Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 5.290 March 27, 1996 1) Friends of Yiddish, London, England (Roger Harris) 2) Tsu 'to' tsi interrogative (Mikhl Herzog) 3) Yiddish or German? (Bernard S. Greenberg) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 15:46:37 +0000 (GMT) From: rwsh@dircon.co.uk Subject: Friends of Yiddish, London, England The Friends of Yiddish in London will commmemorate the Ghetto Uprisings on Thursday 18th April 1996. Date: 6.30 pm., Thursday 18th April 1996. Venue: Chesworth Room, Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial Street, Whitechapel, London E1, England. Nearest Underground railway station: Aldgate East (on Metropolitan and District lines). Contact: Majer Bogdanski, +44 (0)171-488 3092. Roger Harris 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 96 17:31 EST From: zogur@cuvmb.columbia.edu Subject: Tsu 'to' tsi interrogative Concerning the words to the song _A libe iz an umglik af der velt_, which Keyle (Kay) Goodman posted today, note the need to distinguish Tsu in Tsu vemen zi falt nor arayn, Tsu vos hot mir getoygt tsu visn, Tsu morgns tustu avekforn, from Tsi (_not_ tsu) in Tsi ken mir den erger zayn? Mikhl Herzog 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 17:52:29 -0500 From: bsg@basistech.com Subject: Yiddish or German? Leonard Prager's discussion "Is it German or Yiddish?" in Mendele 5.289 has finally inspired me to clean up and submit this piece I've had on hand for a while -- Two decades ago, upon playing for my East-Side bred father the late, beloved Josef Rosenblatt's (1882-1933) immortal and vastly popular rendition of Massenet's _Elegie_, I was dumbfounded to find him unable to comprehend what the label of our old 78 asserted straightforwardly was a "Tenor and viola in Yiddish". When I one day by accident opened ears used to the _Lieder_ of Schumann and Schubert to this classic track, all of a sudden it revealed itself as German. The issue of "Yiddish or German" is by no means clear, and as such is a reflection of the precarious niche and identity crisis of the whole departed Euro-Yiddish culture. I have acquired a score for it in a recent anthology of "Jewish Music" (publication details such as I can ascertain given below), which gives English, Hebrew, and "Yiddish" texts underlayed. The aria's original text was in French. The Hebrew text (given in Roman characters) is credited to one "M. M. Dolitzky". The "Yiddish" text is not credited. Upon close inspection, I was struck by the idiosyncracy of the orthography of the latter, which leads me to suspect that the Groyser Khazen, who sang secular concerts in foreign languages to raise money to pay his tragic debts (see the wonderful biography by his son, Samuel), was not only wholly innocent of French, but could not deal with foreign languages (including liturgical Hebrew!) without a not-always-equally-appropriate Yiddish accent. I suspect that the Great Cantor was urged to sing the song in German "which is just like Yiddish, isn't it, Mr. Rosenberg?" as the only possible means of recording this classic side, even more touching to me now in my awareness of the financial problems that forced him to record secular songs. I reproduce this text and orthography below. Please bear with me in insofar as that I will use u" for u umlaut o" for o umlaut, a" for a umlaut, which are important here, especially. as differentiated from their usual "e" expansions. Note that even the same word oscillates between different orthographies on different lines of the text (e.g., "vek", "wek", "liebes", "libes" on two successive lines, etc.) I find this obvious lack of care embarrassing and painful. (If I have made German errors, bitte, korrigierien Sie das Folgende...) "Yiddish" as given in Hochdeutsch orthography -- "Great Jewish Classics Vol 3" Syntactically, this is almost Tara Pub. NY, no date (very recent) perfectly clean German __________________________________ ______________________________ Oh! fruhling du bist ferbai O Fru"hling, du bist vorbei, [Rosenblatt clearly and audibly umlauts the u] goldene teg goldene Tage [note G plural is Tage, Y is Ta"g] flu"hen fon mir vait a wek Fliehen von mir weit weg [note the bogus umlaut in the "Yiddish"!] die himlen sheinen so fer Die Himmeln scheinen so (fern?) sisse gesang Su"sser Gesang! feigelach (!) ihr ruft nit mer Vo"geln, ihr ruft nicht mehr. [pron. "fay," but see "sheinen"] [this is the most charming, IMO] herzens gelibte du mein Herzensgeliebte du mein Ach vie vait du bist fon mir Ach, wie weit bist du von mir Ach! mein herz ful mit sherz[!sic] Ach, mein Herz, voll mit Schmerz [typo, Scherz, "joke", s/b "Schmerz"] und pain Und Pein ich seh dich niemals mehr[!sic, v.sup] ich seh'(e) dich niemals mehr vek is die zeit Weg ist die Zeit vershwunden mein grosses glik Verschwunden mein grosses Glu"ck ach wie is shmerzt [sic] Ach, wie ist [be?]schmertzt mein brust liebes kind, Meine Brust, liebes Kind, ach libes[sic] kind, ach, liebes Kind, fur imermehr. Fu"r immermehr. [again, pronounced with an umlaut not written!] There is also a text supplied in the frontmatter in a Hebrew-character (by no means "standard") Yiddish orthography, of unknown origin, which could well be a reconstruction, which I will not transcribe here, tracking the above Romanization and word-forms rather closely, including some rather unusual half-breeds, like _Fru"hling_ as fe-resh-yodh-he-lamedh-yodh-nun-gimel. Is my nefarious reconstruction of what went on in the recording studio credible? "That was really wonderful, Cantor Rosenfeld. I've always admired you people." Bernard S. Greenberg ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 5.290