heaven forbid.  However, I must admit
that I think on death more than ever, but to reach Tolstoi's age I must drag
along for yet another 33 years, or thereabouts.

Still more sinless chickens will be sacrificed for us.  Innocent oxen will
depart this world to satisfy our taste for beefsteak.  Physicians tell us to
eat it half- broiled, with blood still dripping, in fact.  Many, many merry
little fishes will quiver and expire before our eyes as they become salted
herring.  It's done not out of great love for these pure and chaste little
creatures, but because they stimulate our appetite.  Before we tackle a slice
of ox or calf, we must first gulp a few tiny fishes.  These are lessons taught
by medical science, and human ethics are shaped in obedience to these lessons.
Forgive me for going off the track, but it is pertinent to Tolstoi. However,
your aim is elsewhere.

You want me to write about Tolstoi?  My God!  Should I write about so great a
literary giant?  Should I write about a human figure of such heroic
proportions?  As a tiny fly strains toward the sun's rays, you stop it to ask,
"Tell me, little fly, what is your opinion of the sun?"

While this particular example may not be quite applicable, the general message
is instructive.  All my days, I have striven toward this shining, illuminating
and warming sun called, "Tolstoi."  Once, I promised myself I shall not die
before going to Yasnaya Polyana [Tolstoi's estate, near Tula, about 100 miles
south of Moscow] to see Tolstoi.  My great desire to look upon this prophet of
our time is not idle curiosity.  Something else drew me.

I could never have imagined that the greatest person of our century could be a
witness to the most appalling and savage outrages committed in his country
against millions of the most forsaken creatures, and still not raise his
mighty voice to make it ring out to the ends of the earth.  Those victims are
my kin.  Perhaps I am biased toward those related to me.  I understand that
not only my co-religionists suffer.  Millions of others suffer,.  But one
calamity is not the same as the next.  There are huge differences.  Other
peoples have defenders who stand up for them, but my people have no one,
anywhere.

Not only that, the great figures of world literature have not been idle. They
 have bent their efforts to weaken our defenses.  They repeat and keep alive
 caricatures of us which are taken by our enemies as accurate representations.
 For example, our deluded enemies wish to use even so deeply human a type as
 Shakespeare's Shylock for their anti-Semitic ends.  They hold that all Jews
 are bloodthirsty, have much money and beautiful daughters. Fools!  Don't they
 know that most Jews are poor and have homely daughters? And our Shylocks will
 not call for cutting out a piece of your flesh; rather, if you promise not to
 cut your finger before their eyes, they will gladly forgive your debt
 entirely, return your signed certificates.  So much for Shakespeare.

And what about modern writers?  When the great humorist, Charles Dickens (with
whom Russian critics have mistakenly compared me), depicted a real thief
running a school for thievery, he could find no one else but a Jew in all his
country.  Of course, only an imbecile would accuse so fine a soul as Dickens
of anti-Semitism.  Or take, for example, such an innocent soul as Robert [he
meant Herbert G.] Wells who deals with other worlds, with Mars, the moon, and
the rest of the stars, and transmigration of spirits.  His pen was quick to
seize upon a Jew described as gathering up money and jewelry abandoned by
mankind when Martians came to earth to destroy our sinful world.

About our Russian geniuses, such as Gogol, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, and others,
I do not speak.  I'm afraid they knew a Jew as well as I know a Martian.  But
even so beloved a person as Chekhov, who it seems had seen Jews, blunders so
grossly in this matter that sometimes I must laugh.  May his soul forgive me.

These were the thoughts that propelled me toward the great apostle of Yasnaya
Polyana.  I don't refer here to my being simply a doting admirer of his
incredible artistry, and a devotee of his Torah.  I have held that his Torah
is our Jewish Torah.

In my opinion, he harmonizes well with our holy Jews and Jewish sages: his
constant struggle against evil inclinations, against the incriminating Satan;
his renunciation of feeding off living beings; his mortifications of the
flesh; his regular reminders of concern for the suffering of animals; his
freedom in letting his mind take him wherever it will; and his willingness to
disregard self-interest, to distance himself from his own death, and even his
own burial.  It is all Jewish.

I have believed in perfect faith that, person to person, it would be easier to
convince this artist and thinker that among the many millions of people (all
suffering in their own way), there are a few million of the most luckless.
They are deprived of every human right, and they long for his mighty voice as
they long for the messiah.

I have not attained my wish to visit Yasnaya Polyana.  I only had the
opportunity to reach an understanding with him about a private matter through
letters.  This was after the first classic pogrom in Kishinev (1903).
Concerning the essence of the sickening matter, he answered me with measured,
forceful points.  One of his letters to me was published, but not entirely.
Since the Kishinev pogrom we have, thank God, come so far that this may not be
the moment, I believe, to print it.

No.  I have not had the honor to be personally acquainted with Tolstoi; and I
will regret it to my last day on earth.  Apparently it is fated that we shall
meet somewhere on the other side of life where (let's hope) there is no sign
of a "Pale of Settlement," nor anything like a "Jewish Question."

But, it shouldn't happen too soon.  Somehow, a wish arises, a wish to struggle
a while more in this world, to see a bit more of what may yet be.

Sholom Aleichem

[I and I expect most would disagree with Sholem Aleichem that morifications
of the flesh fit Jewish desiderata, but his day was so different from ours.]

Louis Fridhandler

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End of Mendele Vol. 5.239