The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century

by Leo Wiener

Gordon has also written a ballad, 'The Stepmother,' which has given rise to a large number of popular imitations. In this he tells of a mother whose rest in the grave is disturbed by the tears of her child. Upon learning that the child has been maltreated by his stepmother, she sends up her voice to God, interceding in her son's behalf, and then addresses herself to her weeping child, assuring him that God has heard her prayer.

Berenstein was no less cultured a man than Gordon. His acquaintance with German literature is evidenced by his motto from Körner, an occasional quotation from Schiller, and his several epigrams which he frankly acknowledges as translations or adaptations of German originals. Thus it happens that Schiller's 'Hoffnung' has been popularized among the Russian Jews in the form of a stanza of a long poem, 'The False Hope.' Except for these literary allusions, Berenstein wrote in the true popular vein. His 'The Cradle,' in which he makes use of the well-known verses, 'Hinter Jankeles Wiegele,' has become as universal as the oral cradle song. Its last stanza enjoins the child to sleep well in order to gather strength for the sufferings of the next day, and this pessimistic view of life becomes ever after the prevailing tone in the many cradle songs that have been written by younger men.[54] 'The Sleep' is a variation on the motto from Körner's 'Tony,' which is put at the head of it: 'Der Schlummer ist ja ein Friedenhauch vom Himmel—Schlummern kann nur ein spiegelreines Herz.' 'Young Tears' is one of the very few love lyrics that appeared in print before the second half of the eighties. In 'The Bar of Soap' Gordon shows that with soap one cannot wash off the blot from his brow, the sorrow from his heart. 'The Empty Bottle' describes the loneliness of him who has lost his wealth, and with it his friends. As a 'byplay' to it follows a pretty lyric, 'Consolation.' A 'byplay' bearing the same name follows an elegy upon the death of an only son. Several of the poems are devoted to the praise of the Sabbath, and only two are given to sarcastic attacks on the Khassidim. In the latter, the words are put in the mouth of a Khassid, who prays to God that he may send again darkness instead of the victorious light in order that his kind may the more securely shear their sheep.

Another very popular poet of the sixties was Abraham Goldfaden,[55] who, in 1876, became the founder of the Jewish theatre. His literary activity may be roughly divided into the period before, and the period after, the establishment of the theatre. The first only is the subject of our present discussion. Like the other two, he published his works in Zhitomir, which, on account of the Rabbinical school opened there in the forties, had come to be the rallying ground of all those who were advocating a progressive Judaism. As the title of his first collection, 'The Jew,' indicates, his poems are all devoted to strictly Jewish matters. Although he occasionally has recourse to the method of Ehrenkranz, or, foreshadowing his future career, even descends to the use of theatre couplets, yet the most of his poems have an individual character, differing from all of his predecessors. He treats with great success, and in a large variety of rhymes, the allegorical and the historical song, sometimes as separate themes, more often by combining them.

One of the best allegorical poems is the triad, 'The Aristocratic Marriage.' In the first part, 'The Betrothal,' he tells us how the humble Egyptian slave, Israel, was betrothed to his aristocratic bride on Mount Sinai. God was the father who gave away the Law to his son, and Moses was the Schadchen, the go-between, the never-failing concomitant of a Jewish marriage. The second part describes a typical Jewish wedding—Israel's entrance into Jerusalem; while the third shows how Israel has misused his opportunity while living in the house of his wife's father during the years that immediately follow the marriage. He committed adultery with idolatry, and God drove him out of his home, but out of regard for his pious ancestry He allowed him to take his wife along with him on his wanderings, and promised him that after ages of repentance He would send him the Messiah to restore him to his former home.

A similar triad, but of a historical nature, is his well-known 'That Little Trace of a Jew,' in which he successively portrays the virtues, the sufferings, and the vices of his race. The last part is identical in sentiment with Gordon's 'Arise, my People,' and inculcates tolerance for the various religious parties of the Jews and love of worldly learning. 'The Firebrand' relates the destruction of the Temple; 'Rebecca's Death' gives a Talmudical version of the event; and 'Cain' tells of his wanderings over the face of the earth after his killing of his brother, and his vain search of death. The latter is the most popular of his Biblical songs. Among the other poems, many of which are of sterling worth, there must be mentioned his lullaby, whose widespread dissemination is only second to Berenstein's cradle song.

The poems which Goldfaden has written during his lifetime would fill several large volumes; they can be found scattered through various periodicals which have appeared in the last thirty years, and in the greater part of the dramas which he has composed for the stage which he has created. Most of these are mere street ballads, but there are some of a serious nature; of these mention will be made in the chapter on the theatre. To the best productions of his first, the most original period of his poetical activity, belong the poems touching women, contained in the volume entitled 'The Jewess.' From the contents we learn that one of them is a translation from Béranger, the other from the Russian. It is also characteristic of the history of Jewish folk-music that one of the songs, as we are informed in the same place, is to be sung to the tune of a well-known Russian lullaby, the other with a Little-Russian melody, while for a third, is mentioned one of M. Gordon's songs.

All the above-mentioned poets belong to what might be termed the German school. These men were more or less intimately acquainted with German literature, and frequently borrowed their subject-matter from that source. They all were active at a time when the conflict between the old religious life of the Russian Jews and the modern tendencies was at the highest. They looked for a solution in the reform which, since the days of Mendelssohn, has become the watchword of progress in Germany. They hoped finally to substitute even the German language for the Judeo-German, which they regarded as a corrupted form of German, and, therefore, named Jargon, an appellation that has stuck to it ever since. In the meanwhile, the better classes were receiving their instruction in Russian schools that alienated them alike from the German influence and from a closer contact with their humble coreligionists. Even such men as had begun in the forties and fifties as folk-poets, were abandoning their homely dialect for the literary language of the country. Jehuda Loeb Gordon, the Hebrew scholar and poet, had given promise of becoming the greatest of popular singers. Yet, in the seventies, he wrote only in Hebrew and Russian, and it was only in the eighties, when the riots and expatriations of the Jews had destroyed all hopes that had been placed in assimilation, that he returned to compose songs for the consolation of his humble and unfortunate brothers.[56] J. L. Gordon has written but few Judeo-German poems, and, of these, not more than nine or ten are folksongs; but they represent the highest perfection of the older school of the popular bards. He has not been surpassed by any of them in simplicity of diction, warmth of feeling, and purity of language. Two of his oldest poems, 'A Mother's Parting,' and 'A Story of Long-Ago,' relate, the first, the hardships of a Jewish soldier in the forties; the second, the horrors of the regime of Chapers, the dishonesty and inhumanity of the Kahal, the representative body of the Jewish community. The newer poems are all of a humoristic nature, except the one devoted to the praise of 'The Law Written on Parchment' that has been the consolation of the Jews during their many wanderings and persecutions.

Parallel with the German school, now overlapping its territory, now pursuing its own course, ran the class of poetry that had for its authors the Badchens or Marschaliks[57]—the wedding jesters. In medieval times the jester's function was to amuse the guests at the wedding, while the more serious discourses were delivered by the Rabbi and the bridegroom. In Russia he had come to usurp all these functions. He improvised verses upon the various stages of the marriage ceremony, delivered the solemn discourses to bridegroom and bride, and furnished the wit during the banquet. His improvisations were replete with Biblical and Talmudical allusions, and cabbalistic combinations of the Hebrew letters of the names of the married couple. His verses were mere rhyming lines, without form or rhythm, and his jests were often of a low order and even coarse. The name of 'badchen' came to be the byname of a coarse, uncultured jester. A change for the better was made in the second half of the fifties by Eliokum Zunser,[58] then but in his teens, who had conceived the idea of making the badchen a singer of songs, rather than a merry person. He was, no doubt, led to make this innovation through the many new folksongs, by Gordon, Ehrenkranz, and Berel Broder, that were then current among the people, and that were received with so much acclamation, both on account of their pleasing contents and the excellent tunes to which they had been set. In 1861, he published eight of his songs which he had been singing at weddings. One of these, at least, 'The Watch,' is merely a differently versified form of Ehrenkranz's 'The Gold Watch,' which must have reached him in its oral form, as it was printed only in 1865. Zunser possessed an excellent voice, and had received a good musical training, and his songs and tunes spread with astonishing rapidity throughout the whole length and breadth of Russia, wherever Jews lived, and became also popular in Galicia and Roumania. This innovation came to stay, and, within a short time, the host of badchens throughout the country began to sing songs at wedding feasts. Whoever could, composed songs of his own; whoever was not gifted with the power of versification, sang the songs of others. These badchens were the most potent factors in the dissemination of the songs of the above-mentioned poets, long before they were accessible in a printed form.

Since it was the badchen's business to amuse, it was natural for Zunser to adopt the manner of Ehrenkranz and Berel Broder, rather than that of his countrymen, Gordon and Goldfaden. But to the Russian Jew, that is amusing which gives him food for reflection, and nature and its manifestations are interesting to him only in so far as they interpret man in all his aspects of life and vicissitudes of fortune. It is this facile power of dissolving external facts in the alembic of his introspective imagination, that has brought Zunser so near to the people, and that has made him so popular. He does not possess the poetical instincts of his contemporaries, Gordon and Ehrenkranz; and many of his poems are mere plagiarisms from other singers. Yet they have become better known in the form in which he has sung them than in their original verses.

All the characteristics of the poets whom he imitates are repeated in Zunser: we have the dispute in 'The Countryman and the Townsman,' 'The Old World and the New,' 'Song of Summer and Winter.' The best of his songs of reflection is 'The Flower,' in which the Jew is compared with a neglected flower; other poems of the same category are 'The Railroad,' 'The Ferry,' 'The Iron Safe,' 'The Clock,' 'The Bird.' There are also songs in which he scourges the hypocrite, the usurer, the inordinate love of innovations and fashion, and some give good pictures of various incidents in the life of a Russian Jew.