The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century

by Leo Wiener

In all these poems there is nothing specifically Jewish except the language, and they might as well have been written in any other language without losing the least part of their significance. Dr. Ettinger is thus an exceptional phenomenon among his confreres, but exceptional only in appearance, as the cause for it is not far to seek. From the few data of his life we have learned that he received his training in the beginning of this century in Galicia, where at that time the influence of the Mendelssohnian school was most potent. He brought with him to Russia not only a love for enlightenment, but also what then was a necessary concomitant of that culture, a love for German learning; hence his exclusive imitation of German originals. At first the privileges of Western education were not only enjoyed by a small number of learned men, but there was no attempt made at introducing them to the masses at large, for that would have been a hazardous occupation for those who entered in an unequal combat with the superstitious people. It was only after J. B. Levinsohn had pointed out in his Hebrew works the desirability of educating them, and after he had undertaken to do so single-handed, that the other writers, late in the thirties and in the forties, began to approach the masses in the least offensive manner, by means of the folksong. Dr. Ettinger's activity, however, fell in the period preceding the militant energy of the Haskala. If he wished at all to write in Judeo-German, he could appear only as the interpreter of German culture to a public imbued with a love for it. What in the beginning was only a pastime of his leisure hours, soon became a passion to try his ingenuity, and he proceeded in writing original poems, and continued that practice even at a time when the main purpose of Judeo-German literature was to educate the people.

Judeo-German poetry has developed in Russia in precisely the opposite direction from the one generally taken by that branch of literature among other nations. Whereas the usual course would have been to pass from the simple utterings of the folksong to more and more elaborate forms, the process among the Jews in Russia has been inverted. The first poetical expressions were those of Dr. Ettinger, who may be regarded as a dialectic continuator of Schiller and Lessing. After that followed the school of popular poets of the Gordons, Goldfaden, Linetzki, Ehrenkranz, Berel Broder. In the seventies a few traces of that school are still to be found, but the majority of songs produced then smack of the badchen's art, while Goldfaden himself has deteriorated into a writer of theatre couplets. The explanation of this is found in the fact that in the sixties the efforts of the folk-singers were crowned with success. The Rabbinical schools had graduated several classes of men trained in the Reform, the Gymnasia and Universities had been thrown wide open to the Jewish youths, and in the next decade a large number of them had availed themselves of the highest advantages offered in these institutions of learning. The cloud of a stubborn ignorance had been successfully dispelled, the light shone brightly over the whole land. The bard's task was done; he had no need to spur the people on to progress, for that duty was now devolved on the large host of younger men who had tasted the privileges of a Russian education. But these had been identifying themselves with Russian thought, with Russian ideals. For them German culture had little of significance, except as it appeared in universal literature, or had affected Russian ideas. Still less were they interested in Jewish letters, whether in Hebrew, or in Judeo-German. On the contrary, they were trying hard to forget their humble beginnings. Neither for these nor by these could the Judeo-German language be employed for any literary purposes. The masses had become accustomed to look with favor on the new education, and one by one the better elements were disappearing from the narrow world of the Ghetto. There was still left a large proportion of those who could not avail themselves of the benefits offered them. They knew no other language than the homely dialect of their surroundings, and they were still thirsting for entertainment such as the folk-singers have offered to them. The older men, the champions of the Haskala, were dead, or too old to write; the younger men had other interests at heart, and thus it was left to a mediocre class of writers to supply them with poetry. This part naturally fell to the badchens. Another quarter of a century, and Judeo-German literature would have run its course; even the badchen would have been silenced. But it suddenly rose from its ashes with renewed vigor after the riots against the Jews in 1881.

VII. POETRY SINCE THE EIGHTIES IN RUSSIA

THE latest blood-bath was instituted against the Jews of Russia in 1881. In the same year there was started in St. Petersburg a weekly periodical, Jüdisches Volksblatt, by the editor of the Kol-mewasser which had gone out of existence ten years before. The purpose of the new publication was to focus all the available forces that had been dispersed in the decade preceding through the agencies that made for assimilation, and to prepare the way for a renewed activity among the people. These no longer needed to be urged on to progress, but had to be comforted in the misfortunes that had befallen them, and in the dangers that awaited them. In the first number of the new periodical there appeared the poem of J. L. Gordon on 'The Law written on Parchment,' while the second brought one by the same author, outlining his plan to sing words of encouragement to his suffering, hard-working brothers and sisters. However, very soon after all singing ceased. The year 1882 had been one of too much suffering, when even consolation is out of place. Two years later S. Rabinowitsch, who was destined by his unresting energy and good example to cause a revival of Judeo-German literature, justly exclaimed in the same weekly[63] in a poem 'To Our Poet': "Arise, thou Poet! Where have you been all this time? Send us from afar your words of wisdom! For what other pleasure have your brothers if not your sweet and consoling songs?"

While no other singers were forthcoming, Rabinowitsch composed himself a series of songs, although he was preparing himself to be a novelist. His heart was with the poetry of the Russian Nekrasov, and his native Judeo-German gave him Michel Gordon for a model. He imitated both, taking the structure from the Russian, and the manner of the folksong from Gordon. When his talent was just reaching its fullest development, he abandoned this branch of literature to devote his undivided attention to prose. Only twice afterwards he returned to the use of rhythm, once in a poem, entitled 'Progress, Civilization,' an imitation of Nekrasov's 'Who lives in Russia Happily,' and at another time in a legend in blank verse. The first has never been finished, the other appeared in a collective volume of poetry published in 1887 by M. Spektor, his friend and rival in the resuscitation of Judeo-German letters.

That volume, named 'Der Familienfreund,' was intended as an attempt to bring together all those who wrote poetry; but we find in it only names that had been known to us from the previous period: M. Gordon, Zunser, Goldfaden, Linetzki.[64] To these must be added the name of Rabinowitsch just mentioned, and of Samostschin, who had furnished a few poems to the Kol-mewasser nearly twenty years before. In the Volksblatt there were published in the meanwhile a few songs by various authors, most prominently by Moses Chaschkes. He also printed in 1889 a volume of his poems at Cracow, under the name of 'Songs from the Heart,' in which are contained a number of reflections on the riots in Russia. There are some good thoughts in them, although the technique is not always faultless. He, too, belongs to the older type of folk-singers.

The Jews had at that time furnished three names to Russian poetry: those of Nadson, Vilenkin (Minski), and Frug. Of these the first had a Christian mother and died at the early age of twenty-four, in 1886. The second had begun his poetical career in the seventies, after having received a thorough Russian education. There was only Frug left, who had not entirely broken with his Jewish traditions, for he had gone directly from the Jewish farmer colony where he had been born to St. Petersburg to engage in literary work. His first Russian poem was published in 1879. In 1885 he began to compose also in Judeo-German, continuing to do so to the present time.[65] Like many other Jewish writers he had become convinced that his duties were above all with his race, as long as it was oppressed and persecuted, and his energy was thus unfortunately split in two by writing in two languages. For the same reason such poets as Perez, Winchevsky, Rosenfeld, have taken to Judeo-German, which is understood by few and which in a few decades is doomed to extinction, except in countries of persecution. They adorn their humble literature, but they would have been an honor to other literatures as well, and from these they have been alienated.

When Frug began to write in his native dialect, he had already acquired a reputation in a literary language. He had passed the severe school of the poet's technique, had been trained in the traditions of his vocation. One could not expect that in descending to speak to his coreligionists in their own tongue, he would return to the more primitive methods of the popular bard. He simply changed the language, but nothing of his art. By this transference he only gains in reputation, although he loses in popularity, for the accusation frequently brought against him, that he confines himself to too narrow a sphere, falls to the ground when he intends that that narrow sphere alone should be his audience. Half a century had gone by since Dr. Ettinger had introduced the form and subject-matter of German poetry, and since those days no such harmony had been heard to issue from the mouth of a Jewish poet. There were no literary traditions to fall back upon, except the folksong of the preceding generation; there scarcely existed a poetical diction for Judeo-German, and a variety of dialects were striving for supremacy. What he and the people owed to Michel Gordon, he expressed in two poems entitled 'To Michel Gordon' and 'On Michel Gordon's Grave'; both collectively he named 'One of the Best.' In an allegorical series, 'Songs of the Jewish Jargon,' he sings of the history of the language which is identical with that of his downtrodden race. The prologue is a model of beautiful style. The Slavic dactyllic diminutives, grafted on German stems, the gentle cadence of words, the simplicity of the diction, remind one rather of mellifluous Italian than of a disorderly mixture which, in the poem, he compares to the bits of bread in a beggar's wallet, or which, according to another part in the same allegory, excludes the deceased Jew from heaven, as the angel at the gate cannot understand him.

There are a few poems in his collection in which he bewails the lot of a Jewish poet who has only tears for his subject, but the most deal with incidents in the life of his oppressed coreligionists, now painting pictures of their misery, their poverty, their lack of orderliness, now giving them words of consolation. He never passes the narrow frame of his people's surroundings, no matter what he sings. Even when he chooses nature of which to sing, it appears to him transformed under a heavy cloud of his own sufferings superinduced by the persecution of his brethren. The best of his poems are those entitled 'Night Songs,' in which he depicts a few night scenes. Here is the way he describes the Melamed, the teacher of children in those miserable quarters called a school: "Behold the palace, oh, how beautiful, how magnificent: ivory and velvet, silk, leather, bronze, cedar wood ... here lives a Jewish teacher.... Of velvet is his skullcap—it glistens and shines from afar; the fescue is made of ivory; his girdle is of silk; the candelabrum is of bronze; the knout is of leather; the stool, the stool is cut out of cedar wood!" One can easily see that the rest of the picture is in keeping with the glory just described. There is gloom everywhere in his songs. And how could it be otherwise? It was proper for Ettinger to smile and to jest, for he was active at the dawn of better days; it was natural for the poets of the thirties and fifties to battle against superstitions and to sound the cry of progress; for the poets of the eighties there was nothing left but tears.

It has been Frug's ambition to be a continuator of the bards who sang for the masses, to be a folk-poet, and the people look upon him as such, although he hardly appeals to them in the manner of the older bards. He is entirely too literary to be understood without previous training, and his allegory is not so easily unravelled. His greatest faults are, perhaps, an absence of dramatic qualities and a certain coldness of colors. Nevertheless, he is one of the best poets in Judeo-German literature, who may also claim recognition by a wider class of readers.