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David Edelstadt was the poet of the Anarchistic party, as
Morris
Winchevsky represents Socialistic tendencies. The influence of both
on
their respective adherents has been great, but the latter has been
a
power for good among a wider circle of readers, within and without
his
party. Both show by the language which they use that it was
mere
accident that threw them into the ranks of Judeo-German writers,
for
while usually the diction of the older poets abounds in words of
Hebrew
origin, theirs is almost entirely free from them, so that one can
read
their productions with no other knowledge than that of the
literary
German language.
Edelstadt mastered neither his poetical
subjects nor the dialect. The
latter is a composition of the literary German
with dialectic forms, and
his rhythms are halting, his ideas one-sided. There
is not a poem among
the fifty that he has written that is not didactic. Many
of these are in
praise of Anarchists and heroes of freedom who have fallen in
the
unequal combat with the present conditions of society. There are
poems
in memory of Sophia Perovskaya, Louise Michel, John Brown, and
even
Albert Parsons and Louis Ling. He sings of the eleventh of November,
the
Fall of the Bastile, of strikes, misery, and suffering. Most of
these
are a call to war with society. They are neither of the
extreme
character that one generally ascribes to the Anarchists, nor do
they
sound any sincere notes. They seem to be written not because
Edelstadt
is a poet, but because he belongs to the Anarchistic party. In all
his
collection there is one only in which he directs himself especially
to
the Jews, and one of its stanzas is significant, as it lies at
the
foundation of much of Rosenfeld's poetry: it tells that they
have
escaped the cruel Muscovite only to be jailed in the dusky
sweat-shops
where they slowly bleed at the sewing-machine.
Morris
Winchevsky is a poet of a much higher type. He is a man of high
culture, is
conversant with the literatures of Russia, France, Germany,
and England, is
pervaded by what is best in universal literature,
follows carefully all the
rules of prosody and poetic composition, and
above all is master of his
dialect. His Socialistic bias is pronounced,
but it does not interfere with
the pictures that he portrays. They are
true to life, though somewhat cold in
coloring. His mastery of
Judeo-German, nearly all of German origin, is
displayed in his fine
translation of Thomas Hood's 'Song of the Shirt' and
some of Victor
Hugo's poems. His other songs show the same care in execution
and are
as perfect in form as can be produced in his dialect. Winchevsky
began
his poetical career in England, where he was also active as
a
Socialistic agitator. The small collection of his poetical
works
(unfortunately unfinished) contains almost entirely songs which
were
written there. His American poems appeared in the _Emeth_, which
he
published in Boston in 1895 and in other periodicals. Although he
has
tried himself in all kinds of verses, he prefers dactyllic
measures,
which in 'A Broom and a Sweeping' he uses most elaborately. The
poems
all treat on social questions and describe the misery of the
lower
strata of society. He speaks of the life of the orphan whose home is
in
the street, of the eviction of the wretched widow, of the
imprisonment
of the small boy for stealing a few apples, of the blind
fiddler, of
night-scenes on the Strand, of London at night. A large number of
songs
are devoted more strictly to Socialistic propaganda, while a series
of
forty-eight stanzas under the collective title 'How the Rich Live' is
a
gloomy kaleidoscope through which pass in succession the usurer,
the
commercial traveller, the journalist, the preacher, the cardplayer,
the
lawyer, the hypocrite, the old general, the speculator, the lady of
the
world, the gambler at races, the man enriched by arson, the
dissatisfied
rich man, the doctor, the Rabbi. Winchevsky has also written
some
excellent fables, of which 'The Rag and the Papershred' and 'The
Noble
Tom-Cat' are probably the best. In all those the language alone
is
Jewish, everything else is of a universal nature, and the freeing
of
society from the yoke of oppression is the burden of his songs.
The
most original poet among the Russian Jews of America is Morris
Rosenfeld. He
was born in 1862 in a small town in the Government of
Suwalk in Russian
Poland. His ancestors for several generations back had
been fishermen, and he
himself passed many days of his childhood on the
beautiful lake near his
native home. He had listened eagerly to the
weird folktales that his
grandfather used to tell, and as a boy had
himself had the reputation of a
good story-teller. At home he received
no other education than that which is
generally allotted to Jewish boys
of humble families: he studied Hebrew and
the Talmud. But his father was
more ambitious for his son, and when he moved
to the city of Warsaw he
provided him with teachers for the study of German
and Polish. However,
Rosenfeld did not acquire more than the mere rudiments
of these
languages, for very soon his struggle for existence began. He went
to
England to avoid military service, and there learned the tailor's
trade.
Thence he proceeded to Holland, where he tried himself in
diamond
grinding. He very soon after came to America, where for many weary
years
he has eked out an existence in the sweat-shops of New York. He
learned
in them to sing of misery and oppression. His first attempts were
very
weak; he felt himself called to be a poet, but he had no training of
any
kind, least of all in poetic diction. For models in his own language
he
had only the folk-singers of Russia, for Frug began his activity at
the
same time as he, and Perez published his 'Monisch' some years
after
Rosenfeld had discovered his own gifts. A regular tonic structure
had
not been attempted before in Judeo-German, and a self-styled critic
of
Judeo-German literature in New York tried to convince him that
his
dialect was not fit for the ordinary versification. One of his
first
poems, published in the _Judisches Volksblatt_ in St. Petersburg,
was
curiously enough a greeting to the poet Frug, who had just published
his
first songs in Judeo-German; however warm in sentiment, it is
entirely
devoid of that imagery and word-painting which was soon to become
the
chief characteristic of Rosenfeld's poetry.
Rosenfeld has read the
best German and English authors, and although he
knows these languages only
superficially, he has instinctively guessed
the inner meaning contained in
their works, and he has transfused the
art of his predecessors into his own
spirit without imitating them
directly. One cannot help, in reading his
verses, discovering his
obligations to Heine, Schiller, Moore, and Shelley;
but it is equally
apparent that he owes nothing to them as regards the
subject-matter of
his poems. He is original not only in Jewish letters but in
universal
literature as well.
Himself in contact with the lower strata
of society and yet in spirit
allied to the highest; at once the subject of
religious and race
persecutions and of industrial oppression; tossed about
among the
opposition parties or Anarchists, Socialists, Populists, without
allying
himself with any; by education and associations a Jew, and yet
not
subscribing strictly to the tenets of the Mosaic Law,--he voices
the
ominous foreboding of the tidal wave which threatens to submerge
our
civilization, he utters the cry of anguish and despair that rises
in
different quarters and condemns the present order of things.
Rosenfeld
does not scoff, or scorn, or hate. He is one with the oppressor and
the
oppressed; if he sings more of the latter, it is only because he
sees
more of that side of life. He is a sensitive plate that reproduces
the
pictures that arise before his mental vision, and the gloom of his
poems
is rather that which he sees than that which he feels; for he has
also
written songs of spring and happiness in the few intervals when the
sky
has looked down unclouded on the Ghetto in which he has lived so
long.
We shall confine ourselves to the small volume of his poetry, 'The
Songs
from the Ghetto,' even though it contains but one-tenth of all
the
verses that he has written. Who can read his 'Songs of Labor'
without
shedding tears? We enter with the poet, who is the tailor himself,
the
murky sweat-shop where the monotonous click of the sewing-machine,
which
kills thought and feeling, mysteriously whispers in your
ear:--
"Ich arbeit', un' arbeit', un' arbeit' ohn' Cheschben.
Es schafft sich, un' schafft sich, un' schafft sich ohn' Zāhl,"
and we
see the workman changed into just such an unfeeling machine.
During the short
midday hour he has but time to weep and dream of the
end of his slavery; when
the whistle blows, the boss with his angry look
returns, the machine once
more ticks, and the tailor again loses his
semblance of a human being. What
wonder, then, that tears should be the
subject of so many of his songs? Even
when the laborer returns home he
does not find relief from his sorrows; his
own child does not see him
from one end of the week to the other, for it is
asleep when he goes out
to work or returns from it ('My Boy'). Not only the
workman, but even
the mendicant, who has no home and finds his only
consolation in his
children, has reason to curse the present system when he
sees the judge
take them away from him to send them to an orphan asylum,--a
species of
misdirected philanthropy ('The Beggar Family'). Sad are the
simple
words: 'Ich gēh' vardienen!' uttered by a girl before the break of
day,
hurrying to the factory, and late at night, following a forced life
of
vice ('Whither'). Even death does not come to the unfortunate in
the
calm way of Goethe's 'Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh'; not the birds
are
silenced, but the worms are waiting for their companion
('Despair').
Nay, after death the laborer arises from his grave to accuse the
rich
neighbor of having stolen the flowers from his barren mound ('In
the
Garden of the Dead').
Not less sad are his National Songs. In
'Sephirah' he tells us that the
Jew's year is but a succession of periods for
weeping. Most of his songs
of that class deal with the tragical conflict
between religious duties
and actualities. Such is 'The First Bath of
Ablution,' which is one of
the prettiest Jewish ballads. The 'Measuring of
the Graves,' which
relates the superstition of the Jews who study by candles
with the wicks
of which graves have been measured, is especially interesting,
on
account of the excellent use of the language of the Tchines made in
it.
The unanswered question of the boy in the 'Moon Prayer' is one of
many
that the poet likes to propound. Perhaps the best poem under the
same
heading is 'On the Bosom of the Ocean,' which is remarkable not only
as
a sad portrayal of the misfortunes of the Jew who is driven out
of
Russia and is sent back from America because he has not the
requisite
amount of money which would entitle him to stay here, but also
on
account of the wonderful description of a storm at sea. The same
sad
strain passes through the poems classed as miscellaneous. Now it is
the
nightingale that chooses the cemetery in which to sing his
sweetest
songs ('The Cemetery Nightingale'). Or the flowers in autumn do not
call
forth regrets, for they have not been smiling on the poor laborer in
his
suffering ('To the Flowers in Autumn'). Or again, the poet
compares
himself with the bird who sings in the wilderness where 'the dead
remain
dead, and the silent remain silent' ('In the Wilderness').
The
gloom that lies over so many of Rosenfeld's poems is the result of
his own
sad experiences in the sweat-shop and during his struggle for
existence; but
this gloom is only the accident of his themes. Behind it
lies the
inexhaustible field of the poet's genius which adorns and
beautifies every
subject on which he chooses to write. The most
remarkable characteristic of
his genius is to weld into one the dramatic
action and the lyrical qualities
of his verse, as has probably never
been attempted before. Whether he writes
of the sweat-shop, or of the
storm on the ocean, or of the Jewish soldier who
rises nightly from his
grave, we in every instance get a drama and yet a
lyric, not as separate
developments, but inextricably combined into one
whole. Thus, for
example, 'In the Sweat-shop' is a lyrical poem, if Hood's
'Song of the
Shirt' is one, but in so far as the poet, or operative, is
turned into a
machine and is subjected to the exterior forces which determine
his
moods and his destiny, we have the evolution of a tragedy before
us.
Similarly, the exact parallel of the storm on the ocean with the
storm
in the hearts of the two Jews in the steerage is no less of a
dramatic
nature than an utterance of subjective feelings.
Rosenfeld
does not confine himself to pointing out the harmony which
subsists between
man and the elements that control his moods and
actions; he carries this
parallelism into the minutest details of the
more technical structure of his
poems: the amphibrachic measure in the
'Sweat-shop' is that of the ticking
machine, which in the two lines
given above reaches the highest effect that
can be produced by mere
words. In the 'Nightingale to the Laborer,' the
intricate versification
with its sonnet rhymes, the repetition of the first
line in each stanza
with its returning repetition in the tenth line, the
slight variations
of the same burden in each succeeding stanza which saves it
from
monotony, are all artifices that the poet has learned from the
bird
along his native lake in Poland. These two examples will suffice
to
indicate the astonishing versatility of the poet in that direction;
add
to this the wealth of epithets, and yet extreme simplicity of
diction
which never strives for effect, the musicalness of his rhythm,
the
chasteness of expression even where the cynical situations seem to
make
it difficult to withstand imprecations and curses, and we can
conceive
to what marvellous perfection this untutored poet of the Ghetto
has
carried his dialect in which Russian, Polish, Hebrew, and English
words
are jostling each other and contending their places with those from
the
German language.
It was left for a Russian Jew at the end of the
nineteenth century to
see and paint hell in colors not attempted by any one
since the days of
Dante; Dante spoke of the hell in the after-life, while
Rosenfeld sings
of the hell on earth, the hell that he has not only visited,
but that he
has lived through. Another twenty-five years, and the language in
which
he has uttered his despair will be understood in America but by
few,
used for literary purposes probably by none. But Rosenfeld's poetry
will
survive as a witness of that lowermost hell which
political
persecutions, religious and racial hatred, industrial oppression
have
created for the Jew at the end of this our enlightened
nineteenth
century.
IX. PROSE WRITERS FROM
1817-1863
The beginning of this century found the Jews of the Russian
Empire
living in a state bordering on Asiatic barbarism. Ages of
persecution
had reduced the masses to the lowest condition of existence,
had
eliminated nearly all signs of civilized life in them, and had
succeeded
in making them the outcasts they really were. Incredibly dirty in
their
houses and uncleanly about their persons, ignorant and
superstitious
even beyond the most superstitious of their Gentile neighbors,
dishonest
and treacherous not only to others, but even more to their own
kind,
they presented a sad spectacle of a downtrodden race. The
legislators
made the effects of the maltreatment of previous lawgivers the
pretext
for greater oppression until the Jews bade fair to lose the
last
semblance of human beings. One need only go at this late hour to
some
small town, away from railroads and highways, where Jews live
together
compactly, in order to get an idea of what the whole of Russia was
a
century ago, for in those distant places people are still living
as
their grandfathers did. Only here and there an individual succeeded
in
tearing himself away from the realm of darkness to become
acquainted
with a better existence by means of the Mendelssohnian Haskala. In
spite
of the very unfavorable conditions of life, or rather on account
of
them, the Jews, although averse to all instruction, passed the
greater
part of their lives, that were not given to the earning of a
livelihood,
in sharpening their wits over Talmudical subtleties. When they
came in
contact with the learning in Germany, their minds had been trained
in
the unprofitable but severe school of abstruse casuistry, and they
threw
themselves with avidity on the new sciences, surpassing even
their
teachers in the philosophic grasp of the same. Such a man had
been
Salomon Maimon, the Kantian scholar; such men were later those
followers
of the Haskala who were active in the regeneration of a
Hebrew
literature, with whom we have also become acquainted in former
chapters
through their efforts of enlightening the masses; foremost of
them,
however, was J. B. Levinsohn, who wrote but little in Judeo-German.
He
was to the Jews of Russia what Mendelssohn had been half a
century
before to the Jews of Germany.
The light of the Haskala
entered Russia in two ways: through Galicia and
through Poland. Galicia was
the natural gateway for German
enlightenment, as its Jews were instructed by
means of works written in
Hebrew, which alone, outside of the native dialect,
could be understood
in the interior of Russia. But this influence was only an
indirect one,
for soon the German language began to be substituted and
understood by
the people of Galicia, whereas that has never become the case
in the
southwest of Russia, that is, in the contiguous territory. The case
was
different in Russian Poland and Lithuania, for there were
many
commercial relations between these countries and Germany, and
there
existed German colonies in that part of the Empire. Consequently
the
ground was here better prepared for the foreign culture. The seats
of
the Haskala of these more northern regions were such towns as
Zamoszcz
in the Government of Lublin, and Warsaw. Roughly speaking,
the
geographically favored portion of the Jewish Pale was inhabited by
the
Misnagdim, or strict ritualists, while the southwest was the seat
of
that fanatical and superstitious sect of the Khassidim against
whom
nearly all of the satirical literature of the last seventy-five
years
has been directed.
As early as 1824 there was published a
periodical in Warsaw in which the
German language, or a corrupt form of it,
written with Hebrew
characters, was employed to serve as an intermediary of
German culture.
In the same year B. Lesselroth used this form of German in
writing a
Polish Grammar[74] for the use of his co-religionists. As has
been
pointed out before, this mixture of Judeo-German was to serve only as
an
intermediary for the introduction of the literary German which at
that
time appeared as the only possible alternative for the homely
dialects
of the Russian Jews. This mixed language has unfortunately remained
the
literary norm of the northwest up to the present time, if one may at
all
speak of norm in arbitrary compounds. In the southwest the
dialects
were, in the first place, much more distant from the German than
the
varieties of Lithuania, and the greater distance from German
influence
made the existence of that corrupt German less possible. At about
the
same time two books were published in Judeo-German, one in the south
by
Mendel Lefin, the other in the north by Chaikel Hurwitz, which
became
the standards of all future publications in the two divisions of
the
Jewish Pale. The first, by adhering to the spoken form of the
dialect,
has led to a normal development of both the language and
the
literature. The second, being unnatural from the start, has
produced
the ugliest excrescences, culminating in the ugliest productions
of
Schaikewitsch and his tribe and still in progress of
manufacture.
Hurwitz[75] was only following the natural tendencies of the
Haskala
when he chose what he called a pure Judeo-German for his literary
style.
In the introduction to his translation of Campe's 'Discovery of
America'
from his own Hebrew version of the same he says: "This translation
of
the 'Discovery of America' I have made from my Hebrew version. It
is
written in a pure Judeo-German without the mixture of Hebrew,
Polish,
and Turkish words which one generally finds in the spoken language."
It
must however, be noted that he uses German forms very sparingly,
and
that but for his avoiding Slavic and Hebrew words, his language
is
really pure. It is only later, beginning with the writings of Dick,
that
the real deterioration takes place.
This book was published in
1824 at Wilna. Its effect on the people was
very great. Previous to that year
there were no other books to be had
except such as treated on ethical
questions, or story-books, which had
been borrowed from older sources two or
three centuries before. Books of
instruction there were none. This was the
first ray that penetrated the
Ghettos from without. The people had no
knowledge of America and
Columbus, and now they were furnished not only with
a good story of
adventure, but in the introduction to the book they found a
short
treatise on geography,--the first worldly science with which they
now
became acquainted. It is interesting to note here by way of
parallel
that a few years later the regeneration of Bulgaria from its
centuries
of darkness began with a small work on geography, a translation
from an
American school-book, published at Smyrna. It is true that to
the
disciples of the Haskala works on the sciences were accessible in
Hebrew
translations, but these were confined to a very small circle of
readers,
and their influence on the masses was insignificant. If the
followers of
the Haskala had not accepted blindly Mendelssohn's verdict
against the
Judeo-German language, which was true only of the language spoken
by the
Jews of Germany, but had furnished a literature of enlightenment in
the
vernacular of the people instead of the language of the select
few,
their efforts would have been crowned with far greater success.
By
subscribing unconditionally to the teachings of their leader,
they
retarded the course of events by at least half a century and widened
the
chasm between the learned and the people, which it had been their
desire
to bridge. English missionaries proceed much more wisely in
their
efforts to evangelize a people. They always choose the everyday
language
in which to speak to them, not the tongue of literature, which is
less
accessible to them. Mainly by their efforts the Modern Armenian
and
Bulgarian have been raised to a literary dignity, and with it there
has
always followed a regeneration of letters and a national
consciousness
that has in some cases led to political independence. The
missionaries
have not always reaped a religious harvest, but their work has
borne
fruit in many other ways. In the beginning of this century they
also
directed their attention to the Christianization of the Jews of
Poland.
The few works that they published in the pursuit of their
aim,
especially the New Testament, are written in an excellent
vernacular,
far superior to the one employed by Hurwitz and Lesselroth. It is
a pity
the Jewish writers of the succeeding generations, particularly in
the
northwest of Russia, did not learn wisdom from the English
missionaries.
'The Discovery of America' has had edition after edition,
and has been
read, at first surreptitiously, then more openly, by all who
could read,
young and old, men and women. But Hurwitz was not forgiven by
the
fanatics for descending to write on worldly matters, and after his
death
it became the universal belief that the earth would not hold him for
his
misdeed and that he was walking around as a ghost, in vain seeking
a
resting-place.
In the south the first impulse for writing in
Judeo-German was given by
the translations of the Proverbs, the Psalms, and
Ecclesiastes by
Minchas Mendel Lefin. Of these only the Psalms were published
in 1817;
Ecclesiastes was printed in 1873, while the Proverbs and a novel
said to
be written by him have never been issued. To write in Jargon was to
the
men of the Haskala a crime against reason, and Lefin was
violently
attacked by Tobias Feder and others. He found, however, a
sympathizer in
Jacob Samuel Bick, who warmly defended him against Feder, and
by degrees
some of the best followers of the Haskala followed his good
example.
Ettinger and Gottlober are known to have received their first
lessons in
Judeo-German composition through the writings of Lefin, while
by
inference one may regard him also as the prototype of Aksenfeld
and
Zweifel. It was not so easy to brave the world with the despised
Jargon,
and up to the sixties not one of the works of these writers appeared
in
print. They passed in manuscript form from hand to hand, until
the
favorable time had come for their publication; and then they
were
generally not printed for those who wrote them, but for those
who
possessed a manuscript, so that on the first editions of their
works
their names do not appear at all.
Lefin's translations mark an
era in Judeo-German literature. He broke
with the traditional language used
in story-books and ethical works of
previous centuries, for that was merely a
continuation of the language
of the first prints, in which local differences
were obliterated in
order to make the works accessible to the German Jews of
the East and
the West. It was not a spoken language, and it had no literary
norm. In
the meanwhile the vernacular of the Slavic Jews had so far departed
from
the book language as to make the latter almost unintelligible to
the
masses. Lefin chose to remedy that by abandoning entirely the
tradition,
and by writing exactly as the people spoke. He has solved his
problem in
a remarkable way; for although he certainly knew well the
German
language, there is not a trace of it in his writings. He is not at
a
loss for a single word; if it does not exist in his dialect, he forms
it
in the spirit of the dialect, and does not borrow it from German.
As
linguistic material for the study of the Judeo-German in the
beginning
of this century the writings of Lefin, Aksenfeld, Ettinger,
Levinsohn,
and Gottlober are invaluable. But that is not the only value of
Lefin's
writings. By acknowledging the people's right to be instructed by
means
of an intelligible language, he at the same time opened up avenues
for
the formation of a popular literature, based on an intimate
acquaintance
with the mental life of the people. In fact, he himself gave the
example
for that new departure by writing a novel 'The First Khassid.' In
the
northwest the masses were not so much opposed to the new culture as
in
the south, hence the writers could at once proceed to bring out books
of
popular instruction clad in the form of stories. But the Khassidim
of
the south would have rejected anything that in any way reminded them
of
a civilization different from their own. In order to accomplish
results
among them, they had to be more cautious and to approach their
readers
in such a way that they were conscious only of the entertainment and
not
of the instruction which was couched in the story. This demanded
not
only the use of a pure vernacular, but also a detailed knowledge of
the
mental habits of the people. As their conditions of life in no
way
resembled those of any other people in Europe, their literature had
to
be quite unique; and the works of the earlier writers are so peculiar
in
regard to language, diction, and style as to baffle the translator,
who
must remodel whole pages before he can render the original
intelligibly.
Of such a character are the dramas of Aksenfeld, Ettinger, and
J. B.
Levinsohn.
Ettinger, the first modern Judeo-German poet, has
also written a drama
under the name of 'Serkele, or the False Anniversary.'
His bias for
German culture shows itself in the general structure of his
play, which
is like that of Lessing's dramas. The plot is laid in Lemberg,
and
represents the struggle of German civilization with the mean
and
dishonest ways of the older generation. Serkele has but
one
virtue,--that of an egotistical love for her only daughter,
the
half-educated, silly Freude Altele. In order to get possession of
some
jewels deposited with her by her brother for his daughter Hinde,
she
invents the story of his death. She is anxious to marry her daughter
to
Gavriel Handler, who is represented to her as a rich speculator, but
who
is in reality a common thief. He steals the casket containing
the
jewels. When the theft is discovered she throws the guilt on
Marcus
Redlich, a student of medicine, her daughter's private teacher,
and
Hinde's lover. Hinde, too, is accused of complicity, and both are
taken
in chains through the town. They pass a hostlery where a stranger
has
just arrived, to whom Handler is trying to sell the jewels. The
stranger
is Hinde's father. He recognizes his property, and seizes the thief
just
as his daughter and her lover are taken by. A general
recognition
follows, and all is righted. He finally forgives his sister,
gives a
dowry to Freude Altele, who marries the innkeeper, while his daughter
is
united to Marcus Redlich.
As in all the early productions of
Judeo-German literature, there are in
that drama two distinct classes of
characters: the ideal persons, the
uncle, Marcus Redlich and Hinde, and the
real men and women who are
taken out of actual life. On the side of the first
is all virtue, while
among the others are to be found the ugliest forms of
vice. A worse
shrew than Serkele has hardly ever been depicted. Her speeches
are
composed of a series of curses, in which the Jargon is
peculiarly
inventive, interrupted by a stereotyped complaint of her ever
failing
health. She hates her niece with the hatred that the tyrant has for
the
object of his oppression, and she is quick to accuse her of
improper
conduct, although herself of very lax morals. Nobody in the
house
escapes the fury of her tongue, and her honest but weak husband has
to
yield to the inevitable. The other characters are all well drawn,
and
the play is an excellent portrayal of domestic life of
seventy-five
years ago. It was written early in the twenties, but was printed
only in
1861, since when it has had several editions.
In 1828 J. B.
Levinsohn wrote his Hebrew work, 'Teudo Beisroel,' by
which the Haskala took
a firm footing in Russia. About the same time
there circulated manuscript
copies of a Judeo-German essay by the same
author, in which a sad picture of
Jewish communal affairs was painted in
vigorous and idiomatic words. This
essay, called 'The World Turned
Topsy-Turvy,'[76] is given in the form of a
conversation by three
persons, of whom one is a stranger from a better
country where the
affairs of the Jews are administered honestly. The other
two in turn lay
before him an array of facts which it is painful to regard as
having
existed in reality. It is interesting to note that the stranger, who
is
Levinsohn himself, advocates the formation of agricultural colonies
for
the Jews, by which he hoped to better their wretched condition and
to
gain for them respect among those who accused them of being averse
to
work.
The most original and most prolific Judeo-German writer of
this early
period was Israel Aksenfeld.[77] He was born in the last quarter
of the
eighteenth century, and had passed the early days of his life in
the
neighborhood of the Rabbi of Braslow, a noted Khassid, being himself
a
follower of that sect. Later in life, in the fifties, he is
remembered
as a notary public in Odessa. He was a man of great culture. Those
who
knew him then speak in the highest terms of the kindly old man that
he
was. They also like to dwell on the remarkable qualities of his
cultured
wife, from whom he is supposed to have received much
inspiration.[78]
That is all that is known of his life. Gottlober mentions
also in his
'Recollections' that he had written twenty-six books, and that
according
to Aksenfeld's own statements they had been written in the twenties
or
thereabout. Of these only five were printed in the sixties; the rest
are
said to be stored away in a loft in Odessa, where they are held
as
security for a debt incurred by the trustee of his estate. Although
this
fact is known to some of the Jews of that city, no one has taken
any
steps to redeem the valuable manuscripts. This is to be
greatly
regretted, as his books throw light on a period of history for
which
there is no other documentary evidence except that given by the
writings
of men who lived at that time.
Of the five books printed, one
is a novel, the other four are dramas.
The first, under the name of 'The
Fillet of Pearls,' shows up the
hypocrisy and rascality of the Khassidic
miracle-workers, as only one
who has himself been initiated in their doings
could relate them. The
hero of the novel is Mechel Mazeewe. He is discovered
eating on a minor
fast day, and the Rabbi uses this as an excuse for
extorting all the
money the poor fellow had earned by teaching little
children and young
women. His engagement to one of his pupils, the daughter
of the beadle,
is broken off for the same reason. Disgusted with his town, he
goes away
from it in order to earn a living elsewhere. Good fortune takes him
to
Breslau, where he, for the first time, discovers that there are
also
clean, honest, peaceful Jews. He is regenerated, and returns to
his
native town, where in the meantime the miracle-working Rabbi
has
succeeded in rooting out the last vestige of heresy. At the house of
the
Rabbi, Mechel has an occasion to prove the falseness of his
pretensions
to the assembled people. Mechel is reunited with his
bride.
This bare skeleton of the plot is developed with great care, and
is
adorned with a variety of incidents, each forming a story within
the
story. The biting satire, the sharp humor, the rapid development
of
situations, are only excelled by his dramatic sense, which makes
him
pass rapidly from descriptions, without elaborating them to the form
of
dialogue. His mastery of the dialect is remarkable; for although one
can
here and there detect his intimate acquaintance with German
literature,
there is not a single case where he has been led under
obligations to
the German language in thought or a word: German is as foreign
to him as
French or Latin. Of his dramas it will be sufficient to discuss one
to
show their general structure. The most dramatic of these is the
one
entitled 'The First Recruit' and tells of the terrible time in 1827
when
the Ukase drafting Jewish young men into the army had for the first
time
been promulgated. To the ignorant masses it seemed as though the
world
would come to an end. To avoid the great misfortune of having
their
sons taken away from them, they married them off before they
had
reached their teens; finding that that did not prevent the
'catchers'
from seizing them, maimed, halt, sickly men were preferred as
husbands
to their daughters; in short, all was done to avert the
unspeakable
calamity of serving the Czar. As in the novel, there are plots
within
the plot, and didactic passages are woven into the play without in
the
least disturbing its unity.
The tragedy consists of eight scenes.
The first opens with a noisy
meeting at the house of Solomon Rascal, a
Parnes-Chōdesch
(representative of the Jewish community), on a Saturday
afternoon. The
cause of the disturbance is the order to furnish one recruit
from their
town, which had just been brought in from the capital of the
district by
two soldiers. The assembled kahal are wondering whether it is
incumbent
upon them to sign the receipt of the order, while the infuriated
mob
without is clamoring that the Ukase will be ineffective as long as
not
signed by the representatives of the Congregation. The kahal is
divided
on the subject, and the women take a part in the discussion,
making
matters lively. Upon the advice of one of the men, the meeting
is
adjourned to the house of Aaron Wiseman, the honored merchant of
their
town of Nowhere, where they expect to get a satisfactory solution
in
their perplexity. The second scene is the ideal scene of the play.
Here
is depicted the happy and orderly home life of the
cultured
merchant,--the reverse of the picture just portrayed. Jisrolik
the
Ukrainian arrives and announces the decision of the kahal to refer
the
matter to him. Aaron Wiseman explains how the Emperor had not
intended
to bring new misfortunes upon the Jews by the mandate, but how
by
imposing on them the honorable duty of defending their country, he
was
investing them with a new privilege upon which greater liberties
would
follow. This he farther elucidates in the next scene before
the
assembled representatives of the Congregation. The fourth scene is
laid
in the inn, where we are introduced to Nachman the Big, the
practical
joker and terror of the town. In the following scene, Aaron
Wiseman
advises the kahal to use a ruse by which Nachman will voluntarily
offer
himself as a soldier, thus freeing the town from the unpleasant duty
of
making a more worthy family unhappy. Wiseman explains that Nachman
has
been a source of trouble to all, and that military service would be
the
only thing that would keep him from a possible life of crime. The
ruse
is accomplished in the following manner: it is known that Nachman
has
been casting his eyes on Frume, the good and beautiful daughter
of
Risches the Red, the tax-gatherer. It is proposed to send a schadchen
to
Nachman, pretending that Frume's parents seek an alliance with him,
and
that Frume loves him, and that she wants to get a proof of his
affection
in his offering himself up as a soldier. The apparent incongruity
of the
request is amply accounted for in the play by the fact that he who
has
lost his heart also loses his reason. In the next two scenes the plot
is
carried out, and Nachman becomes a soldier. The last scene contains
the
tragic denouement. Chanzi, the go-between, comes to the house of
Frume
and tells her of the fraud perpetrated on Nachman. But, alas,
Frume
actually loves Nachman, and she silently suffers at the recital of
the
story. The climax is reached when her father arrives and tells
of
Nachman's self-sacrifice, how he has given himself up for the love
he
bears her, how they put him in chains and took him away. Frume
bears
her secret to the last, but her heart breaks, and she dies. The
sorrow
of her parents is great. During the lamentation Nachman's blind
mother
arrives, led by a little girl. She has learned of Chanzi's
treachery,
and breaks out in loud curses against those who took part in the
plot.
As she steps forward, she touches the dead body of her whom Nachman
had
thought to be his bride. She addresses her as though she were alive
and
consoles her that she need not be ashamed of Nachman, who had been
an
inoffensive, though somewhat wild, boy. While speaking this, she
faints
over her body.
The characters are all admirably delineated, and
how true to nature the
whole play is one can see from a matter-of-fact story,
by Dick,[79] of
the effects of the Ukase on the city of Wilna. Except for the
tragic
plot, the drama may serve as a historical document of the event, and
is
a valuable material for the study of the Jewish mind in the beginning
of
Nicholas's reign. This must also be said of the other plays
of
Aksenfeld, which all deal with conditions of contemporary
Jewish
society.
Similar to Aksenfeld's subject in 'The Fillet of
Pearls' is the comedy
'The Marriage Veil' by Gottlober, which he wrote in
1838. Jossele, a
young man with modern ideas, is to be married to a one-eyed
monster,
while his sweetheart, Freudele, is to be mated on the same day with
a
disfigured fool. By Jossele's machinations, in which he takes
advantage
of the superstitions of the people, he is united under the marriage
veil
to Freudele, while the two monstrosities are married to each other.
This
is found out too late to be mended. This plot is only an excuse to
show
up the hypocrisy and rascality of the miracle-working Rabbi in even
a
more grotesque way than in 'The Fillet of Pearls.' A much finer work
is
his story 'The Transmigration,' which, however, is said to be based on
a
similar story in the Hebrew, by Erter. In this a dead soul, previous
to
finding its final resting-place, relates of its many transmigrations
ere
reaching its last stage. The succession of mundane existences
is
strictly in keeping with the previous moral life of the soul. It
starts
out with being a Khassidic singer, who, like all the followers of
the
Rabbi, is represented as an ignorant dupe. After his death he
naturally
is turned into a horse, the emblem of good-natured stupidity
according
to the popular Jewish idea. Then he is in turn a Precentor, a fish,
a
tax-gatherer, a dog, a critic, an ass, a doctor, a leech, a usurer,
a
pig, a contractor. By far the most interesting and dramatic incident
is
that of the doctor, who is trying to pass for a pious Jew, but who
is
caught eating lobsters, which are forbidden by the Mosaic Law, and
who
dies from strangulation in his attempt to swallow a lobster to hide
his
crime. The story is told in a fluent manner, is very witty, and puts
in
strong relief the various characters which are satirized.
Like the
poetry of the same period, the prose literature of the writers
previous to
the sixties is of a militant nature. It had for its aim the
dispersion of
ignorance and superstition, and the introduction of the
Haskala and Western
civilization among the Jews of Russia. The main
attack of all these early
works was directed against the fanaticism of
the Khassidic sect, against the
hypocrisy of its miracle-working Rabbis
in whose interest it lay to oppose
the light at all cost. But the
authors not only attacked the evil, they also
showed the way for a
reform: this they did by contrasting the low, sordid
instincts of the
older generation with the quiet, honest lives of the new. Of
course, the
new generation is all German. The ideal characters of Ettinger's
drama,
Aksenfeld's hero in 'The Fillet of Pearls,' Gottlober's Jossele,
have
all received their training in Germany. At the same time, in
accordance
with the Mendelssohnian School, these ideal persons are not
opposed to
the tenets of Judaism; on the contrary, they are represented as
the
advocates of a pure religion in place of the base substitute
of
Khassidism. Outside of the didactic purpose, which, however, does
not
obtrude on the artistic development of the story, the
Judeo-German
literature of that period owes its impulse to the three German
authors,
Lessing, Schiller, Jean Paul Richter. As regards its language,
the
example set by Lefin prevails, and all the productions are written in
an
idiomatic, pure dialect of the author's nearest surroundings. There
is
but one exception to that, and that is 'The Discovery of
America,'
which, being mainly intended for a Lithuanian public, is written in
a
language which makes approaches to the literary German, whereby
it
opened wide the way to misuses of various kinds.
X.
PROSE WRITERS FROM 1863-1881: ABRAMOWITSCH
Zederbaum,[80] the friend
and fellow-townsman of Ettinger, began in 1863
to publish a Judeo-German
weekly under the name of _Kol-mewasser_, as a
supplement to his Hebrew
weekly, the _Hameliz_. This was the first organ
of the kind for Russia, for
the one edited in Warsaw forty years before
was not written in the dialect of
the people. Let us look for the cause
of such an innovation.
The
advocates of the Haskala regarded it as one of their sacred duties
to spread
culture wherever and whenever they could do so. This they did
through the
medium of the Hebrew and the Judeo-German. The first was a
literary language,
the other was not regarded as worthy of being such.
If, therefore, there was
some cause to feel an author's pride in
attaching one's name to productions
in the first tongue, there was no
inducement to subscribe it to works in the
second. It was, to a certain
extent, a sacrifice that the authors made in
condescending to compose in
Judeo-German, and the only reward they could
expect was the good their
books would do in disseminating the truth among
their people. The songs
of M. Gordon and Gottlober, and the works of Ettinger
and Aksenfeld,
were passed anonymously throughout the whole land. The books
were not
even printed, but were manifolded in manuscript form by those who
had
the Haskala at heart. A few years before the issue of
the
_Kol-mewasser_, the efforts of these men began to bear ample fruit.
It
was no longer dangerous to be called a 'German,' and many
Jewish
children were being sent to the gymnasia, to which the Government had
in
the meanwhile admitted them. The Rabbinical schools at Wilna
and
Zhitomir, too, were graduating sets of men who had been
receiving
religious instruction according to the improved methods of the
Haskala.
It was then that some of the works written decades before, for the
first
time saw daylight, but more as a matter of curiosity of what had
been
done long ago, than with any purpose. It would even then have
been
somewhat risky to sign one's name to them for fear of ridicule, and
no
native firm would readily undertake their publication. Thus the
first
two works of Aksenfeld were issued from a press at Leipsic in
1862,
while Ettinger's 'Serkele' had appeared the year before at
Johannisburg.
Only the following year Linetzki's 'Poems' were published at
Kiev, and,
by degrees, the authors took courage to abandon their anonyms
and
pseudonyms for their own names. The time was ripe for a periodical
to
collect the scattered forces, for there was still work to be done
among
those who had not mastered the sacred language, and they were in
the
majority. At that juncture, Zederbaum began to issue his supplement
to
the _Hameliz_.
This new weekly was not only the crowning of the
work of the past
generation of writers, it became also the seminary of a new
set of
authors. It fostered the talents of those who, for want of a medium
of
publication, might have devoted their strength entirely to Hebrew,
or
would have attempted to assimilate to themselves the language of
the
country. In the second year of the existence of the periodical,
there
appeared in it 'The Little Man,' the first work of Abramowitsch,
who
was soon to lead Judeo-German literature to heights never
attempted
before by it, and with whom a new and more fruitful era
begins.
Solomon Jacob Abramowitsch[81] was born in 1835, in the town of
Kopyl,
in the Government of Minsk. He received his Jewish instruction in
a
_Cheeder_, and later in a _Jeschiwe_, a kind of Jewish academy.
He
consequently, up to his seventeenth year, had had no other
instruction
except in religious lore. His knowledge of Hebrew was so thorough
that,
at the age of seventeen, he was able to compose verses in that
language.
He lost his father early, and his mother married a second time.
When he
was eighteen years old, there arrived in his native town a
certain
Awremel the Lame, who had been leading a vagabond's life over
the
southern part of Russia. He told so many wonderful stories
about
Volhynia, where, according to his words, there flowed milk and
honey,
that many of the inhabitants of Kopyl were thinking of emigrating to
the
south. Awremel also persuaded Abramowitsch's aunt to go with him
in
search of her absent husband. That she did, taking her nephew along
with
her. It soon turned out, however, that Awremel was exploiting them
as
objects of charity, by collecting alms over the breadth and length
of
the country. For several months he kept zigzagging in his wagon
from
town to town, wherever he expected to find charitable Jews, until
at
last they arrived a certain distance beyond Kremenets. Here they
passed
a carriage from which proceeded a voice calling Abramowitsch by
his
given name. They stopped, and Abramowitsch was astonished to
discover
his friend of his childhood, who had, in the meantime, become
a
chorister in Kremenets. The latter invited his youthful friend to
go
back to town with him, promising to take care of him. This the
young
wanderer was only too glad to do, for he wished to be rid of
Awremel,
who had been tantalizing him with his almsbegging. The Precentor,
who
was in the carriage with the chorister, paid off the driver,
and
Abramowitsch started with them back to town, where a new period began
in
his life.
His thorough acquaintance with the Talmud and the Hebrew
language soon
gained him many friends, and he was able to make a living by
teaching
the children of the wealthier inhabitants. One of his friends
advised
him to make the acquaintance of the poet Gottlober, who, at that
time,
was teaching in one of the local Jewish schools. The old man who
was
giving him that counsel added: "Go to see him some evening when no
one
will notice you, and make his acquaintance. He is an apostate who
shaves
his beard, and he does not enjoy the confidence of our community. Nor
do
we permit young men to cultivate an acquaintance with him; but you are
a
learned man, and you will know how to meet the statements of
that
heretic. He is a fine Hebrew scholar, and it might do you good to
meet
him. Remember the words of Rabbi Meier: 'Eat the wholesome fruit,
and
cast away the rind.' I'll tell the beadle to show you the way to
the
apostate."
On the evening of the following day, Abramowitsch
betook himself, with a
copy of a Hebrew drama he had composed, to the house
of Gottlober. The
latter smiled at the childish attempt of the young
Talmudist, but he
did not fail to recognize the talent that needed only the
fostering care
of a teacher to reach its full development, and he himself
offered his
services to him, and invited him to be a frequent caller at his
house.
Here, under the guidance of Gottlober's elder daughter, he received
his
first instruction in European languages, and in the rudiments
of
arithmetic. He swallowed with avidity everything he could get, and
soon
he was able to write a Hebrew essay on education which was printed
in
the _Hamagid_, and which attracted much attention at the time. His
fate
soon led him to Berdichev, "the Jewish Moscow," where he married for
a
second time, and settled down for many years. In 1859 his first
serious
work, still in Hebrew, was published. In 1863 began his
Judeo-German
career, in which he still continues, and which has made him
famous among
all who read in that language.
The tradition of the
Haskala came down to Abramowitsch in an
uninterrupted succession, from Mendel
Lefin through Ettinger and
Gottlober. He, too, started out with the set
purpose of spreading
enlightenment among his people, and in his first two
works we find a
sharp demarkation between the two kinds of character, the
ideal and the
real. But he was too much of an artist by nature to persevere
in his
didactic attitude, and before long he abandoned entirely that field,
to
devote his undivided energy to the production of purely artistic
works.
Even his earlier books, in which he combats some public nuisance,
differ
materially from those of his predecessors in that they reflect not
only
conditions of society as they actually existed at his time, but in
that
his characters are true studies from nature. No one of
his
contemporaries reading, for example, his 'The Little Man,' could be
in
doubt of who was meant by this or that name. The portrait was
so
closely, and yet so artistically, copied from some well-known denizen
of
Berdichev that there could be no doubt as to the identity. There
are
even more essential points in his stories and dramas in which he
widely
departs from his predecessors. While these saw in a religious reform
and
in German culture a solution out of the degraded state into which
their
co-religionists had fallen, he preached that a reform from within
must
precede all regeneration from without. While they directed their
attacks
against the Khassidim as the enemies of light, and their Rabbis as
their
spiritual guides, he cautiously avoided all discussions of religion
and
culture, and sought in local communal reforms a basis for
future
improvements. To him the physical well-being of the masses was a
more
important question than their spiritual enlightenment, and according
to
his ideas a moral progress was only possible after the
economical
condition had been considerably bettered. His precursors had
looked upon
the Haskala as the most precious treasure, to be preferred to all
else
in life. Abramowitsch loves his people more than wisdom and culture,
and
the more oppressed and suffering those he loves, the more earnest
and
the more fervent are his words in their behalf. He is the advocate
of
the poor against the rich, the downtrodden against the oppressor,
the
meek and long-suffering against the haughty usurper of the
people's
rights. He is, consequently, worshipped by the masses, and has
been
hated and persecuted by those whose meanness, rascality, and
hypocrisy
he has painted in such glaring colors. He had even once to flee for
his
life, so enraged had the representatives of the kahal become at
their
lifelike pictures in one of his dramas. His love for the people is
an
all-pervading passion, for man is his Godhead. There is a
divine
element in the lowest of human beings, and he thinks it worth while
to
discover it and to bring it to light, that it may outshine all the
vices
that have beclouded it. He turns beggar with the beggar he
describes,
becomes insane with him who ponders over the ills of this earth,
and
suffers the criminal's punishment. He at all times identifies himself
with those of whom he speaks. |
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