The History of Yiddish Literature 6

The History of Yiddish Literature 6

In the more external form of composition there is again a vast progress from the writings of Lefin to the style and diction of Abramowitsch. Lefin was the first to show what vigor there was in the use of the everyday vernacular. Ettinger, Aksenfeld, and Gottlober have well adapted that simple, unadorned speech to the requirements of literary productions; but it was only Abramowitsch who demonstrated what wealth of word-building, what possibilities of expression, lay dormant in the undeveloped dialects of Judeo-German. He was peculiarly fitted to enrich the language by new formations, for having passed the first eighteen years of his life in Lithuania and passing the greater part of his later years in the Southwest, he was enabled to draw equally from the source of his native Lithuanian dialect and the spoken variety of his new home. He has welded the two so well that his works can be read with equal ease in the North and in the South, whereas the language of Aksenfeld offers a number of difficulties to the Lithuanians and even the Polish Jews whose dialect the Southern variety resembles. In diction he differs from his masters in that he substitutes a regular prose structure for the semi-dramatic utterances of the older narration, without affecting the natural speeches of the characters wherever these are introduced. In these cases he becomes so idiomatic as to baffle the best translator, who must be frequently satisfied with mere circumlocutions. He also abandons the anonym of the former generation for a pseudonym, Mendele the Bookpedler, which is, however, but a thin disguise for his real name, for his writings are of such an individuality that there can be no doubt about their authorship. Beginning with Abramowitsch style is regarded as an important requisite of a Judeo-German work. Now we shall turn to the discussion of his several books. The subject of his first, 'The Little Man,' is an autobiography of a man, who, by low flattery, vile servility, and all dishonest ways, rises to high places of emolument which he uses entirely in order to enrich himself at the expense of the people. Such men had been the bane of Jewish communities in the middle of our century. In Berdichev it was, at the time of the publication of the book, Jacob Josef Alperin, who by similar means had come to be the right hand of the Governor General, Bibikov; but far more vile than he was Hersch Meier Held, who stood in the same relation to Alperin that the latter occupied to the Governor General. That flunky of a flunky is personified as the hero of the story, Isaac Abraham Takif. In this work we still have the ideal persons of the older writers. We are introduced there to a poor, honest, and cultured family, in whom one cannot fail to recognize his master and friend, Gottlober, and his daughter. If this work made him a host of friends among those who were the victims of Alperin and Held, the next drama he wrote endangered his stay in Berdichev, for the persons attacked in it, the representatives of the kahal, would not shrink from any crime to rid themselves of a man who, like Abramowitsch, had come to be a power and a stumbling-block to their incredible rascalities. The greatest curse of the Jewish community in Russia had ever been the meat and candle tax, which all had to pay, nominally to support communal institutions, but the greater part of which went into the pockets of the representatives of the kahal to whom the tax was farmed out. No meat and no candle could be purchased without that arbitrary imposition by the members of the kahal, who in their fiendish craving for money increased the original cost of meat several fold, and who spared no means, however criminal, to silence any opposition to their doings. It is these men that Abramowitsch had the courage to hold up to the scorn of the people in his 'The Meat-Tax, or the Gang of City Benefactors.'[82] He had to flee for his life, but the drama did its work. It even attracted the attention of the Government, which tried to remedy the evil. It became the possession of the people, and many of its salient sentences have become everyday proverbs. The revolt against that Gang of City Benefactors of Berdichev was so great that Moses Josef Chodrower, whom all recognized as the prototype of the arch-rascal Spodek in the play, and who had been a prominent and wealthy merchant, was soon driven into bankruptcy by the infuriated population that refused to support him. That was the first time that a literary production written in Judeo-German had become a factor in social affairs. A Russian troupe that was then playing at Berdichev wanted to give a Russian version of the drama, but was restrained from doing so by the machinations of the kahal. The book had done its work thoroughly. In the same year there appeared his story from the life of the Jewish mendicants, 'Fischke the Lame.'[83] This psychological study of the impulses of the lowest dregs of society is probably unique in all literature. It is a love story from the world of the lame and the halt that constitute the profession of mendicants in the Jewish part of every Russian town in the West. But it is not merely the love of Fischke the Lame for a beggar girl and the jealousy of his blind wife, who tyrannizes over him in spite of her affliction, that we are made acquainted with in that remarkable book. We are introduced there to a class of people with entirely different motives, different aims in life, from those we are accustomed to see about us. They hide from daylight and have a morality of their own; but yet they are possessed of the passions that we find in beings endowed with all the senses and enjoying the advantages of well-organized society. One must have lived among them, been one of them, so to reproduce their language, their thoughts, as Abramowitsch has done in this novel; and one must have broad sympathies with all humankind to be able to find the divine spark ablaze even in the lowest men. His next work,'The Dobbin,'[84] is the most perfect of his productions. It unites into one a psychological study of a demented man, with a delicate allegory, in which the history of his people in Russia is delineated, thus serving as a transition from the pure novel in his former production to the composite allegory in his poetical work 'Judel' which was published a few years later. It combines a biting satire with a tragic story; it is a prophecy and a history in one. If the 'Meat Tax' had made him the favorite of the masses who suffered from the oppression of the members of the kahal, 'The Dobbin' was calculated to endear him with all who professed the Jewish faith; for while the first pointed out an internal evil which could be remedied, the second painted in vivid colors their sufferings in the present and the misfortunes which awaited them in the future, which were entirely of an external nature over which they had no control. It showed them more graphically than anything that had been said heretofore how helpless they were to meet the charges which were continually cast against them by the Gentiles and the Government. Abramowitsch foresaw that the turning-point in the inner life of his race was near at hand, that the call to progress of the early writers had availed them little in righting them with the world without, that his own productions acquainting them with their weak points from within were now out of place, and that soon they would need only words of consolation such as are uttered when a great calamity overtakes a people. In 1873 hardly any one dreamed of the possibility of the riots against the Jews that were to be inaugurated eight years later, for it was just then that the highest privileges had been granted to them, and the assimilation had been going on to such an extent that Judeo-German literature would have been a thing of the past, had not the writers of the previous decade continued now and then to issue a volume of their works. But Abramowitsch saw that the reforms of Alexander II. were not conceived in the same liberal spirit as had been proposed by Nicholas I., and that sooner or later they would be followed by retrenchments such as would throw the Jews back into conditions far worse than those they had been in half a century before; for they would find no avenues for their many new energies which they had developed in the meanwhile. It is this coming event that the author has depicted in his fantastic story, 'The Dobbin.' Jisrolik has made up his mind to acquire Gentile culture, and he is preparing himself for an examination in the Gymnasium. He falls in with a Dobbin that is pursued by everybody, and this so affects him, together with the worry over his examination, that he becomes demented, and he imagines that the Dobbin is talking to him. After that the animal is introduced as a transmigrated soul that tells its biography. The Dobbin is the personification of the Jewish race. The book was very popular, and although there was a demand for new editions, the Russian Government would not permit them, as even this veiled allegory appeared to it as too open an accusation of its acts. Only sixteen years later the censor relaxed and allowed a second edition to appear. In 1879 there was published by Abramowitsch a volume entitled 'The Wanderings of Benjamin the Third,'[85] which is an excellent pendant to Cervantes's famous work and which has therefore been called by its Polish translator 'The Jewish Don Quixote.' The subject of his caricature was a real fellow, named Tscharny, who had been employed by some French society to undertake a scientific journey into the Caucasus, but who was entirely unfit for the work, as he had a very superficial knowledge of geography. For his more immediate purpose Abramowitsch copied a crazy fellow who was all the time citing passages from a fantastic Hebrew geography he had been poring over. Out of this Abramowitsch evolved the story of the Quixotic fellow who starts out to discover the mystic river Sambation and the tribe of the Red Jews, but who never gets any further than the town of Berdichev and its dirty river Gnilopyat. Of the other works[86] of Abramowitsch the most important is his drama 'The Enlistment,' which deals with the same subject as Aksenfeld's 'The First Recruit,' but referring it to more modern times. After a long silence the author has again resumed his pen, and one may look forward for some new classics in Judeo-German. He has also written a number of popular scientific articles, which have been widely circulated by means of calendars which he has edited. His popularity as a writer is best illustrated by the fact that for a series of years his income from his books and calendars has amounted to three thousand roubles a year. Considering the poverty of the reading public, for whom cheap editions have to be issued, and the general custom of borrowing books rather than buying them, this will appear as a very great sum indeed. Many of the younger authors lovingly refer to him as the 'Grandfather,' although no one has attempted to imitate him either in manner or style. He forms by himself a school, and would have been the last to write in the dialect but for the occurrences of the eighties that have been the cause of a new set of writers who have no reason to follow the authors of the period of the Haskala, but who dip their pens in the blood that has been shed in the riots, or who from the same cause speak to their brethren, though not of them. XI. PROSE WRITERS FROM 1863-1881: LINETZKI, DICK In 1867 the _Kol-mewasser_ began publishing a serial story by Linetzki[87] under the name of 'The Polish Boy.' Its popularity at once became so great that to satisfy the impatient public the editor was induced to print the whole in book form as a supplement long before it had been finished in the periodical. The interest in the book lay not so much in the fact that it was written with boundless humor as in its being practically an autobiography in which the readers found so much to bring back recollections of their own sad youth. They found there a graphic description of the whole course of a Khassid's life as no one before Linetzki had painted it,--as only one could paint it who had himself been one of the sect, standing in an even nearer relation to their Rabbis than had been the case with Aksenfeld. While the latter had been a follower of one, Linetzki had narrowly escaped being a Rabbi himself, had suffered all kinds of persecution for attempting to abandon the narrow sphere of a Khassid's activity, and knew from bitter experience all the facts related in his work. The story of his own life, unadorned by any fiction, was dramatic enough to be worth telling, but he has enriched it with so many details of everyday incidents as to change the simple biography into a valuable cyclopedia of the life and thoughts of his contemporaries, in which one may get information on the folklore, games, education, superstitions, and habits of his people in the middle of our century. Linetzki was born in 1839 in Vinitsa, in the Government of Podolsk. At the age of six he was far enough advanced in Hebrew to begin the study of the Talmud. At ten he had passed through all the Jewish schools, and there was nothing left for his teachers to teach him. He was an _Ilui_, an accomplished scholar, but his father, who was a Khassidic Rabbi, was not satisfied with his mere scholastic acquirements; he wanted him to be initiated in all the mysteries of the Cabbala which would make of him a fanatical Khassid. He was put for that purpose in the hands of a few of his blind followers, who did not spare any means to kill the last ray of reason in him, even if they had to resort to violent punishments, with which they were very liberal. Instead of curbing his spirit, they only succeeded in nurturing an undying hatred toward themselves and everything connected with their doctrine. But finding it impossible to tear himself away from their tyranny, he finally feigned submission and openly professed adherence to his sect, while he secretly visited the few intelligent people that the town could muster up and borrowed from them works that told of the Haskala or that gave some useful instruction. These books he would take with him to uninhabited houses, or to the empty synagogues, and pore over them until their contents had been appropriated by the precocious boy. His father began to suspect that something was wrong with his son, so at the age of fourteen he married him to a girl who, he hoped, would take him back on the road of Khassidism. But finding that, contrary to his expectations, she agreed in everything with her child-husband, the father managed to divorce her from him. Linetzki's patience had come to an end; he threw off the thin mask he had been wearing, and began to make open attacks on the fanatics. He was again forced into marriage, but with the same result as before. The Khassidim now wanted to get rid of him at all cost, and in a dark night he was seized by them and thrown into the river. He was saved as if by a miracle. After that he was carefully guarded by the police, and his enemies did not dare to lay hands on him again. At the age of eighteen he escaped to Odessa, where he eked out his existence by teaching Hebrew to children, all the time perfecting himself in worldly sciences. He was again pursued by the Khassidim of the city, who got away with a box full of his manuscripts, and he decided to leave Russia, to take a course at the Rabbinical Seminary in Breslau. What was his surprise when, upon arriving at the Austrian frontier, he was put in chains by the Rabbi of the border town, who threatened to present a forged despatch from Odessa in which Linetzki was named as a dangerous criminal. He again pretended to repent, and was taken back to his father, from whom the forged despatch had emanated. The latter compelled his son to do penance at the house of the Rabbi of Sadugora. After that he was divorced from his second wife, as it was hoped that it would conciliate him to free him from the ties which had been hateful to him. Linetzki, however, took the first occasion to escape again. This time he went to Zhitomir, where at the age of twenty-three he entered the third class of the Rabbinical school, as his insufficient knowledge of Russian made it impossible for him to attend a higher class. His schoolmates were about twelve years old, and ridiculed the man who was sitting on the same bench with them. He left the institution and went to Kiev, where in 1863 his Judeo-German literary career began by his volume of poetry discussed in a previous chapter. His next work was 'The Polish Boy,' which has gained him a reputation as a classic writer. Were it not for the many didactic passages which the author has interwoven in the second part of his story, it might easily be counted among the most perfect productions of Jewish literature. These unfortunately mar the unity of the whole. Except for these, the book is characterized by a truly Rabelaisian humor. Its greatest merit is that it follows so closely actual experiences as to become a photographic reproduction of scenes. There is hardly any plot in it, and it is doubtful if Linetzki would have succeeded so well had he attempted a piece of fiction, for in his many later works he is signally defective in this direction. The mere photographic quality of the story, the straightforward tone that pervades it, the grotesque, unbounded humor which one meets at every turn, have made it acceptable to the Khassidim themselves, who grin at their caricatures but must confess that it is absolutely true. The copy of the book in my possession was sold to me by a pious itinerant Rabbi, who had treasured it as a precious work. Linetzki was misled by his early success to regard his unchecked humor as his special domain, and into cultivating it to the exclusion of the finer qualities of style and sound reason. The farther he proceeds,[88] the less readable his works become, the coarser his wit. Later, in the eighties, he abandons entirely original work to devote himself to the translation of German books. We have from his pen versions of Lessing's 'Nathan the Wise' and Graetz's 'History of the Jews.' The first is rather a free paraphrase than an artistic translation, while the second is not as carefully done as one might have expected. But once has he returned to the style of his 'The Polish Boy,' in his 'The Maggot in the Horseradish,'[89] but that is but a reflection of his great work. Linetzki's reputation is based only on his first novel, which will ever remain a classic. A number of men with less talent than those heretofore mentioned have attempted imitations of this or that popular book. Among these writers the attacks against the Khassidim still continue at a time when they have lost their power to sting, when the best authors have abandoned that field for more useful works. However, some of the minor productions are quite creditable performances. Such, for example, is the well-told story in verse by M. Epstein, entitled 'Lemech, the Miracle-worker,' published in 1880. It tells of Lemech the tailor who leaves his wife, and turns miracle-worker, which he finds more profitable than his tailoring. He settles in a distant town and persuades one of the wealthy men to give him his daughter in marriage. The miracle-worker must not be refused, and the daughter's previous engagement with Rosenblatt, her lover, is broken off. Just as the rings are to be exchanged which would unite Lemech with Rosenblatt's former bride, Rosenblatt steps up with Lemech's wife, who has been travelling about to find her unfaithful husband, whom she knows only as a tailor. The story is developed naturally, and the reflections interwoven in it are well worth reading. An earlier one-act drama by the same author, 'The Drubbing of the Apostate at Foolstown,' relates also in verse of the punishment inflicted by the Rabbi on the Jew who had been found reading one of Mendelssohn's books. Another, 'The Conversation of the Khassidim,' by Maschil Brettmann, gives in the form of a dialogue the best exposition of the tenets of that sect, and shows how the various stories of miracle-workings originate. The introduction contains a short historical sketch of this strange aberration of miracle-working, written in an excellent prose. While these writers had in view the eradication of some error and the dissemination of culture by their works, the ancient story-telling for the mere love of amusing still continues to attract the masses. The better class of authors were too serious to condescend to compete with the badchen in their efforts to entertain. The lighter story was consequently left to an inferior set of men who frequently had no other excuse for writing their stories than the hope of earning a few roubles by them. Of such a character are 'Doctor Kugelmann,' 'Wigderl the Son of Wigderl.' There is, however, a wide difference in these from similar story-books of the previous generation. The older chapbooks were based mainly on the romantic material of the West, generally reflecting nothing of the Jewish life in them. The newer stories of the Southwest of Russia have this in common with the works of the classical writers, that they reproduce scenes of contemporaneous Jewish life. At times these tales are well told and well worth reading. Such is the amusing _quid pro quo_ in 'A Jew, then not a Jew, then a Good Jew [_i.e._ a Khassid], and Again a Jew,' by S. Hochbaum. Still more interesting is the charming comedy 'The Savings of the Women' by Ludwig Levinsohn.[90] Its plot is as follows: Jekel, a Khassid, returns late at night to his house, where he is awaited by his wife Selde. To silence her torrent of invectives he invents a story that the decree of Rabbi Gershon, by which monogamy had been introduced among the Jews of Europe in the eleventh century, was about to be dissolved in order that by marrying several wives the Jews of the town might get new dowries with which to pay the arrears in their taxes. His wife spreads this news throughout the community, to the great terror of the women. They resolve to avert the calamity by offering up their savings stored away in stockings and bundles. These are brought to the assembled brotherhood of the Khassidim, who, of course, use the money for a jollification. There are many amusing incidents in the play. The servant of Selde is dreaming of the time when she shall be married to Jekel and when she will lord it over her former mistress; the scene in the women's galleries when the news of the impending misfortune is reported is very humorous, and the attempt of the Rabbi's wife to learn the truth of the fact from her husband who had not been initiated in the story by Jekel is quite dramatic. It is one of the best, if not the best, comedy written in Judeo-German. A number of witty stories in a semi-dramatic form have been produced by Ulrich Kalmus; the most of these are disfigured by coarse jokes, but a few of them it would well pay to rearrange for scenic representation. One of his best is a version of the Talmudical legend of the devil and the bad wife; it is almost precisely the same that Robert Browning has versified in his 'Doctor ----.' A good story, resembling Linetzki's 'The Polish Boy,' but with much less bitterness and humor, is given in 'Jekele Kundas,' by one who signs himself by the pseudonym Abasch. Translations from foreign tongues are not uncommon in this period. Some Russian stories are rendered into Judeo-German; also a few German dramas, such as Lessing's 'The Jews'; from the English we have Walter Scott's 'Ivanhoe' and Longfellow's 'Judas Maccabæus'; and from the French we get for that time Masse's 'The Story of a Piece of Bread,' and from the Hebrew one of Luzzato's dramas. To other useful works of a scientific character we shall return later. There is a marked difference in the development of Judeo-German literature in the Khassidic Southwest and the Misnagdic North. While the first gave promise of a natural growth and a better future, the second showed early the seeds of decay. The nearness to Germany explains the deterioration of the literary Judeo-German of Lithuania, but the cause for the weaker activity in the literature itself is to be sought in the whole mental attitude of the Misnagdim, who as strict ritualists did not allow the promptings of the heart to interfere with their blind adherence to the Law. The very origin of Khassidism was due to a protest against that cold formalism which excluded everything imaginative. Unfortunately this protest opened the way to the Cabbala and admitted the wildest excesses of mysticism in the affairs of everyday life, and this soon gave rise to that form of the new sect with which we meet so frequently in the descriptions of the early authors of the Southwest. These, however, in tearing themselves away from their early associations abandoned only their degraded religious faith, not the love for the fanciful which, if properly directed by a controlling reason, would lead to an artistic career. The Misnagdim, on the contrary, in breaking with their traditions were predisposed to become rationalists with whom utilitarian motives prevailed over the finer sentiments. Their advocates of the Reform, who took to writing in the vernacular of the people, set about from the very start to create a useful, rather than an artistic, literature, to give positive instruction rather than to amuse. The outward form of language and style was immaterial to them; the information the story carried was their only excuse for writing it. Foremost of that class of writers was Aisik Meier Dick,[91] who in the introduction to one of his stories[92] speaks as follows of his purpose in publishing them: "Our women have no ear and no feeling for pure ethical instruction. They want to hear only of miracles and wonderful deeds whether invented or true; they find delight in the story of Joseph de la Reyna, or of Elijah's appearance in the form of an old man to be the tenth in the Minyan on the eve of the Atonement day; they are even satisfied with the story of Bevys of Hamptoun and the Greyhound, with the Horse Drendsel and the Sword Familie, and with the beautiful Princess Deresna, or merely with a story of a Bride and Bridegroom. "This sad fact, dear readers, I took deep to heart, and I resolved to make use of this very weakness for interesting stories for their own good by composing books of an entertaining nature, which would at the same time carry moral lessons. Thanks to God I have succeeded in my undertaking, for my stories are being read diligently, and they are productive of good. Several hundred stories of all kinds have been so far issued by me, each having a different purpose. Even every witty tale and mere witticism teaches something useful. I am sure a great number of my readers do not suspect my good intentions, and read my stories, just as they read Bovo, for pastime only, and will accuse me, the writer of the same, as being a mere babbler who distracts the attention from serious studies, and as writing them for the money that there is in them. I know all that full well, and yet I keep on doing my duty, for even greater men than I have been treated in no better way by our nation; our prophets have been cursed by us, and beaten, and pulled by the hair, and spit upon, and some have even been killed. I am proud to be able to say that I am not making my living from my writings, and I should have been repaid tenfold better if I had passed my time in some more profitable work. But I do it only out of love for my nation, of whom the most do not know how far they are removed from mankind at large, and what a miserable position we occupy in these enlightened days among the civilized nations.... We must, whether we wish or not, enter into much closer relations with the outside world than our parents did. We must, therefore, be better acquainted with the world, that we may be tolerated by our fellow-men (the Gentiles), who surpass us in civilization.... Consequently, I regard it as a great favor to speak to you by means of my books, and as a still greater favor that the famous firm of Romm is willing to print them, for the publication of prayers is more profitable than that of story-books that are only read in circulating libraries or merely borrowed from a friend." This passage fully characterizes Dick's activity, which lasted from the fifties until his death, in 1893. He was not a man of deep learning, and did not produce any masterpieces, such as the other writers of the time were printing in the South. But he atoned for this by his great earnestness and good common sense, which led him to choose the best subjects for his stories, such as would be of the most immediate good for his humble readers. He translated or imitated the leading popular books of his time, not limiting himself to such as were taken out of Jewish life, but independently of their religious tenor. Among his translations we find the works of Bernstein, Campe, Beecher-Stowe; there are imitations of Danish, French, Polish, and Russian books; and many subjects, not easily traceable now, have been suggested to him by other literatures. He has also written many stories taken from the life of the Lithuanian Jews. He ascribes great importance to biographies, devoting several introductions to impress the necessity of reading these. But he treats just as frequently geographical and historical themes; among the latter he has even dared to give an impartial discussion of the Reformation. At first Dick's books were small 16mos of rarely more than forty-eight pages, and up to the year 1871 the abbreviation AMD, for his name, occurs but twice. After that all his works bear the initials, or even the name in full. The small size of the books is due to his desire to make them accessible to the poorest of his race; this necessitated a retrenchment of nearly all the works which he translated. Only in the eighties, when reading had become universal and more expensive works could be published, did he issue octavos of considerable thickness, some of them being four-volumed books. Dick had no talent as a writer, and his style is but a weak reflection of the originals which he translated. The language he uses is a frightful mixture of Judeo-German with German, the latter frequently predominating over the first, so that he is often obliged to give in parentheses the explanation of unusual words. And so it happened that, although his purpose had been a good one, and his influence had at first been salutary on a very large circle of readers, he has set a bad example to a large host of scribblers who have taken all imaginable liberties with the language and the subjects they treated of, and have produced a flood of bastard literature under which the many better productions are entirely drowned. He has destroyed all feeling for a proper diction, and has cultivated only a passion for reading, so that it was necessary for his followers to write 'ein hochst interessanter Roman' on the title-page, and parade the book with crumbs of German words unintelligible to the public, in order to find a ready sale. One of the first to write in the style of Dick was M. R. Schaikewitsch,[93] who began his prolific career in 1876, since which time he has brought out more than one hundred books, the most of which are of bulky proportions. At first he was satisfied to tell stories from the life of his immediate surroundings, but soon he aspired to higher things, and began to drag in by the hair scenes and situations of which he did not have the slightest conception. As long as he wrote of what he had himself seen he produced books that, without doing any particular good, were to a certain extent harmless. He certainly has a better talent for telling a story than Dick; his language is also nearer the spoken vernacular, and in the beginning he avoided Germanisms. He might, therefore, have developed into one of the best Jargonists, had he chosen to study, and had he worked less rapidly. In an adaptation of Gogol's 'The Inspector,' he has shown what he might have been had he had any earnest purpose in life. But he lacks entirely Dick's straightforwardness, and writes only to make money. The common people devoured his stories with the same zeal that formerly they showed towards the productions of Dick, and unwittingly they have imbibed a poison which the later authors of a nobler nature, who have the interests of the people at heart, are trying to eradicate. These try to point out directly by accusation, and indirectly by writing better novels, how dangerous and immoral Schaikewitsch is in his books. They go too far in their anxiety to bias the mind of the masses against him when they speak of his proneness to immoral scenes, for in that he is not worse than many of the better class of authors. The deleterious effect is produced not by these, but by his introducing a world to them that does not exist in reality, that gives them a most perverted idea of life, without teaching them any facts worth knowing. In his many historical novels, for example, he uses good sources for the fundamental facts on which he bases his tale, but the men and women are such as could never have existed at the period described and that do not exist now: they are monstrosities of his imagination as they appear to him in his very narrow sphere of experiences. His treatment of these historical themes is not unlike the one given to the stories of Alexander and other ancient works during the Middle Ages. The resemblance is still further increased by his extravagant, romantic conception of love, on which he dwells with special pleasure, to the great joy of his feminine public. A much better attempt at transferring the method of Dick to dramatic productions had been made as early as 1867 and the following year by J. B. Falkowitsch. His two dramas 'Chaimel the Rich' and 'Rochele the Singer' were at one time very popular in the South. The second is an adaptation of some foreign work; the first is probably original. They are written in a good vernacular, but are devoid of interest, as the didactic element outweighs the plot, and the latter is very loosely developed. Schaikewitsch has had many imitators, all of whom try to rival him in quantity. Among these are to be counted Blaustein, Beckermann, Seiffert, Budson, Buchbinder; the latter, a writer without talent, has at least given some useful translations, and has also written some articles on the popular belief of the Jews. Outside of Dick, the Northwest has produced two important writers, one in the beginning, the other at the end, of the period. The first is Zweifel, whom we already know from his poetical works; the other is Schatzkes, the author of 'The Jewish Ante-Passover.' Zweifel has produced several small works of aphorisms which have been very popular and have been frequently reprinted. Their fine moral tone, the purity of the language used in them, the simple style in which they are composed, place them among the best books of Judeo-German literature. He has also written a story, 'The Happy Reader of the Haphtora,' which is a discussion on piety and honesty clad in the form of a tale. The other, M. A. Schatzkes, has written but one book, which is not properly called a story, but an invaluable cyclopedia of Jewish customs, particularly such as directly or indirectly refer to the Passover, strung together in chronological order as a consecutive action. With the exception of Linetzki's 'The Polish Boy,' there has been written no one work that treats so comprehensively of the beliefs and habits of the Jews in Russia. Schatzkes is an indifferent story-teller, and his work is full of repetitions, but, nevertheless, 'The Jewish Ante-Passover' must be counted among the classics of the period under discussion. It is a sad picture that is portrayed in it; in a straightforward manner, without exaggeration, he tells of conditions that one would hardly believe possible as existing at the end of the nineteenth century. Neither of these men has told stories in the manner of the Southern writers, for neither of them cared as much for the form as for the contents in which they told them. They differ from Dick in that they at least did not use a corrupt language in their works. All the other writers have no excuse for writing at all. This inferior literature had its rise in the seventies, when the better forces had been alienated from the people and had received instruction in Russian schools. The men who had been writing for the Haskala, finding their efforts crowned with success, had ceased to write; many of the older men had passed away. The newer generation had no reason to proceed in the path of the older men. There were only the lower classes left, who had had no advantages in the foreign education, and who were craving for reading matter of whatsoever kind. It was to these alone that the newer writers spoke, and they were not animated by any high motives in addressing them. They were left to themselves to do as they pleased, for the seventies are characterized by an absence of all criticism. No one cared what they did or how they did it. All felt and hoped that the last hour for the Jargon had come, and it was immaterial to them what was produced in Judeo-German literature before its final decay. But Abramowitsch's prophecy in 'The Dobbin' was fulfilled,--the assimilation that had been going on peacefully had not produced the desired result, and one morning those who had had time to forget the language their mothers had been talking to them awoke to the bitter consciousness that they were despised Jews, on the same level with the most lowly of their race. Among these arose a new school of writers who introduced the methods of the literary languages into their native dialect. The next period, the present, is signalized by a spirit of sound criticism. XII. PROSE WRITERS SINCE 1881: SPEKTOR In the short period of two years Judeo-German literature lost four of its most prominent writers: in 1891 there passed away the veteran poet, Michel Gordon; the next year J. L. Gordon followed him; and soon after death gathered in Dick and Zederbaum. Without having himself produced any works of a permanent value, without having in any way accelerated or retarded the course of its literature, Zederbaum is peculiarly identified with its development and has on two important occasions in the history of the Jews of Russia served as a crystallizing body for the literary forces in the vernacular. He was born in 1816, and in his youth enjoyed the intimate friendship of Ettinger and Aksenfeld. He had fostered the budding talents of Abramowitsch and Linetzki at a time when the efforts of the first disciples of the Haskala were about to be crowned by a success they had hardly dreamed would be realized so soon. And he lived to see all his hopes crushed in the occurrences of 1881, when his race was threatened to be cast back into darkness more dense than at his birth. During a lifetime thus rich in momentous experiences, he has in his person reflected the succession of events as far as they affected his race. In 1861 he founded a Hebrew periodical, the _Hameliz_, as a mouthpiece of the more advanced ideas of culture for that restricted class of the learned and educated who still clung to the sacred language as the only medium for the advancement of worldly knowledge. But he felt that the time had come when the masses who, on the one side, could not be reached by that ancient tongue, and who, on the other, had not yet had an opportunity of a Russian instruction, must be approached directly in their own mother-tongue. So, two years later, he started the Judeo-German supplement to his Hebrew weekly, the _Kol-mewasser_, which was for ten years the rallying ground of all who could wield a Judeo-German pen. Then the Government interfered in the publication, and for another decade there was no periodical published in Russia in that language. Nor was that to be regretted, for its usefulness had become very small. The Russian schools were crowded with Jewish young men and women, and there was not a science or an art to which the Jews had not given a large contingent, and this vanguard of the new culture, even if it had not broken with the traditions of the past, could be reached only by means of the Russian language. To fall in line with these changed conditions, Zederbaum founded two Russian periodicals for the discussion of Jewish affairs. After a great deal of trouble, he succeeded in October of 1881 in getting the Government's permission to issue a Judeo-German weekly, the _Judisches Volksblatt_. He felt that his duty was once more with the masses, that they needed the advice of better-informed men in the impending danger, and at the advanced age of sixty-five he once more took upon his shoulders a publication in which he had no supporters. In the first two years the weekly was bare of literary productions. Except for an occasional poem by J. L. Gordon, and here and there a feuilleton, the rest was occupied by political news, for which Zederbaum had to supply the leaders. Abramowitsch and Linetzki had ceased writing, and no new generation had had time to develop literary talents. The tone of the new novel, to do any positive good, had to be different from those current before. Dick had been writing for the people with little regard to the people's familiarity with the scenes described, while Abramowitsch wrote of the people but not necessarily to the level of an humble audience. Now the author had to write both of and for the people, he had to be in touch with them not as a critic or moralizer, but as a sympathetic friend. In 1883, two such men made their debut in the _Judisches Volksblatt_: Mordechai Spektor, the calm observer of the life in the lower strata of society, and Solomon Rabinowitsch, the impulsive painter of scenes from the middle classes. Of these, the first came nearest to what Zederbaum regarded as requisite for a writer in those troublous times, and he called Spektor to St. Petersburg to take charge of the literary part of his weekly. In the short time of his connection with the _Volksblatt_, and later as editor of several periodicals of his own, Spektor[94] has developed a great activity. He has written a large number of short sketches and more extended novels,[95] and his talent is still in the ascendant. All of his productions are characterized by the same melancholy dignity and even tenor. He is never in a hurry with his narration, and his characters are sketched with a firm hand and clearly outlined against the background of the story. He loves his subjects with a calm, dispassionate love, and he loves the meanest of his creations no less than his heroes. He likes to dwell with them and to inspect them from every coign of vantage. He fondly tells of their good qualities and suffers with them for their natural defects. And yet, though he loves them, he does not place a halo around them, he does not idealize them. The situations are developed in his stories naturally, independently of what he would like them to be. Although he now and then describes the life of the middle classes, he more often treats incidents from the life of the artisans in the small towns, who have not been affected by the modern culture. Himself having had few advantages in life, he has been able to keep in closer touch with the men and women about whom and for whom he writes. He understands them thoroughly, and they like to listen to him. He does not sermonize to them, he does not attack them or their enemies; he merely speaks to them as their friend. The Khassid and the Anti-Khassid, the laborer and the man of culture, Jew and Non-Jew, can read him with equal pleasure. The student of manners finds in his faithful pictures as rich a store of information as in Schatzkes' or Linetzki's works, and he has the conviction that nothing is distorted or thrown out of its proper proportion, as the others sometimes have to do in order to strengthen their arguments. Spektor is a young man, having been born in 1859, and was a witness of the occurrences in the seventies and the eighties from which he draws the subjects for his stories. His style is simple, without any attempts at adornment, and his language, based on his native dialect of Uman in the Government of Kiev, is chaste and pure. One of the most puzzling problems to the Judeo-German writers of modern times has been the treatment of love in the Jewish novel. They all agree that they have to follow Western models in that class of literature, and they are all equally sure that that passion does not exist among their people in any of the phases with which one meets elsewhere. The young woman's education in a Jewish home is such as to exclude a blind self-abandonment, with the consequent tragic results. Her desire to form family ties is greater than the natural promptings of her heart; her infatuation of the moment is easily smothered by a cool calculation of her future welfare, by the consideration of her duties towards her future husband and children. Unless the author uses the greatest caution in this matter, he is liable to fall into exaggerations and sentimentalities which would soon land him among the writers of the type of Schaikewitsch. But Spektor, not departing even in this from his usual candor, intermingles the most romantic passages with the cold facts of stern reality. His unrequited lovers do not commit suicide, or pine their lives away; they get over their infatuations in a manner prescribed by their religious convictions, get married to others, and rear happy families. Here is an example: In 'The Fashionable Shoemaker' we are introduced to the sphere of a well-to-do shoemaker with no pretensions to any kind of culture. Having gotten on successfully in life, he is anxious to marry his daughter Breindele to Schlōme, the dandyish son of Sender Liebersohn, the rich man of the town. The latter looks favorably on the alliance in spite of the general disinclination of business men to enter into family ties with artisans, as he is desirous of feathering his son's nest before an impending bankruptcy sweeps away his fortune. Lipsche, Breindele's mother, in vain tries to dissuade her husband from the step, while Hirschel, the chief apprentice in the shop, is earnestly pleading with Breindele to marry him, for he loves her dearly. But she is too much attracted by the wealth of Schlōme and her future social position to listen to her father's simple-hearted, honest workman. The marriage is consummated, and soon a complete change takes place in the affairs of all concerned. Liebersohn loses his possessions. Hirschel, bearing in his heart his unrequited love, leaves his master and establishes a shop of his own. He works with great energy to forget his sorrow, and becomes a dangerous competitor of Susje, the shoemaker, whose hard-earned savings are slowly disappearing under the double obligation to support his family and that of his daughter Breindele. In vain some of the 'modern' girls of the town dress themselves in their best gowns and don fine silk stockings when Hirschel comes to take a measure of their feet for new pairs of shoes for them. Their machinations have no effect on Hirschel, who lives quietly for himself. But one day he notices Leotschke, Breindele's younger sister, in the street, and he is struck by her resemblance to his former love. When he left his master she was but a child, and now she is a pretty maiden. He cultivates her acquaintance, falls in love with her and is loved by her. There are no love scenes in the story. Hirschel goes to Leotschke's mother and gets her willing consent to the union. After the marriage he helps support Breindele and her family, for her husband, Schlōme, who has learned no trade, finds it hard to make a living. One of his best sketches is the one entitled 'Two Companions.' It is a gem among the many good things he has written,--perfect in form and rounded off as few of his sketches are. It tells of two girls, Rōsele and Perele, who have grown up together as dear friends. When they reach the age of sixteen Rōsele notices that the young students of the gymnasium pay more attention to her beautiful companion than to her. She becomes jealous, suspects the seamstress of purposely favoring her friend with more carefully worked dresses, which enhance her natural beauty, accuses Rōsele of drawing away her gentlemen friends by unfair means, and finally when she finds herself more and more abandoned by her acquaintances, she completely breaks off her relations with the friend of her childhood. They lead a separate existence. At the age of thirty-five Perele is bowed down with sorrows: she has buried a husband and two children, has again married, and her days are taken up in the care of her family and unpleasant discussions with her jealous husband. Rōsele has married a sickly man with whom she has nothing in common. He married her only for her money. Their child is as frail as its father, and Rōsele's days are passed in sordid cares and worry. "So passed another twenty-five years. After a long severe winter there came at last the young, fresh spring in all his glory, with his many attendants of all kinds who warble, whistle, chatter, and clatter, in the trees, in the air, on the earth, and in the grass. The streets are dry, the air is warm.... In an avenue of trees, on the sunlit side of it, two old women are walking together. They are dressed in old-fashioned, long burnouses, and hold umbrellas in their hands against which they lean. Their faces are wrinkled, their heads drooping to one side, and they stop every few steps they take, and speak with their toothless mouths: "'My dear Perele, this has been a long winter!' "'Yes, a frightful winter! Thanks to the Lord it is over. To-day it is good--the sun shines so warmly! But I have put on my burnous for all that! You, Rōsele, have done likewise! No, it is not yet warm enough for us.' "They seated themselves on the nearest bench and continued their conversation: "'I am getting tired; I think we had better go home.' "'Yes, I am getting hungry, for I have eaten to-day only a broth. I cannot eat anything except it be a soft, fresh roll with milk or something like it.' "'I, too....' "And thus old age has again made peace among the two companions of long ago. They love each other again just as before when they were children, and they did not know that one was pretty and the other homely, ... for now they are again alike! Perele and Rōsele have both alike bent forms and wrinkled faces; both have no teeth in their mouths, and their heads droop alike. Only Perele has come to it from living too much, and Rōsele from not living at all. The two gowns, which the same tailor has made for them for the Passover from the same piece of cloth and according to the same fashion, have pleased them equally well, and they need not complain of the workmanship."